Everything Military website. Gary W. Gallagher, in Lee and His Army in Confederate History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001, ISBN978-0-8078-2631-7), p. 173, wrote that Lee's surrendering army "represented but a fraction of the Confederacy's men under arms, yet virtually everyone, North and South, interpreted Appomattox as the end of the war. ... Wartime evidence points strongly to the conclusion that Lee was correct in believing he operated in the vital geographic area."