Bells to mark 150th anniversary of end of Civil War

If you hear bells tolling at 2:15 p.m. Thursday, April 9, it's to mark the 150th anniversary of the surrender ceremony at the Appomattox Court House, ending the Civil War.

The Catholic Bishops of Illinois have called on parishes, schools and religious houses in this Land of Lincoln to ring their bells for four minutes to coincide with the very hour of the ceremony leading to the end of the war and of slavery in the United States, which came in December of that year with the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

At St. Raymond de Penafort Parish in Mount Prospect, the bells will chime a triumphal tune last used when the Cubs won their division. Children in the parish school will review the significance of the war and the end of slavery.

And the bishops asked that people recall President Lincoln's words in his second inaugural address just weeks before the war ended: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish, a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."