PLAINS — April 9, 1865, Union General Ulysses S. Grant met with Confederate General Robert E. Lee to set the terms of surrender of Lee’s Army of North Virginia that would bring an end to the Civil War. The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site will join churches, temples, schools, city halls, public buildings, historic sites, and others across the country in the ringing of the farm bell to commemorate the act that is seen by most Americans as the symbolic end of four years of bloodshed.

The bells will ring first at Appomattox at 3 p.m. and will reverberate across the country beginning at 3:15 p.m. for four minutes (each minute symbolic of a year of war). The end of the Civil War has different meanings for different people and the JCNHS will participate in the ringing of bells across the nation as a gesture to mark the end of the bloody conflict in which more than 750,000 Americans perished.

Join us at 3:15 p.m. April 9 at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm, as we ring the farm bell in celebration of freedom, a restored Union, an expression of mourning and a moment of silence for the fallen.