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Grant, "Personal

Vol. II.,

p. 495.

terms. He then remarked that his army was in a CHAP. IX. starving condition, and asked Grant to provide them with subsistence and forage, to which he at Apl. 9, 1865. once assented, and asked for how many men the rations would be wanted. Lee answered, "About twenty-five thousand," and orders were at once Memoirs." given to issue them. The number surrendered turned out to be even larger than this. The paroles signed amounted to 28,231. If we add to this the captures at Five Forks, Petersburg, and Sailor's Creek, the thousands who deserted the failing cause at every by-road leading to their homes, and filled every wood and thicket between Richmond and Lynchburg, we can see how considerable an army Lee commanded when Grant "started out gunning." Yet every Confederate writer, speaker, and singer who refers to the surrender says, and will say forever, that Lee surrendered only seven thousand muskets.

With these brief and simple formalities one of the most momentous transactions of modern times was concluded. The news soon transpired, and the Union gunners prepared to fire a National salute; but Grant would not permit it. He forbade any rejoicing over a fallen enemy, who he hoped would hereafter be an enemy no longer. The next day he rode to the Confederate lines to make a visit of farewell to General Lee. Sitting on horseback be- Ibid., p. 497. tween the lines, the two heroes of the war held a friendly conversation. Lee considered the war at an end, slavery dead, the National authority restored; Johnston must now surrender- the sooner the better. Grant urged him to make a public appeal to hasten the return of peace; but Lee, true to

CHAP. IX. his ideas of subordination to a government which had ceased to exist, said he could not do this without consulting the Confederate President. They parted with courteous good wishes, and Grant, without pausing to look at the city he had taken or Apl. 10, 1865. the enormous system of works which had so long held him at bay, intent only upon reaping the peaceful results of his colossal victory, and putting an end to the waste and the burden of war, hurried away to Washington to do what he could for this practical and beneficent purpose. He had done an inestimable service to the Republic: he had won immortal honor for himself; but neither then nor at any subsequent period of his life was there any sign in his words or his bearing of the least touch of vainglory. The day after Appomattox he was as simple, modest, and unassuming a citizen as he was the day before Sumter.

CHAPTER X

THE FALL OF THE REBEL CAPITAL

INCE the visit of Blair and the return of the

SINC

CHAP. X.

1865.

rebel commissioners from the Hampton Roads Conference, no event of special significance had excited the authorities or people of Richmond. February and March passed away in the routine of war and politics, which at the end of four years had become familiar and dull. To shrewd observers in that city things were going from bad to worse. Stephens, the Confederate Vice-President, had abandoned the capital and the cause and retired to Georgia to await the end. Judge John A. Campbell, though performing the duties of Assistant Secretary of War, made, among his intimate friends, "A Rebel no concealment of his opinion that the last days of the Confederacy had come. The members of the rebel Congress, adjourning after their long and fruitless winter session, gave many indications that they never expected to reassemble. A large part of their winter's work had been to demonstrate without direct accusation that it was the Confederate maladministration which was wrecking the Southern cause. On his part Jefferson Davis prolonged their session a week to send them his last message -a dry lecture to prove that the blame rested en

Jones, War Clerk's Diary." Vol. II.,

p. 450.

CHAP. X. tirely on their own shoulders. The last desperate measure of rebel statesmanship, the law to permit masters to put their slaves into the Southern armies to fight for the rebellion, was so palpably illogical and impracticable that both the rebel Congress and the rebel President appear to have treated it as the merest legislative rubbish; or else the latter would scarcely have written in the same message, after stating that "much benefit is anticipated from this measure," that "The people of the Confederacy can be but little known to him who supposes it possible they would ever consent to Message, purchase, at the cost of degradation and slavery, "Annual permission to live in a country garrisoned by their own negroes, and governed by officers sent by the pp. 718, 719. conqueror to rule over them."

Davis,

Mar. 13,

1865.

Cyclo

pædia," 1865,

Jefferson Davis was strongly addicted to political contradictions, but we must suppose even his crosseyed philosophy capable of detecting that a negro willing to fight in slavery in preference to fighting in freedom was not a very safe reliance for Southern independence. The language as he employs it here fitly closes the continuous official Confederate wail about Northern subjugation, Northern despotism, Northern barbarity, Northern atrocity, and Northern inhumanity which rings through his letters, speeches, orders, messages, and proclamations with monotonous dissonance during his whole four years of authority.

Of all the Southern people none were quite so blinded as those of Richmond. Their little bubble of pride at being the Confederate capital was ever iridescent with the brightest hopes. They had no dream that the visible symbols of Confederate

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