How we cite our quotes: Paragraph
Quote #10
"I never did go to school—I was too old at the Surrender," she said in a soft voice. (87)
The Civil War ended in 1865 with Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This is "the Surrender" Phoenix references. The implication is that for younger children who hadn't grown up in slavery, there were new possibilities available with the Surrender, but that those possibilities were not an option for Phoenix who passed her childhood as a slave.