THE BATTLE OF APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE

APPOMATTOx COUNTY, VIRGINIA
APRIL 9, 1865

COMMANDERS

Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee

PARTICIPANTS

110,000 (Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James; 63,285 engaged in battle)

29,000 (Army of Northern Virginia; 9,992 engaged in battle)

CASUALTIES

Union 164 killed/wounded

Confederate Approximately 500 killed/wounded 28,356 paroled

VICTORY: UNION

OVERVIEW

After nearly ten months the Siege of Petersburg was nearing its end. Lee tried to force Grant to contract his lines by staging an attack on Fort Stedman, but the battle only weakened Lee’s right flank. Then Sheridan defeated Pickett on April 1, 1865, in the Battle of Five Forks. That loss convinced Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond. His right flank was about to give way, and he knew he’d quickly be overwhelmed by Grant’s much larger force. He determined the best course was to retreat to the west, then south, to join forces with General Johnston in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Union broke through his right flank on April 2. By that evening Lee’s army of about 54,000 men was on the move. Petersburg surrendered the morning of April 3, followed by Richmond that evening. Before President Davis left, he ordered all supplies of use to the Union destroyed—inadvertently setting Richmond afire. Grant immediately took off after Lee with about 110,000 men.

On April 4 Lee arrived at Amelia Court House—about forty miles west of Petersburg—where he expected to find supplies that he had ordered, but nothing was there. His men, worn out from fighting and marching, now had nothing to eat. He lost twenty-four hours while his men fanned out through the countryside scrounging food. On the fifth he moved toward the Richmond & Danville Railroad, where he encountered Sheridan’s cavalry, which prevented him from using the railroad for transportation or for bringing up supplies from Danville.

Nothing could be found in the countryside, so he headed toward Appomattox Station, about fifty miles west of Amelia Court House, to meet three wagon trains from Lynchburg and perhaps to send his men south by rail to North Carolina. On April 6 Custer captured and burned 400 supply wagons, while Sheridan’s men captured almost an eighth of Lee’s army, including Lieutenant-General Richard Ewell and eight other generals, along with 180 of their supply wagons. Lee’s army was reduced to two corps under Generals Longstreet and John Brown Gordon. On April 8, before Lee arrived at Appomattox Station, about five miles south of Appomattox Court House, Custer swooped in and captured the four large railroad trains of supplies there. Lee’s next move would have been to continue twenty miles west to Lynchburg.

Some of the Union infantry pressed on, marching overnight, while Lee camped for the night near Appomattox Court House. He awoke to find Sheridan and Major-General John Griffin’s Twentyfourth Corps on his south side and Meade on his northeast. He could have tried to retreat toward Lynchburg, but he had received several notes from “Unconditional Surrender” Grant indicating that the Union was willing to offer favorable terms. While Grant is often given credit for being lenient to Lee, it was actually Lincoln who set the generous terms of surrender beforehand.

While Lee was weighing his options, Gordon informed him that the men were so worn out they wouldn’t be able to fight without help from Longstreet’s division, which was defending the other end of Lee’s army. As his final battle geared up, Lee called a truce, and on April 9 surrendered to Grant.

PREPARATIONS WITH SHERIDAN

General Ulysses S. Grant (See biography, page 54.)

My anxiety for some time before Richmond fell was lest Lee should abandon it. My pursuit of Lee was hazardous. I was in a position of extreme difficulty. You see I was marching away from my supplies, while Lee was falling back on his supplies. If Lee had continued his flight another day I should have had to abandon the pursuit, fall back to Danville, build the railroad, and feed my army. So far as supplies were concerned, I was almost at my last gasp when the surrender took place.

When I returned to Washington [after Lee’s surrender], Lincoln said, “General, I half suspected that movement of yours would end the business, and wanted to ask you, but did not like to.”

“What a careless thing it was to be going about with the President without a guard to protect him! I never thought of any danger to him at the time. Our people were not given to assassination, and if any one had told me that the President stood in danger of his life, I would have laughed at him.²⁹

“As we reached the edge of the city, the sidewalks were lined on both sides of the streets with black and white alike—all looking with curious, eager faces at the man who held their destiny in his hand; but there was no anger in any one’s face; the whole was like a gala day, and it looked as if the President was some expected guest who had come to receive great honors.

“Judging from present appearances, they certainly were not grieving over the loss of the Government which had just fled. There was nothing like taunt or defiance in the faces of those who were gazing from the windows or craning their necks from the sidewalks to catch a view of the President.”

Of course, I could not have told him, if he had asked me, because the one thing a general in command of an army does not know, is what the result of a battle is until it is fought. I never would have risked my reputation with Mr. Lincoln by any such prophecies. As a matter of fact, however, my own mind was pretty clear as to what the effect of the movement would be. I was only waiting for Sheridan to finish his raid around Lee to make it.

When Sheridan arrived from that raid, and came to my quarters, I asked him to take a walk. As we were walking, I took out his orders and gave them to him. They were orders to move on the left and attack Lee. If the movement succeeded, he was to advance. If it failed, he was to make his way into North Carolina and join Sherman.

When Sheridan read this part, he was, as I saw, disappointed. His countenance fell. He had just made a long march, a severe march, and now the idea of another march into North Carolina would disconcert any commander—even Sheridan. He, however, said nothing.

I said: “Sheridan, although I have provided for your retreat into North Carolina in the event of failure, I have no idea that you will fail, no idea that you will go to Carolina. I mean to end this business right here.”

Sheridan’s eyes lit up, and he said, with enthusiasm, “That’s the talk. Let us end the business here.”

A WHITE FLAG

General Philip Sheridan (See biography, page 203.)

When Lee awoke on April 9, he found the Union army unexpectedly in front of him. Two days earlier, after receiving a note from Grant, he didn’t want to talk of surrender, but now he began considering it. Without food he knew he couldn’t continue much longer. He decided it was the best course, and while the Battle of Appomattox was beginning, he sent out white flags in several directions to call a truce in preparation for his meeting with Grant to finalize terms. Sheridan didn’t know any of this, of course, and was preparing to attack the Army of Northern Virginia.

A move on the enemy’s left was ordered, and every guidon [unit pennant ] was bent to the front. As the cavalry marched along parallel with the Confederate line, and in toward its left, a heavy fire of artillery opened on us, but this could not check us at such a time, and we soon reached some high ground about half a mile from the Court House, and from here I could see in the low valley beyond the village the bivouac undoubtedly of Lee’s army. The troops did not seem to be disposed in battle order, but on the other side of the bivouac was a line of battle—a heavy rear-guard—confronting, presumably, General Meade.

I decided to attack at once, and formations were ordered at a trot for a charge by Custer’s and Devin’s divisions down the slope leading to the camps. Custer was soon ready, but Devin’s division being in rear its formation took longer, since he had to shift further to the right; Devin’s preparations were, therefore, but partially completed when an aide-de-camp galloped up to me with the word from Custer, “Lee has surrendered; do not charge; the white flag is up.”

The enemy perceiving that Custer was forming for attack, had sent the flag out to his front and stopped the charge just in time. I at once sent word of the truce to General Ord, and hearing nothing more from Custer himself, I supposed that he had gone down to the Court House to join a mounted group of Confederates that I could see near there, so I, too, went toward them, galloping down a narrow ridge, staff and orderlies following; but we had not got half way to the Court House when, from a skirt of timber to our right, not more than three hundred yards distant, a musketry fire was opened on us. This halted us, when, waving my hat, I called out to the firing party that we were under a truce, and they were violating it.

This did not stop them, however, so we hastily took shelter in a ravine so situated as to throw a ridge between us and the danger. We traveled in safety down this depression to its mouth, and thence by a gentle ascent approached the Court House. I was in advance, followed by a sergeant carrying my battle-flag.

When I got within about a hundred and fifty yards of the enemy’s line, which was immediately in front of the Court House, some of the Confederates leveled their pieces at us, and I again halted. Their officers kept their men from firing, however, but meanwhile a single-handed contest had begun behind me, for on looking back I heard a Confederate soldier demanding my battle-flag from the color-bearer, thinking, no doubt, that we were coming in as prisoners. The sergeant [Sheridan’s] had drawn his sabre and was about to cut the man down, but at a word from me he desisted and carried the flag back to my staff, his assailant quickly realizing that the boot was on the other leg.

These incidents determined me to remain where I was till the return of a staff-officer whom I had sent over to demand an explanation from the group of Confederates for which I had been heading. He came back in a few minutes with apologies for what had occurred, and informed me that General Gordon and General Wilcox were the superior officers in the group. As they wished me to join them I rode up with my staff, but we had hardly met when in front of [General Wesley] Merritt firing began.

At the sound I turned to General Gordon, who seemed embarrassed by the occurrence, and remarked: “General, your men fired on me as I was coming over here, and undoubtedly they are treating Merritt and Custer the same way. We might as well let them fight it out.”

He replied, “There must be some mistake.”

I then asked, “Why not send a staff-officer and have your people cease firing; they are violating the flag.”

He answered, “I have no staff-officer to send.”

Whereupon I said that I would let him have one of mine, and calling for Lieutenant Vanderbilt Allen, I directed him to carry General Gordon’s orders to General Geary, commanding a small brigade of South Carolina cavalry, to discontinue firing. Allen dashed off with the message and soon delivered it, but was made a prisoner, Geary saying, “I do not care for white flags: South Carolinians never surrender.”

By this time Merritt’s patience being exhausted, he ordered an attack, and this in short order put an end to General Geary’s last ditch absurdity, and extricated Allen from his predicament.

When quiet was restored Gordon remarked: “General Lee asks for a suspension of hostilities pending the negotiations which he is having with General Grant.”

WAITING FOR GRANT

Lieutenant-General James Longstreet (See biography, page 48.)

Captain Sims, through some informality, was sent to call the truce. The firing ceased. General Custer rode to Captain Sims to know his authority, and, upon finding that he was of my staff, asked to be conducted to my head-quarters, and down they came in fast gallop, General Custer’s flaxen locks flowing over his shoulders, and in brusk, excited manner, he said, “In the name of General Sheridan I demand the unconditional surrender of this army.”

He was reminded that I was not the commander of the army, that he was within the lines of the enemy without authority, addressing a superior officer, and in disrespect to General Grant as well as myself; that if I was the commander of the army I would not receive the message of General Sheridan.

He then became more moderate, saying it would be a pity to have more blood upon that field. Then I suggested that the truce be respected, and said, “As you are now more reasonable, I will say that General Lee has gone to meet General Grant, and it is for them to determine the future of the armies.”

He was satisfied, and rode back to his command.

General Grant rode away from the Army of the Potomac on the morning of the 9th to join his troops near Appomattox Court-House, so General Lee’s note was sent around to him. When advised of the change, General Lee rode back to his front to await there the answer to his note. While waiting, General Lee expressed apprehension that his refusal to meet General Grant’s first proposition might cause him to demand harsh terms.

General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!

—LIEUTENANT-GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET’S WORDS TO LEE AS HE RODE OFF FOR HIS MEETING WITH GRANT, ACCORDING TO BRIGADIER-GENERAL E. P. ALEXANDER, LONGSTREET’S CHIEF OF ARTILLERY

I assured him that I knew General Grant well enough to say that the terms would be such as he would demand under similar circumstances, but he yet had doubts. The conversation continued in broken sentences until the bearer of the return despatch approached. As he still seemed apprehensive of humiliating demands, I suggested that in that event he should break off the interview and tell General Grant to do his worst. The thought of another round seemed to brace him, and he rode with Colonel Marshall, of his staff, to meet the Union commander.

General Grant was found prepared to offer as liberal terms as General Lee could expect, and, to obviate a collision between his army of the rear with ours, ordered an officer sent to give notice of the truce.

Soon after General Lee’s return ride his chief of ordnance reported a large amount of United States currency in his possession. In doubt as to the proper disposition of the funds, General Lee sent the officer to ask my opinion. As it was not known or included in the conditions of capitulation, and was due (and ten times more) to the faithful troops, I suggested a pro rata distribution of it.

The officer afterwards brought three hundred dollars as my part. I took one hundred, and asked to have the balance distributed among Field’s division, the troops most distant from their homes.

The commissioners appointed to formulate details of the capitulation were assigned a room in the McLean residence. The way to it led through the room occupied as General Grant’s head-quarters.

As I was passing through the room, as one of the commissioners, General Grant looked up, recognized me, rose, and with his old-time cheerful greeting gave me his hand, and after passing a few remarks offered a cigar, which was gratefully received.

GUERRILLAS

Guerrilla groups were fighting the Civil War well before the war began and after it ended. Before the war, guerrilla activity almost became a war in itself during the Bleeding Kansas years, sometimes called the Border War. It began with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. In 1820 proslavery and antislavery politicians established the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state but prohibited the institution in the rest of the former Louisiana Territory north of parallel 36° 30° north. The Kansas-Nebraska Act nullified this arrangement, allowing the inhabitants of each state or territory to decide for themselves whether to become a free state or slave state. This put the Kansas Territory up for grabs, the result of which would have a huge impact on the struggle for dominance between Democrats and Republicans.

Both preservationist and abolitionist forces flooded into Kansas. Twice when they held elections, thousands of armed “border ruffians” flooded into the territory from Missouri. Through voter fraud, both elections went proslavery. At about the same time, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was collecting money to buy Sharps rifles to send to abolitionists in Kansas; the guns were called “Beecher’s Bibles.”

When a proslavery farmer murdered a Free-Soiler in a land dispute, reprisals began flying back and forth. About 1,500 proslavery men raided an arsenal and, led by the sheriff, laid siege to the Free-Soil town of Lawrence. Abolitionist John Brown led the defense. The attack wasn’t made, although five months later the sheriff returned to arrest some Lawrence citizens for establishing an illegal state government—and was nonfatally shot for his trouble. The sheriff returned again with a posse of about 750 proslavery men, many from Missouri and some from the proslavery Law and Order Party. They arrested three Free-Soil leaders and sacked the town. The only death was one of the sheriff’s men, struck by falling masonry. In retaliation John Brown, his four sons, and two others murdered five proslavery men with swords in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.

John Brown later gained fame for his ill-planned raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in 1859, hoping to start a slave uprising. A detachment of U.S. marines headed by Colonel Robert E. Lee, accompanied by Lieutenant Jeb Stuart, captured him and twenty insurgents. Brown and six of his raiders were tried and found guilty of treason. John Wilkes Booth, among others, witnessed Brown’s hanging.

Missouri, the northernmost slave state, was deeply divided, and people began murdering their neighbors solely because of their political views. For protection, men throughout the region formed themselves into private militias. When the war began, these vigilante groups became semiofficial guerrillas. As self-established irregulars, they answered only to themselves and rarely received orders from the military. Without specific objectives they focused on killing, punishing, and looting civilians while occasionally engaging in sabotage. Most guerrillas were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, brave, reckless, and ruthless. They terrorized and plundered, which was how they financed themselves. Anyone with criminal tendencies found the groups extremely attractive. Those siding with the South were “bushwhackers,” while Unionists were known as “jayhawkers.” They sometimes fought the soldiers of the opposing side and each other when they crossed paths, but generally they focused on civilians.

Jesse James, his brother Frank, and Cole Younger were bushwhackers throughout the war. Mark Twain served in a bushwhacker militia for two weeks before heading to Nevada, disillusioned. Soon after the war began, Buffalo Bill Cody joined the Red Legs, a band of jayhawkers. Cody soon left what he called “the enterprise of crippling the Confederacy by appropriating the horses of noncombatants” and became a Union soldier and scout.

On the Union side, Charles Jennison’s militia had the worst reputation. Jennison’s Jayhawkers plundered and burned Dayton, Missouri, on January 1, 1861. All of the town’s forty-seven buildings and homes were destroyed, except for one owned by a pro-Union man. On September 23, 1861, U.S. Senator James Lane’s Kansas Brigade of jayhawkers sacked Osceola, Missouri, population 3,000. After plundering it, they burned it to the ground and executed nine of its citizens.

In February 1862 the Union tried to rein in the jayhawkers by making them part of the military and establishing martial law. Jennison’s Jayhawkers became part of the Union army as the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry and Jennison became its colonel. Lane’s Kansas Brigade became the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Kansas Volunteers, with Lane as its brigadier general.

While both sides committed atrocities, some of the worst were by William “Bloody Bill” Anderson and William Quantrill, the two most notorious Confederate guerrillas. In retaliation for the earlier jayhawker attacks, Quantrill’s bushwhackers, along with Frank James and Cole Younger, raided the town of Lawrence on August 21, 1863, hoping to find Senator (and Brigadier-General) Lane, but he escaped by running off through a cornfield in his nightshirt. Quantrill’s men robbed two banks, looted the town, set it on fire, and then murdered all the men and boys of gun-bearing age. Estimates of the dead range from 100 to more than 200, with the higher number more likely. It became known as the Lawrence Massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the war.

In response, Brigadier-General Thomas Ewing, in command of the district, ordered that the four Missouri counties bordering Kansas be evacuated, evicting thousands from their homes.

On September 27, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson’s bushwhackers, along with Jesse James, were looting Centralia, Missouri, when a train pulled into the station. His men found twenty-three Union soldiers on board. All were on leave and unarmed, and some were wounded. In what became known as the Centralia Massacre, Anderson, Frank James, and others robbed the train and killed all but one of the soldiers, along with some passengers who tried to hide their valuables. After scalping the soldiers to decorate their saddles and bridles, they set fire to the train and sent it rolling toward its next destination.

While guerrilla activity was widespread, the worst hot spots were in the Kansas-Missouri area and along eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.

After the war Grant explained how he dealt with guerrillas: “I told the inhabitants of Mississippi, when I was moving to Holly Springs, that if they allowed their sons and brothers to remain within my lines and receive protection, and then during the night sneak out and burn my bridges and shoot officers, I would desolate their country for forty miles around every place where it occurred. This put an end to bridge-burning. This was necessary, because I could not fight two armies—an army in front under military conditions, and a secret army hid behind every bush and fence.”

When the war ended, the guerrillas faded into the woodwork. Some bushwhackers joined the burgeoning Ku Klux Klan, while others continued their activities in small gangs. Frank and Jesse James, along with the Younger brothers, claimed they were continuing the fight by robbing only Northern banks and businesses. On at least one occasion they robbed a train wearing Klan garb. The number of robberies they committed remains unknown, although it is estimated the gang stole between $82,000 and $450,000—roughly $11 million to $69 million today.

Many Southerners viewed the bushwhackers as heroes, and some newspapers painted the James-Younger gang’s crimes as a continuation of their guerrilla activities, using them to rally against the excesses of the Reconstruction. Helped by many Southerners, Jesse James eluded the authorities for fifteen years, becoming one of the war’s last rebels.

THE SURRENDER

General Ulysses S. Grant (See biography, page 54.)

On the night before Lee’s surrender, I had a wretched headache—headaches to which I have been subject—nervous prostration, intense personal suffering. But, suffer or not, I had to keep moving. I saw clearly, especially after Sheridan had cut off the escape to Danville, that Lee must surrender or break and run into the mountains—break in all directions and leave us a dozen guerilla bands to fight.

The object of my campaign was not Richmond, not the defeat of Lee in actual fight, but to remove him and his army out of the contest, and, if possible, to have him use his influence in inducing the surrender of Johnston and the other isolated armies. You see, the war was an enormous strain upon the country. Rich as we were I do not now see how we could have endured it another year, even from a financial point of view.

So with these views I wrote Lee, and opened the correspondence with which the world is familiar. Lee does not appear well in that correspondence, not nearly so well as he did in our subsequent interviews, where his whole bearing was that of a patriotic and gallant soldier, concerned alone for the welfare of his army and his state.

I received word that Lee would meet me at a point within our lines near Sheridan’s headquarters. I had to ride quite a distance through a muddy country. I remember now that I was concerned about my personal appearance. I had an old suit on, without my sword, and without any distinguishing mark of rank except the shoulderstraps of a lieutenant-general on a woolen blouse. I was splashed with mud in my long ride. I was afraid Lee might think I meant to show him studied discourtesy by so coming—at least I thought so. But I had no other clothes within reach, as Lee’s letter found me away from my base of supplies.

I kept on riding until I met Sheridan. The General, who was one of the heroes of the campaign, and whose pursuit of Lee was perfect in its generalship and energy, told me where to find Lee. I remember that Sheridan was impatient when I met him, anxious and suspicious about the whole business, feared there might be a plan to escape, that he had Lee at his feet, and wanted to end the business by going in and forcing an absolute surrender by capture. In fact, he had his troops ready for such an assault when Lee’s white flag came within his lines.

I went up to the house where Lee was waiting. I found him in a fine, new, splendid uniform, which only recalled my anxiety as to my own clothes while on my way to meet him. I expressed my regret that I was compelled to meet him in so unceremonious a manner, and he replied that the only suit he had available was one which had been sent him by some admirers in Baltimore, and which he then wore for the first time.

We spoke of old friends in the army. I remembered having seen Lee in Mexico. He was so much higher in rank than myself at the time that I supposed he had no recollection of me. But he said he remembered me very well. We talked of old times and exchanged inquiries about friends. Lee then broached the subject of our meeting. I told him my terms, and Lee, listening attentively, asked me to write them down. I took out my “manifold” order-book and pencil and wrote them down. General Lee put on his glasses and read them over. The conditions gave the officers their side-arms, private horses, and personal baggage. I said to Lee that I hoped and believed this would be the close of the war; that it was most important that the men should go home and go to work, and the government would not throw any obstacles in the way. Lee answered that it would have a most happy effect, and accepted the terms.

I handed over my penciled memorandum to an aide to put into ink, and we resumed our conversation about old times and friends in the armies. Various officers came in—Longstreet, Gordon, Pickett, from the South; Sheridan, Ord, and others from our side. Some were old friends—Longstreet and myself, for instance, and we had a general talk. Lee no doubt expected me to ask for his sword, but I did not want his sword. It would only have gone to the Patent Office to be worshiped by the Washington rebels.

There was a pause, when General Lee said that most of the animals in his cavalry and artillery were owned by the privates, and he would like to know, under the terms, whether they would be regarded as private property or the property of the government. I said that under the terms of surrender they belonged to the government. General Lee read over the letter and said that was so. I then said to the general that I believed and hoped this was the last battle of the war; that I saw the wisdom of these men getting home and to work as soon as possible, and that I would give orders to allow any soldier or officer claiming a horse or a mule to take it.

General Lee showed some emotion at this—a feeling which I also shared—and said it would have a most happy effect. The interview ended, and I gave orders for rationing his troops.

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. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything other 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.

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 determined to return to Washington at once, with a view to putting a stop to the purchase of supplies, and what I now deemed other useless outlay of money. Before leaving, however, I thought I would like to see General Lee again; so next morning I rode out beyond our lines towards his headquarters, preceded by a bugler and a staff-officer carrying a white flag.

Lee soon mounted his horse, seeing who it was, and met me. We had there between the lines, sitting on horseback, a very pleasant conversation of over half an hour, in the course of which Lee said to me that the South was a big country and that we might have to march over it three or four times before the war entirely ended, but that we would now be able to do it as they could no longer resist us. He expressed it as his earnest hope, however, that we would not be called upon to cause more loss and sacrifice of life; but he could not foretell the result.

I then 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. But Lee said, that he could not do that without consulting the [Confederate] President first. I knew there was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right.

I was accompanied by my staff and other officers, some of whom seemed to have a great desire to go inside the Confederate lines. They finally asked permission of Lee to do so for the purpose of seeing some of their old army friends, and the permission was granted. They went over, had a very pleasant time with their old friends, and brought some of them back with them when they returned.

When Lee and I separated he went back to his lines and I returned to the house of Mr. McLean.

The enemy was more than five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one day longer, it would have been at a great sacrifice of life, and at its end I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. We had no subsistence for man or horse, and it could not be gathered in the country. The supplies ordered to Pamplin’s Station from Lynchburg could not reach us, and the men, deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and exhausted.

—General Robert E. Lee, explaining why he surrendered

Lee’s great blunder was in holding Richmond. He must have been controlled by Davis, who, taking the gambler’s desperate view of the situation, staked the Confederacy on one card. It must have been that Davis felt that the moral effect of the fall of Richmond would have been equal to the fall of the South. Or it may be, as I have sometimes thought, that Lee felt that the war was over; that the South was fought out; that any prolongation of the war would be misery to both the North and the South. After I crossed the James, the holding of Richmond was a mistake. Nor have I ever felt that the surrender at Appomattox was an absolute military necessity. I think that in holding Richmond, and even in consenting to that surrender, Lee sacrificed his judgment as a soldier to his duty as a citizen and the leader of the South. I think Lee deserves honor for that, for if he had left Richmond when Sherman invaded Georgia, it would have given us another year of war.

Because the federal government didn’t recognize the secession as legitimate, it never viewed the Confederacy as an actual government. From the U.S. point of view, the Southern states remained part of the Union while under the temporary and illegal control of rebels. When General Johnston contacted Major-General Sherman to negotiate an armistice between the two countries, Sherman said it was impossible. In the eyes of the federal government, there was no such thing as the Confederate government; therefore the United States couldn’t negotiate with it.

The surrender of the Confederacy’s primary fighting force, the Army of Northern Virginia, effectively ended the war, though some sporadic fighting continued for another two months. Johnston surrendered his 98,270 men to Sherman on April 26. The last Confederate cabinet meeting took place on may 5. When Jefferson Davis was captured on may 10, President Andrew Johnson immediately declared that armed resistance had ended. On June 23 Brigadier-General Stand Watie was the final Confederate general to surrender.

“MORNING DAWNED”

Major-General Joshua Chamberlain (See biography, page 174.)

Major-General Joshua Chamberlain described the effect of the news that Lee wanted to surrender.

Everybody seemed acquiescent and for the moment cheerful—except Sheridan. He did not like the cessation of hostilities, and did not conceal his opinion. His natural disposition was not sweetened by the circumstance that he was fired on by some of the Confederates as he was coming up to the meeting under the truce. He is for unconditional surrender, and thinks we should have banged right on and settled all questions without asking them.

One o’clock came; no answer from Lee. Nothing for us but to shake hands and take arms to resume hostilities. As I turned to go, General Griffin said to me in a low voice, “Prepare to make, or receive, an attack in ten minutes!” It was a sudden change of tone in our relations, and brought a queer sensation. Where my troops had halted, the opposing lines were in close proximity. The men had stacked arms and were resting in place.

It did not seem like war we were to recommence, but willful murder. But the order was only to “prepare,” and that we did. Our troops were in good position, my advanced line across the road, and we stood fast intensely waiting. I had mounted, and sat looking at the scene before me, thinking of all that was impending and depending, when I felt coming in upon me a strange sense of some presence invisible but powerful—like those unearthly visitants told of in ancient story, charged with supernal message. Disquieted, I turned about, and there behind me, riding in between my two lines, appeared a commanding form, superbly mounted, richly accoutred, of imposing bearing, noble countenance, with expression of deep sadness overmastered by deeper strength. It is no other than Robert E. Lee! And seen by me for the first time within my own lines.

I sat immovable, with a certain awe and admiration. He was coming, with a single staff officer, for the great appointed meeting which was to determine momentous issues. Not long after, by another in-leading road, appeared another form, plain, unassuming, simple, and familiar to our eyes, but to the thought as much inspiring awe as Lee in his splendor and his sadness. It is Grant! He, too, came with a single aide, a staff officer of Sheridan’s who had come out to meet him. Slouched hat without cord; common soldier’s blouse, unbuttoned, on which, however, the four stars; high boots, mud-splashed to the top; trousers tucked inside; no sword, but the sword-hand deep in the pocket; sitting in his saddle with the ease of a born master, taking no notice of anything, all his faculties gathered into intense thought and mighty calm.

He seemed greater than I had ever seen him,—a look as of another world about him. No wonder I forgot altogether to salute him. Anything like that would have been too little.

He rode on to meet Lee at the Court House.³⁰ But the final word is not long coming now. Staff officers are flying, crying “Lee surrenders!”

They [the Confederates] had a supper that night, which was something of a novelty. For we had divided rations with our old antagonists now that they were by our side as suffering brothers. In truth, Longstreet had come over to our camp that evening with an unwonted moisture on his martial cheek and compressed words on his lips: “Gentlemen, I must speak plainly; we are starving over there. For God’s sake! can you send us something?”

We were men; and we acted like men, knowing we should suffer for it ourselves. We were too shortrationed also, and had been for days, and must be for days to come. But we forgot Andersonville and Belle Isle [notorious POW prisons] that night, and sent over to that starving camp share and share alike for all there; nor thinking the merits of the case diminished by the circumstance that part of these provisions was what Sheridan had captured from their trains the night before.

Late that night I was summoned to headquarters, where General Griffin informed me that I was to command the parade on the occasion of the formal surrender of the arms and colors of Lee’s army. He said the Confederates had begged hard to be allowed to stack their arms on the ground where they were, and let us go and pick them up after they had gone; but that Grant did not think this quite respectful enough to anybody, including the United States of America; and while he would have all private property respected, and would permit officers to retain their side-arms, he insisted that the surrendering army as such should march out in due order, and lay down all tokens of Confederate authority and organized hostility to the United States, in immediate presence of some representative portion of the Union Army. Griffin added in a significant tone that Grant wished the ceremony to be as simple as possible, and that nothing should be done to humiliate the manhood of the Southern soldiers.

Morning dawned; and then, in spite of all attempts to restrain it, came the visiting and sightseeing. Our camp was full of callers before we were up. They stood over our very heads now—the men whose movements we used to study through field-glasses, or see close at hand framed in fire.

We woke, and by force of habit started at the vision. But our resolute and much-enduring old antagonists were quick to change their mood when touched by appealing sentiment; they used their first vacation to come over and see what we were really made of, and what we had left for trade.

Food was what was most needed; but was precisely what we also most lacked. Such as we parted with was not for sale, or barter; this went for “old times”—old comradeship across the lines. But tobacco, pipes, knives, money—or symbols of it—shoes—more precious still; and among the staff, even saddles, now and then, and other more trivial things that might serve as souvenirs, made an exchange about as brisk as the bullets had done a few days ago.

The authorities in charge had to interpose and forbid all visiting. It was now the morning of the 12th of April. I had been ordered to have my lines formed for the ceremony at sunrise. It was a chill gray morning, depressing to the senses. But our hearts made warmth.

We formed along the principal street, from the bluff bank of the stream to near the Court House on the left—to face the last line of battle, and receive the last remnant of the arms and colors of that great army which ours had been created to confront for all that death can do for life.

On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breathholding, as if it were the passing of the dead!

As each successive division masks our own, it halts, the men face inward towards us across the road, twelve feet away; then carefully “dress” their line, each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn and half starved as they were. The field and staff take their positions in the intervals of regiments; generals in rear of their commands. They fix bayonets, stack arms; then, hesitatingly, remove cartridgeboxes and lay them down. Lastly—reluctantly, with agony of expression—they tenderly fold their flags, battle-worn and torn, blood-stained, heart-holding colors, and lay them down; some frenziedly rushing from the ranks, kneeling over them, clinging to them, pressing them to their lips with burning tears.

And only the Flag of the Union greets the sky!

What visions thronged as we looked into each other’s eyes! Here pass the men of Antietam, the Bloody Lane, the Sunken Road, the Cornfield, the Burnside-Bridge; the men whom Stonewall Jackson on the second night at Fredericksburg begged Lee to let him take and crush the two corps of the Army of the Potomac huddled in the streets in darkness and confusion; the men who swept away the Eleventh Corps at Chancellorsville; who left six thousand of their companions around the bases of Culp’s and Cemetery Hills at Gettysburg; these survivors of the terrible Wilderness, the Bloody-Angle at Spottsylvania, the slaughter pen of Cold Harbor, the whirlpool of Bethesda Church!

Here comes Cobb’s Georgia Legion, which held the stone wall on Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg, close before which we piled our dead for breastworks so that the living might stay and live. Here too come Gordon’s Georgians and Hoke’s North Carolinians, who stood before the terrific mine explosion at Petersburg, and advancing retook the smoking crater and the dismal heaps of dead—ours more than theirs—huddled in the ghastly chasm.

Now the sad great pageant—Longstreet and his men! What shall we give them for greeting that has not already been spoken in volleys of thunder and written in lines of fire on all the riverbanks of Virginia? Shall we go back to Gaines’ Mill and Malvern Hill? Or to the Antietam of Maryland, or Gettysburg of Pennsylvania?—deepest graven of all.

With what strange emotion I look into these faces before which in the mad assault on Rives’ Salient, June 18, 1864, I was left for dead under their eyes! It is by miracles we have lived to see this day—any of us standing here.

Now comes the sinewy remnant of fierce Hood’s Division, which at Gettysburg we saw pouring through the Devil’s Den, and the Plum Run gorge; turning again by the left our stubborn Third Corps, then swarming up the rocky bastions of Round Top, to be met there by equal valor, which changed Lee’s whole plan of battle and perhaps the story of Gettysburg.

Ah, is this Pickett’s Division?—this little group left of those who on the lurid last day of Gettysburg breasted level cross-fire and thunderbolts of storm, to be strewn back drifting wrecks, where after that awful, futile, pitiful charge we buried them in graves a furlong wide, with names unknown!

Thus, all day long, division after division comes and goes, surrendered arms being removed by our wagons in the intervals, the cartridge-boxes emptied in the street when the ammunition was found unserviceable, our men meanwhile resting in place.

ASSASSINATION

General Ulysses S. Grant (See biography, page 54.)

Lincoln, I may almost say, spent the last days of his life with me. I often recall those days. I have no doubt that Lincoln will be the conspicuous figure of the war; one of the great figures of history. He was incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.

The darkest day of my life was the day I heard of Lincoln’s assassination. I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and starting up in the gutters; we had fought it as war, now we had to fight it as assassination. Lincoln was killed on the evening of the 14th of April. Lee surrendered on the 9th of April. I arrived in Washington on the 13th. I was busy sending out orders to stop recruiting, the purchase of supplies, and to muster out the army. Lincoln had promised to go to the theater, and wanted me to go with him. While I was with the President, a note came from Mrs. Grant saying she must leave Washington that night. She wanted to go to Burlington to see our children. Some incident of a trifling nature had made her resolve to leave that evening.

I was glad to have the note, as I did not want to go to the theater. So I made my excuse to Lincoln, and at the proper hour we started for the train. As we were driving along Pennsylvania Avenue, a horseman drove past us on a gallop, and back again around our carriage, looking into it.

Mrs. Grant said, “There is the man who sat near us at lunch to-day, with some other men, and tried to overhear our conversation.”

He was so rude that we left the dining-room. Here he is now riding after us. I thought it was only curiosity, but learned afterward that the horseman was Booth. It seems I was to have been attacked, and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave deranged the plan.

A few days later I received an anonymous letter from a man, saying he had been detailed to kill me, that he rode on my train as far as Havre de Grace, and as my car was locked he could not get in. He thanked God he had failed. I remember the conductor locked our car, but how true the letter was I cannot say. I learned of the assassination as I was passing through Philadelphia. I turned around, took a special train, and came on to Washington. It was the gloomiest day of my life.