by Ron Chernow
Now admitting that surrender was the crux of the matter, Lee had capitulated. Grant’s headache vanished the instant he set eyes on these words and he couldn’t resist gently ribbing Rawlins. “Well, how do you think that will do?” he inquired of his petulant friend. “I think that will do,” Rawlins allowed happily.86 Only one staff officer openly rejoiced at the extraordinary news; celebration seemed cheap and tasteless after so many years of epic bloodshed. Sitting down on a grassy slope by the roadside, Grant composed a letter to Lee that struck a conciliatory note, agreeing to meet him at any place he proposed. Orville Babcock delivered it under a flag of truce and found Lee leaning against an apple tree, his feet in the road, chatting with Longstreet beyond Appomattox Court House. Based on his long-standing relationship with Grant, Longstreet persuaded a skeptical Lee that his old friend would behave honorably at any parley and not inflict humiliating conditions.
After replying to Lee, Grant hurried to meet Sheridan, who was eager to thrash the Confederate army into final submission. The impetuous Sheridan had been disappointed when a messenger, white flag in tow, announced Lee’s surrender. “Damn them,” Sheridan blurted out. “I wish they had held out an hour longer and I would have whipped hell out of them.” Grabbing his gloved hand, he swore, “I’ve got ’em like that.”87 Grant never made such boasts, nor did he revel in a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance. In chatting with Grant, Sheridan dismissed Lee’s talk of surrender as a patent ruse. He was, Grant recalled, “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.”88 To his credit, Grant conquered any feelings of revenge and, knowing that Lee’s overture was genuine, acted on that assumption.
With the Confederate army bivouacked in a nearby valley, Sheridan directed Grant to a brick house on the outskirts of Appomattox Court House where Lee awaited him. It was owned by Wilmer McLean, who had owned a house at Bull Run damaged during the first battle there; he had fled to the sleepy hamlet of Appomattox Court House, hoping to escape further hostilities, and would now claim the odd distinction of witnessing the beginning of the Civil War in his backyard and its ending in his parlor. Approaching the historic rendezvous, Grant was painfully aware of how poorly costumed he was to enact this lofty scene; his slovenly appearance had come about merely from being detached from his headquarters wagon. He had no inkling that later historians might be charmed by his outfit or assume that his mud-caked clothes made a political statement. Quite simply, Grant hadn’t expected to meet Lee this soon: “I had an old suit on, without my sword, and without any distinguishing mark of rank, except the shoulder straps of a Lieutenant General on a woollen blouse . . . I was afraid Lee might think I meant to show him studied discourtesy by so coming—at least I thought so.”89 Later asked what was uppermost in his mind at this sublime moment, a sheepish Grant said prosaically: “My dirty boots and wearing no sword.”90
Grant, now forty-two, had no trace of gray in his dark brown hair. Nevertheless, his beard was fuller than at the start of the war, his face broader, and the bags heavier beneath his eyes, their somber expression bordering on depression. So earthy was his appearance that one officer said with a laugh that he “looked like a fly on a shoulder of beef.”91 However self-conscious Grant may have been about his appearance, he projected authority as he approached the McLean house. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a hero of Gettysburg, was awestruck as Grant trotted by:
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 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.92
Lee dreaded the encounter and only submitted when informed that Sheridan had checkmated his army. “Then there is nothing left me to do but go and see General Grant,” he concluded wearily, “and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”93 As befit a man about to step onto the brightly lit stage of history, Lee startled his officers by appearing in a spotless gray uniform, buttoned tightly to the throat. At fifty-eight, he still cut a tall, erect, and imposing figure. Every garment he wore had been chosen with extreme care: the intricately wrought dress sword with the gilded hilt; long, embroidered buckskin gauntlets; silk sash fitted around his waist; and high boots with an ornamental design of red silk, set off by prominent spurs. When his officers questioned him about this magnificent display, Lee confided, “I have probably to be General Grant’s prisoner, and thought I must make my best appearance.”94 Longstreet saw Lee’s ceremonial glitter as so much emotional armor. “At first approach his compact figure appeared as a man in the flush vigor of forty summers, but as I drew near, the handsome apparel and brave bearing failed to conceal his profound depression.”95 Another spectator noted how Lee’s hair and beard had grown “as white and as fair as a woman’s.”96 There was a Roman severity, a patrician air of rectitude, about Robert E. Lee, and at Appomattox Court House he was determined to look the victor, even if he could not be one.
Appomattox Court House consisted of a single street or two of straggling houses. When Grant arrived at the brick McLean house around 1:30 p.m., the blue and gray armies faced off uneasily outside of town, set to resume hostilities the second talks failed. Nothing outwardly marked the house as the venue for talks except that Traveller and another horse munched grass in the front yard. Having dismounted, Grant marched up the wooden steps, crossed the verandah, then entered the front hallway alone. Lee, who was waiting, sat in a small front room with a single aide, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall. Mildly irritated by the delay, Lee rose to greet Grant, shook hands civilly, and ushered him into the room. A stiff, unbending dignity about the unsmiling Lee threw into relief Grant’s down-to-earth nature. Pulling off his tattered, dark yellow gloves and noting Lee’s spruce appearance, Grant apologized for his “rough garb.”97 As he appraised the Union general, Marshall thought “he looked as though he had had a pretty hard time.”98 Perhaps with mild embarrassment, Lee explained that his new uniform had been sent by some Baltimore admirers and was the only one he had available for the occasion.
Because Grant had left his entourage outside, Orville Babcock went out and invited Ord, Sheridan, Rawlins, and other generals into the parlor. They shuffled discreetly into the room, “very much as people enter a sick chamber where they expect to find the patient dangerously ill,” one noted.99 The officers then withdrew as they awaited an agreement. With a large fireplace, two small tables, a wicker armchair, and a leather swivel chair, the McLean parlor was cramped but adequate for negotiations. Characteristically, Grant tried to exchange pleasantries with Lee, who sat there with Olympian gravity. In a slightly fumbling manner, Grant said deferentially, “I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico, when you came over from General Scott’s headquarters to visit Garland’s brigade, to which I then belonged. I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.” Fifteen years his senior, Lee didn’t bother to pretend that he recalled Grant. “Yes, I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it, and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature.”100 The comment surely reminded both men of their highly unequal ranks in Mexico, a difference in status equalized by subsequent events.
On the surface, their conversation seemed amiable, but Grant was perceptive enough to discern that Lee struggled with strong feelings behind a mask of cordiality. As he observed in an eloquent passage of his Memoirs notable f
or its empathy:
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 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.101
The tone of Grant’s reminiscence confirmed the Duke of Wellington’s adage that “next to a battle lost, there is no spectacle more melancholy than a battle won.”102
Doubtless with some exaggeration, Grant claimed, “Our conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting.”103 While Grant tried gamely to converse about friends and old times, Lee seemed to find socializing unendurable under the circumstances and resolutely resisted any show of surface camaraderie. What preyed on his mind were the exact terms of surrender. He cut short small talk in a slightly brusque manner. “I suppose, General Grant,” he interrupted, “that the object of our present meeting is fully understood. I asked to see you to ascertain upon what terms you would receive the surrender of my army.” Fully prepared, Grant said both officers and men would be “paroled and disqualified from taking up arms again until properly exchanged, and all arms, ammunition, and supplies [were] to be delivered up as captured property.” Lee nodded in agreement. “Those are about the conditions which I expected would be proposed.” Grant added his fond hope that such terms would “lead to a general suspension of hostilities, and be the means of preventing any further loss of life.”104 Lee bowed his head in approval. When Grant sought to digress, dwelling on the prospect of peace, Lee firmly steered him back to business. Clearly he didn’t care to prolong this torture. “I presume, General Grant, we have both carefully considered the proper steps to be taken, and I would suggest that you commit to writing the terms you have proposed, so that they may be formally acted upon.” “Very well,” Grant responded. “I will write them out.”105
Chewing a cigar, writing fluently, Grant drafted the surrender terms on a small, oval wooden table, while Lee sat at a squarish, marble-topped table. With no premeditated formula, Grant trusted to the moment’s inspiration. Wreathed in cigar smoke, he scribbled the terms rapidly in a “manifold order book” that enabled him to make three copies. Using magnanimous language, he began his transformation from scourge of the South to its unlikely champion: “The Arms, Artillery and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them . . . 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 parole and the laws in force where they may reside.”106 This last sentence was significant, making southern soldiers immune from treason prosecutions and setting the stage for postwar reconciliation—or so it was hoped. Afraid Lee would become a martyr and his sword a holy relic, Grant made a point of not asking Lee to surrender his sword; he also didn’t care to humiliate him. Finally, Grant omitted the noxious words “unconditional surrender,” lest they grate on Lee’s proud sensibility. With no tinge of malice, Grant’s words breathed a spirit of charity reminiscent of Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
When he finished writing, Lee cleared the small table before him, wiped his steel spectacles, crossed his legs, and reviewed the language with close scrutiny, asking for only minor revisions. With special delight he saw that officers would be allowed to save face by retaining their sidearms and horses and could return home to resume their lives unmolested. With quiet fervor, he said this “would have a most happy effect, and accepted the terms,” Grant recalled. “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.”107 Lee seemed hugely relieved. When Grant asked if the terms were satisfactory, he answered, “Yes, I am bound to be satisfied with anything you offer. It is more than I expected.”108
The business concluded, Grant brought in his staff officers, but Lee only deigned to engage in conversation with General Seth Williams, his former adjutant when he was West Point superintendent. Apart from this exchange, Horace Porter wrote, “Lee was in no mood for pleasantries, and he did not unbend, or even relax the fixed sternness of his features.”109 At first Grant assigned Theodore Bowers to prepare a fair copy of the surrender agreement, while Marshall drew up an acceptance letter for Lee to sign. Because Bowers’s hand quivered nervously and he botched three or four sheets, Grant reassigned the task to his Senecan aide, Ely Parker. When introduced to the swarthy Parker, Lee blushed deeply, eyeing tensely his complexion. “What was passing in his mind no one knew,” Porter said, “but the natural surmise was that he at first mistook Parker for a negro, and was struck with astonishment to find that the commander of the Union armies had one of that race on his personal staff.”110 Another onlooker thought Lee momentarily offended since he believed “a mulatto had been called on to do the writing as a gratuitous affront.”111 Evidently Lee relaxed when he realized Parker was a Native American. “I am glad to see one real American here,” he ventured, shaking his hand. To which Parker retorted memorably: “We are all Americans.”112
The terms of surrender settled, Lee alluded to his hungry army, which had subsisted for days on parched corn, and asked for food and forage for it. Unhesitatingly Grant consented to provide rations and wondered how many were needed, to which Lee replied, “About twenty-five thousand.”113 Grant directed Lee to send his commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox Station, where they could gather plentiful stocks of beef, salt, hardtack, coffee, and sugar. “I think it will be ample,” said Lee, touched by Grant’s generosity, “and it will be a great relief, I assure you.”114 M. R. Morgan, Grant’s commissary chief, later commented, “Were such terms ever before given by a conqueror to a defeated foe?”115 Grant showed genuine compassion for the Confederate soldiers, saying he assumed most were farmers and wanted to plant crops to tide them over during the winter. To this end, he issued a directive that rebel soldiers who owned their horses or mules should be allowed to take them home. “This will have the best possible effect upon the men,” Lee said. “It will be very gratifying, and will do much toward conciliating our people.”116
The afternoon fast approached four o’clock when the final documents were signed and Lee and Marshall strode onto the porch. The bright lamp of the Confederacy was now nearly extinguished. For all intents and purposes, the war had ended, although Johnston’s army in North Carolina, Richard Taylor’s in Alabama, and Edmund Kirby Smith’s in Texas remained at large. During the encounter, Lee had maintained his marble composure, but as he waited for Traveller to be bridled, he gazed wistfully toward his army and gave way to emotion. Horace Porter registered the lone gesture that disclosed his unspoken despair: “He thrice smote the palm of his left hand slowly with his right fist in an absent sort of way, seemed not to see the group of Union officers in the yard, who rose respectfully at his approach, and appeared unaware of everything about him.”117 Only Traveller’s approach snapped him from this trance. When Lee sat up straight in the saddle, Grant descended the front steps and lifted his hat in homage to his vanquished foe, as did other Union officers. In response Lee tipped his hat and rode off slowly toward his army while a Pennsylvania regimental band across the way played “Auld Lang Syne.” The scene was no less solemn when he reached his soldiers, who crowded the wayside, doffing their hats in respect. Lee stared fixedly ahead as he passed and many men called good-bye or stroked affectionately Traveller’s flanks. When he at last spoke up, Lee simply said, “Men, we have fought through the war together. I have done the best that I could for you.”118 At this, he and his so
ldiers wept openly. The moment underscored the loving bond Lee had forged with his men. Many of them had assumed Grant would mete out punitive conditions and were pleasantly surprised. As one said, “The favorable and entirely unexpected terms of surrender wonderfully restored our souls.”119
Grant’s handling of his own soldiers was equally sensitive. Once Lee was out of earshot, the Union army surrendered to jubilation. In marked contrast to Grant, George Meade went wild with exultation, galloping hatless through his camp, shouting madly, “It’s all over, boys! Lee’s surrendered! It’s all over.”120 Everything not nailed down was twirled in the air. Such a celebration was anathema to Grant, who stopped his artillery from firing a hundred-gun salute. After the war, afraid that the North would seem to be bragging about the South’s downfall, he even objected to a painting being placed in the Capitol that depicted Lee’s surrender. He now reminded his army that the rebels had been restored as their countrymen. Thanks to this, the unseemly rejoicing was stopped, replaced by stunned silence. To prevent scuffles that might upset a conciliatory mood, Grant heeded Lee’s request that the two armies be kept apart.
Some fraternizing ensued between officers and old feelings of camaraderie suddenly welled up. The most memorable came when the tall, hirsute James Longstreet shuffled into the McLean household.121 As soon as Grant saw his old pal, he sprang to his feet, shook his hand, offered him a cigar, and invited him to play brag, the card game they had enjoyed before the war. As Longstreet told a reporter, he was bowled over by Grant’s generous spirit: “Great God, thought I to myself, how my heart swells out to such a magnanimous touch of humanity! Why do men fight who were born to be brothers? . . . His whole greeting and conduct toward us was as though nothing had ever happened to mar our pleasant relations.”122
