Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Lee may never have sent the letter, for even if he knew that Davis was in Charlotte, there was no way to get it to him, and soon enough the fleeing government was on the road again. Moreover, soon there was no point. Six days later Johnston surrendered to Sherman on terms similar to those given Lee. On May 4 the army in Alabama gave up, leaving only the Army of the Trans-Mississippi at large, and it was disintegrating and destined for surrender in three more weeks. Meanwhile, Federal cavalry captured Davis and his entourage on May 10 in Georgia.

  More immediate matters faced Lee. He had no home of his own, no property but his clothing. Food was scarce and he had no money when it could be bought, and friends and well-wishers helped as they could by bringing produce to the house. The Lees even accepted some of the rations being doled out by Federal occupying troops to civilians, “just like the poorest negro in the place,” thought one of Meade’s staff.11 Early in May Grant’s army marched back through Richmond on its way to Washington to muster out. Meade called on Lee and the two old friends shared memories and discussed the future, Lee hesitant to commit himself until he knew what President Andrew Johnson’s policy would be. Once satisfied that it would not be punitive toward the South, he said he would take the oath of allegiance, apply for the restoration of full rights of citizenship, and counsel others to do the same. For himself, he concluded to avoid all public controversy over the war and its causes, or current and future national affairs. He would stay out of the public eye and work to rebuild himself and Virginia.

  The best way to accomplish that was to settle somewhere other than Richmond. Lee wanted to get his family to the country, perhaps near Rooney’s place on the Pamunkey River, where they might be able to support themselves and find peace out of the way of constant reminders of their situation.12 Punctuating that was the steady rumble of thousands of feet on the city streets as Grant’s veterans, and then Sherman’s, passed through headed to Washington. Occasionally a regiment marched down Franklin Street and a sharp-eyed Yankee looked up to see Lee in the window, partly veiled by the curtain, watching as they tramped past.13

  Several of his old officers and soldiers called at his door, many seeking advice on whether to leave the country and go to Mexico or Brazil where colonies of former Confederates were to be launched. Brigadier General John Echols and Colonel Josiah Stoddard Johnston called and had a frank interview in which Lee said the South was in deplorable condition, its people without the protection of law, in financial ruin, and the children going without education. He discouraged all talk of emigration. Those who had been leaders in the Confederacy had an obligation to remain and share the fate of their people and help in the rebuilding, even at risk of their personal safety. “As to my own fate, I know not what is in store for me,” he told his callers. “I believe the politicians at Washington are bent on the most extreme measures, and if they have their way will stop at no humiliation they can heap on me.” He relied on Grant. “I have faith in his honor and his integrity as a soldier, and do not believe that he will permit the terms of my surrender or the parole given me to be violated.”14

  He also met with a few Yankees, among them the chaplain of the 80th Ohio Infantry, George W. Pepper, and in talking with them he weighed every sentence carefully before speaking. Pepper found that “his heart was grand and large” as he spoke, criticizing the politicians who brought on the war, including even Davis. Lee restated his opposition to secession and war, and how he resigned his commission to try to stay out of it. Lincoln’s murder horrified him, but he had nothing but generous words for Grant. It was but “simple justice to General Grant” to acknowledge that his treatment of Lee’s army was “without a parallel.” Asked whom he thought to be the best of the Union generals, Lee diplomatically responded that “I have no hesitation in saying General Grant.” He became more guarded when Pepper pressed him on the reasons for Confederate defeat. Lee said he was not a good extemporaneous speaker, “nor am I a very good extemporaneous answerer of questions.” Superior manpower and resources beat them in part, he volunteered, but so did the vanity of the Southern people after early victories: “The cheering proved to be our folly.”15

  The constant callers made it difficult for him to stay out of the public eye. Early in May leaders of two Northern relief commissions, in Richmond trying to feed the hungry, came to his door. Dressed in his old uniform, Lee met them in his dining room, saying nothing as they introduced themselves and extended their hands. Declaring theirs an unofficial visit, they merely called to pay their respects. Then one of the leaders said that he hoped Lee sympathized with their mission. The general spoke affirmatively, adding that such associations had done great good, and he hoped their efforts would succeed. They shook his hand again and left.16

  Within days Lee’s old enemy the New York Tribune condemned the “humanitarians” for meeting with Lee, and then reiterated the old Norris whipping story, now enhanced to have Lee working the slaves to pay his own debts, not his father-in-law’s, and rubbing down the bloody brine-soaked backs of his victims with rough corn husks.17 Less than a month later Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts spoke at Boston’s Emancipation League and referred to Lee as “the woman whipper of Arlington.”18 It was Lee’s first experience of the danger of speaking with even the most innocent callers.

  When he did go out in public, he carried with him that same consciousness of the role he had chosen to play. For a start, when he was last in Richmond most of its black population were slaves. A few weeks later on his return they were all freedmen and the social balance had shifted dramatically. To be sure, whites still held all of the social, political, and economic power, but the door had been opened for blacks to make modest challenges to the old order. On Sunday June 4 Lee went to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for a communion service. While he was there, perhaps at the communion itself, an incident apparently took place involving a black communicant. Nothing more is known, but forty years later a witness still remembered that something occurred that would not have happened three months before.19

  That may have been a part of the reason Lee wanted to leave Richmond, but mainly it was for peace and quiet, for Mary’s health, and as he put it, to make a “quiet house in the woods where I can procure shelter & my daily bread if permitted by the victors.”20 When Elizabeth Randolph Cocke offered him a modest four-room cottage at Derwent near Powhatan, he gladly accepted and moved the family in the last week of June.21 Soon he told his son Robert that “we are all well & established in a comfortable but small house, in a grove of oaks.” It was a poor region, but good for Mary, and he had some thought of trying farming at last.22

  Before leaving Lee prepared an application for pardon and submitted it to friends in Richmond for their opinion.23 In the process, he made clear that he acted willingly and only on his own behalf. His son Custis recalled him saying at the time that “it was but right for him to set an example of making formal submission to the Civil Authorities; and that he thought, by so doing, he might possibly be in a better position to be of use to the Confederates, who were not protected by Military paroles, especially Mr. Davis.”24 When word reached the press, speculation as to his motives ran rampant, but a few months later he explained his reason to Beauregard. “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them—the desire to do right—is precisely the same,” he wrote. “The circumstances which govern their actions change; and their conduct must conform to the new order of things.”25

  Lee was conforming to that “new order.” However, just when his application was ready to submit, Federal Judge John Underwood in Norfolk unexpectedly handed down an indictment against him for treason on June 7. Lee doubted that there would be any trial, thinking himself protected from prosecution by the Appomattox surrender terms, but still engaged legal counsel. He sent his application to Grant, and asked if Grant believed he was liable to indictment. If so, he would not submit his application. If Grant did not
so feel, then he asked him to forward it to the president. Telling Lee that he believed his own “good faith” was pledged to him, Grant endorsed the application on June 16 and took the matter personally to Johnson, finally threatening to resign unless the indictment was quashed. Johnson gave in on June 20, the indictment disappeared, and Grant sent him Lee’s application. Perversely, no pardon ever came because when Lee sent in the required oath of allegiance on October 2, someone in the executive branch kept the document as a souvenir.26

  When no pardon arrived soon after Grant’s letter, Lee began to wonder if he would ever have his civil rights fully restored, but he did not broach the matter again to Grant. Meanwhile, he stayed at home and did not travel, unclear even as to restrictions on his movements.27 While still at Derwent, Lee sent a verbal message to imprisoned Jefferson Davis that “I have not words warm enough & strong enough to express the deep sympathy & constant solicitude I feel for him.” Making it worse, Lee told the messenger, was the distressing feeling that he could do nothing. “I trust it may not always be so.”28 Indeed it might not, if he so chose.

  Virtually all former Confederates felt that helplessness the summer after the war, but none more than Lee, who sensed keenly the precariousness of his situation. His position called for great care in what he said and did, not only for himself personally, but for all Southerners to whom he was now a symbol of their failed cause, and their current political condition. Hence Lee took heart at any sign of a conciliatory attitude from Congress and the White House. “I wish that spirit could become more general,” he wrote Letcher after the former Virginia governor received a friendly welcome in Washington. “It would go far to promote confidence & to calm feelings which have too long existed.” Lee freely acknowledged that having lost their bid for independence, it was now incumbent on the Southern states to yield manfully and openly to the result. The interests of Virginia were once more identical to those of the general government, and their future prosperity inextricably intertwined. “All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the grievous effects of war,” he added, “& to restore the blessings of peace.” Virginians should promote good will, and elect to state and federal offices “wise & patriotic men, who devote their abilities to the interests of the Country & the healing of all dissensions.” They should also remain in Virginia.29 Some Confederates had expatriated themselves to Mexico, and other colonization schemes even then attracted more to Brazil, Venezuela, and elsewhere. The way for former Confederates to serve their states was to stay home and rebuild.

  Whether he liked it or not, Lee was to be an example to other ex-Confederates who took their cue from his behavior. He had half expected that, and apparently from the day of the surrender never gave a thought to leaving Virginia, but once more to “share the fortunes of my people,” for as he told one cousin, his native state “requires the presence of all her sons, more now, than at any period of her history.” Beyond that advice, which he would give again and again, he refrained from offering counsel. As for Virginians who had left the country during the war and wanted to return, he suggested that they secure a pardon “So Called” before entering the country just to be safe.30 By the fall, however, he allowed an occasional letter to this effect to be handed to the press, or else was not consulted in the matter. A September letter to a man in Petersburg laid out his policy as well as any. “It should be the object of all to avoid controversy, to allay passion, give free scope to reason and every kindly feeling,” he wrote. He believed that if people devoted themselves to life’s daily duties “with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past or fears of the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced in science, in virtue and in religion.”31

  Following his unsuccessful meeting with Lee after the surrender at Appomattox, Grant went to Washington to see Lincoln and Stanton, where fortunately he declined an invitation to the theater and instead left for Philadelphia to join Julia. He arrived to the news that Lincoln had been shot and was dying. Grant immediately returned to Washington, stunned by the news, and uneasy that the vindictive Johnson of Tennessee would now be president. Not knowing the extent of the murderous conspiracy, Grant spent his days in an office at his headquarters with a guard, and only appeared outside twice a day to go to his hotel for meals.32 Forty-eight hours after Lincoln’s death Sherman sent word that he and Johnston were going to meet, with surrender a likely result, so Grant decided to shift the crest of the wave west and ordered Pope to send a proposal for surrender to General Kirby Smith in command of Confederates west of the Mississippi.33 The flurry of activity brought on by the Confederate collapse was so great that Grant could scarcely escape for a meal. On April 21 when the result of Sherman’s meeting with Johnston came in, he saw that his subordinate went far beyond just the surrender of the Army of Tennessee, and had negotiated a surrender of all remaining Confederate forces. Grant knew at once that it went too far and would not be approved, and so it was not when the president and cabinet saw the document. Grant had to inform Sherman to resume hostilities and confine any further negotiations to the surrender of Johnston’s army only.34

  The magnitude of what the Union had achieved was beginning to dawn on him more than ever. “What a spectacle it will be to see a country able to put down a rebellion able to put half a Million of soldiers in the field,” he wrote Julia that evening. “That Nation, united, will have a strength which will enable it to dictate to all others [to] conform to justice and right.” However, its power should go no further than that. “The moment conscience leaves, physical strength will avail nothing.”35 Coincidentally, he wrote that same evening in answer to a cousin’s inquiry about his own future that “I can truly say that I am without ambition,” though he confessed that he liked public approval, “for it is in their interest I am serving.”36

  Grant went immediately to North Carolina to meet with Sherman and stayed several days until Johnston finally surrendered on April 26. He sent renewed instructions to army commanders elsewhere to initiate surrender talks on the basis of the terms given Lee and Johnston, and then turned to an aspect of being general-in-chief that he never anticipated. The rejection of Sherman’s first agreement commenced a feud between Stanton and Sherman that became embarrassingly public, with Grant trying to arbitrate in the middle. It was only a hint of the job ahead, for now that the Confederacy was virtually conquered, the whole subject of the military’s role in the subsequent reconstruction remained to be seen. Would the army be reassigned as an occupying force, or would it be disbanded? What was to happen to the men like Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Meade, and many more who were the architects of victory? For that matter, what was to happen to Grant himself?

  At the end of May, Johnson issued a proclamation outlining the procedure to be followed by those former Confederates who wanted to seek pardon and amnesty. When Grant heard Lee might apply, he was pleased, though he expected it would be opposed by a vengeful faction in the North and among the Radical Republicans. “I think it would have the best possible effect towards restoring good feeling and peace in the South,” he told Halleck. “All the people except a few political leaders South will accept what ever he does as right and will be guided to a great extent by his example.”37 It was what he had believed all along. When Underwood’s grand jury handed down Lee’s indictment, Grant took Lee’s application to the president and stood his ground when Johnson argued that the Appomattox terms and parole only had effect while Lee was a soldier. Now that he was a civilian he enjoyed no protection from civil prosecution. Grant met him argument for argument, telling Johnson he could do what he pleased about civil rights and other questions, but the surrender terms had to be honored. To do otherwise brought dishonor on the government for breaching its own terms, and undid all that Grant had tried to accomplish by way of easing Confederates from resistance toward citizenship. Moreover, Lincoln had in part inspired the Appomattox terms, and tacitly approved them after the fact. Johnson was probably already
tired of hearing what Lincoln had done or would do, and demanded to know when the general-in-chief believed any former Confederate leaders could be brought to trial. Grant responded, “Never.” At an impasse, Grant closed the conversation with a threat to resign his office if the president dishonored the Appomattox accord. Johnson, already in a weak position, and faced with having to explain to the administration and people how he lost the most popular man in America, finally relented. The indictment against Lee would be dropped and he would be free from any further prosecution for his Confederate service.

  By late June all organized Confederate forces had surrendered, and Grant felt it was time to prepare a final report on the actions of the armies since he assumed overall command. He opened with a statement of his conviction early in the war that continuous operations on all fronts were the way to bring down the rebellion, not eastern and western armies acting independent of each other, and sitting out winters in the East and hot summers in the West. They must defeat the military capability of the foe, and then the rebellion would be extinguished. He closed complimenting Lee that “great consideration is due him for his manly course and bearing shown in his surrender.” Grant wrote then crossed out a passage condemning Lee’s indictment and possible prosecution, saying that had Lee known that was ahead, he would have fought his way out and the war in Virginia would still be going on. “Gen. Lee’s great influence throughout the whole South caused his example to be followed,” and the armies under him were at home desiring peace. He also wrote then crossed out a passage reflecting on reconstruction. Opposing views among the loyal on handling the defated South had led to factionalism, while those who fought largely wanted moderation and forgiveness. “Would it not be well for all to learn to yeald enough of their individual views to the will of the Majority to preserve a long and happy peace?” On reflection, he deleted such passages that overstepped the bounds of his authority, but his desire for a gentle and speedy reconstruction was clear.38