With the final toll of the great iron bell, a solemn stillness hung in the air Thursday at Vicksburg National Military Park.

About two dozen people gathered in the shade of a mighty magnolia near the national cemetery and watched in silence as the bell pealed four minutes straight to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the end of the Civil War.

“It’s one minute for each year of the war,” ranger Jake Koch said after the program.

On April 9, 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va. The surrender ended the war in Virginia but was far from the close of combat, Koch said.

“Appomattox is of course not the end of the war, especially out here in the west,” Koch said.

Battles continued to rage and confederate surrenders continued through May and June 1865. The last Confederate ship — the CSS Shenandoah — would not surrender until November.

“It was just such a sad thing all together,” Gerald Hamilton, a tourist from Eugene, Ore., who attended the bell-ringing, said of the war.

Hamilton said he felt the program was appropriately solemn and appreciated the park’s reverence toward the war.

“We can’t call an event where 800,000 Americans died a celebration by any means,” Koch said during the program.

Other visitors said they were aware of the anniversary of the Appomattox surrender but didn’t come to the park specifically for the program.

“We just happened to hit the right day for this,” said Margaret Crissman of Michigan who was touring the park with a group.

Commemoration of Civil War related events continues at 7 p.m. Friday, April 24 when Koch will present a program on the 150th anniversary of the SS Sultana’s departure from Vicksburg.

The ill-fated boat packed with Federal troops exploded outside Memphis on April 27, 1865, killing at least 1,800 people onboard.

“It was the worst maritime disaster in American history,” Koch said.