GRANT TO LEE GENERAL: April 7, 1865 The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia. U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General LEE TO GRANT April 7, 1865 GENERAL: I have received your note of this date. Though not entertaining the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender. R. E. Lee, General GRANT TO LEE April 8, 1865 GENERAL: Your note of last evening, in reply to mine of same date, asking conditions on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply, I would say that peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon namely, That the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received. U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General Lee still hesitated. But when Sheridan on the evening of April 8 captured twenty-five Confederate field guns at Appomattox Station and seized four trainloads of supplies for the Confederate army, and on the next morning General Ord reached Appomattox and threw his army corps against the Confederates, who were desperately attempting to fight their way out of the cordon of Union cavalry, Lee sent the white flag, and asked for the interview to arrange terms of surrender. Grant describes the scene in his "Memoirs." When I had left camp that morning [April 9] I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted each other, and after shaking hands took our seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview. What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result and was too manly to show it.... I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us. General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia.... We soon fell into a conversation about old army times [in the Mexican War]. He remarked that he remembered me very well in the old army. . . . Our conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting . . . when General Lee again interrupted the course of the conversation by suggesting that the terms I proposed to give his army ought to be written out. I called to General Parker, Secretary on my staff, for writing materials, and commenced writing out the following terms: Appomattox C. H., Va. Gen. R. E. Lee, Ap'l 9th 1865 GEN: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside. Very respectfully ... I then said to him that I thought this would be about the last battle of the war I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I took it that most of the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole country had been so raided by the two armies that it was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United States did not want them, and I would therefore instruct the officers I left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy effect. He then sat down and wrote out the following letter: GENERAL: Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia I received your letter of this date containing the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect. R. E. Lee, General While duplicates of the two letters were being made, the Union Generals present were severally presented to General Lee. The much talked of surrendering of Lee's sword and my handing it back, this and much more that has been said about it is purest romance. . . . General Lee, after all was completed, and before taking his leave, remarked that his army was in a very bad condition for want of food, and that they were without forage; that his men had been living for some days on parched corn exclusively, and that he would have to ask me for rations and forage. I told him "certainly," and asked for how many men he wanted rations. His answer was "about twenty-five thousand": and I authorized him to send his own commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox Station, two or three miles away, where he could have, out of the trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted... When news of the surrender first reached our lines our men commenced firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our prisoners, and we did not want to exult over their downfall. . . . I suggested to General Lee that there was not a man in the Confederacy whose influence with the soldiery and the whole people was as great as his, and that if he would now advise the surrender of all the armies I had no doubt his advice would be followed with alacrity.1 But Lee said, that he could not do that 1 This testimony to Lee's influence is corroborated by John S. Wise of Virginia, a second lieutenant in the Confederate army at the close of the war: "Certain it is that the Confederacy contained no other man without consulting the President first. I knew that there was no use urging him to do anything against his ideas of what was right. When Lee and I separated he went back to his lines and I returned to the house of Mr. McLean. Here the officers of both armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting battles under the same flag. tributes to Walt Whitman, the American "poet of democracy," 99. Poetical offered his services as voluntary nurse to the soldiers in Abraham the hospitals in Washington during the Civil War. The Lincoln assassination of President Lincoln called forth no nobler tribute than the famous elegy from Whitman's pen: O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead! O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills, a-crowding, -- for you the shores For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; like Robert E. Lee. When he said that the career of the Confederacy was ended; that the hope of an independent government must be abandoned . . . and that the duty of the future was to abandon the dream of a confederacy and render a new and cheerful allegiance to a reunited government - his utterances were accepted as true as Holy Writ. No other human being on earth, no other earthly power, could have produced such acquiescence, or have compelled such prompt acceptance of that final and irreversible judgment."— J. S. Wise, The End of an Era, p. 344. [373] |