I live in the South... not the deep South... but deep enough to where people have trouble letting things go. One common thing I hear when discussions about the American Civil War get brought up is that the North didn't "actually win" the war; the war just ended. Can someone explain to me if this is technically accurate? Or is this just an excuse used by Southerners who don't want to admit that the South lost?
I don't know a lot about the Civil War, but my understanding is that the North had things won and the South was going to surrender, but the words "I surrender" never came out of Robert E. Lee's mouth. And I'm thinking if that's why people say "the north didn't actually win," it's almost like saying, "yeah, you scored way more points than me in our one-on-one basketball game, but because I never said that I lost means you didn't actually win." Is my thinking incorrect?
The other answer was deleted so I'll add mine here.
Lee did indeed surrender to Grant, signing an instrument of surrender at Appomattox Court House to General Ulysses S. Grant. He refused to carry on a guerrilla war as requested by Jefferson Davis and see his beloved south ravaged even further.
The war didn't just end, the North won fair and square. The south was being economically strangled from the outside (no trade partners to speak of), and from within (scorched earth policies from vengeful union commanders). Their army was vastly smaller than the north and had lost the initiative it had in the first couple years. The confederacy was split in two down the Mississippi, and many major cities (like Atlanta, burned to the ground by Sherman) had been lost. The south very much lost that war, in every sense of the word.
I think the surrender of all Confederate forces, The capture of the Confederate capital, The capture of the entire Confederate Cabinet along with the President of the Confederate States and the occupation of Federal troops in every major Confederate city means the South lost the war.
Sources:
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House. 1958. ISBN 0-307-29039-5.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian. New York: Random House. 1963. ISBN 0-307-29040-9.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3: Red River to Appomattox. New York: Random House. 1974. ISBN 0-307-29041-7.
Oh man, how much time do you have because this topic can be looked at from so many different angles. I think the other answers and comment threads appropriately address that the Confederate States did in fact lose the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War between the States, War of the Rebellion, or whatever name you so choose to call the Civil War.
Where the North did not win, arguably, was in Reconstruction. Johnson was amazingly inept as president. The Freedmen's Bureau doesn't live up to the potential of many radicals, Southern legislators and governments look exactly the same as they did pre-war (e.g. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens is elected back into the Congress of the United States), and Black Codes are passed in Southern States.
Congress does override the veto of Johnson with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Tenure of Office Act (which is used to keep Stanton in office), as well as passing the 14, 15, and 16th amendments but they don't quite live up to their potential. Republican governments fail in the South mainly because of violence (the KKK founded by former Gen. Nathaniel Bedford Forrest) and the amount of Blacks going to the vote drops radically because of this. The South invents this idea of a glorified pre-war South which is completely different from the actuality of Southern life. This return to the "idea of the old South" by Southerns eventually is what causes reconstruction to fail but reunification of the States to be accomplished.
In short though, no, the North won the Civil War and the South surrendered. The goal of many Northerners did not end up being victorious which could lead to this way of thinking
Sources:
Lou Masur's A Concise History of the Civil War
Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
*Edit: added sources and grammar
The North's war aim was to keep the South in the union. They certainly won in that respect.
They defeated the South's armies. They captured and occupied Southern territory. They got the Confederate leaders to formally surrender. These are all things traditionally seen as part of winning.
In a sense, one could say that the struggle to rebuild the Southern social system was not won. The Reconstruction dream of political ( and, among some people, social and economic) equality was never achieved.