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replied, asking for terms and an interview. The two great commanders met on April 9 at the residence of a Mr. McLean at Appomattox Court House. They were not entirely strangers, Grant having seen Lee once during the Mexican War, when he was a lieutenant and Lee chief engineer of General Wool's brigade. Lee was at the time of his surrender fifty-nine years of age, six feet tall, erect in carriage, and on the day of the meeting with Grant was dressed in a new uniform and wore a costly sword that had recently been presented to him by the legislature of Virginia. Grant, on the other hand, was sixteen years his junior, not so imposing of stature, with shoulders slightly drooping, and was dressed in a rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant general, and without sword or sash. "I must have contrasted very strangely," said the Union commander, " with a man so handsomely dressed and of faultless form, but it was not a matter that I thought of until afterward." 61

The two generals, forgetful of the occasion, fell into a conversation about " old army times," until Lee recurred to the subject of terms. After reaching a basis of agreement Grant put his terms in writing. Officers and men were to give their paroles not to take up arms again during the war until properly exchanged, and were to be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as their paroles were observed. Grant then expressed the hope that the last battle of the war had been fought, and suggested that General Lee should advise the surrender of all the Confederate commanders. But Lee replied that he could not do this without consulting the President of the Confederacy, and Grant did not insist for, "I knew," he wrote later on, "there was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right." 62

Upon the suggestion of General Lee that the horses ridden by his cavalrymen were in most cases their private property, and that they would be greatly needed for the spring ploughing, Grant replied that he would instruct the officers left behind to allow every Confederate who claimed to own a horse or mule to take the animal home with him. For this Lee expressed his gratification, and remarked that it would have a happy effect. After all was completed Lee turned to Grant and remarked that his men were very hungry, 61 Grant's "Memoirs," one volume edition, p. 630. 62 Ibid., p. 634.

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as they had been living for some days on parched corn, and that he would have to ask for rations and forage. Grant cheerfully complied with the request, and 28,000 half-starved veterans were fed from the Federal commissariat. Grant's bearing toward Lee was that of a generous and magnanimous foe. The story that the Union commander received his adversary's sword and then returned it, Grant repudiates as the "purest romance." 63 When news of the surrender reached the Union lines the men began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. Grant at once sent word that it must be stopped. "The Confederates," he said, “are now our prisoners, and we do not want to exult over their downfall." On the following day the great Confederate commander took affectionate leave of the battle-scarred soldiers who had so long and so devotedly followed his lead. With a look of sadness. on his face he addressed them in a simple and unaffected manner, saying: "Men, we have fought through the war together, and I have done the best I could for you."

The civil government of the Confederacy did not end with the surrender of Lee's army. On the afternoon of the Sunday on which Jefferson Davis received Lee's dispatch saying that Richmond must be evacuated, he, with his Cabinet and such of the archives as could be packed, left by rail for Danville, Virginia. From that place he issued, on April 5, after the fall of Richmond, a proclamation intended to revive the waning hopes of the Southern people. "We have," he said, " entered upon a new phase of the struggle - let us but will it and we are free. I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy Virginia shall be held and defended, and no peace ever made with the infamous invaders of her territory." The fugitive government of the Confederacy now moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where, on April 12, three days after Lee's surrender, Jefferson Davis held a council with three members of the Cabinet, at which Generals Johnston and Beauregard were present. Davis still professed to believe that the people of the South were ready to keep up the fight in spite of the surrender of Lee's army and the general exhaustion of the South. He announced that an

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63 Grant's "Memoirs," p. 632. For an interesting account of Lee's surrender, see an article by General Horace Porter in "Battles and Leaders,” vol. iv. PP. 729-746. 64 Pollard, "The Lost Cause,” p. 701.

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other proclamation would be issued and a new army raised. The members of the Cabinet looked astonished, but kept silent. Finally Johnston was asked for his views. He replied: "Our people are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped and will not fight.'

Mr. Davis was eventually persuaded to consent to the opening of negotiations for peace, and authorized Johnston to make overtures to Sherman for terms of surrender. The two generals had an interview and agreed upon conditions, but as the terms contained stipulations relating to the future political relations of the Confederates, the President of the United States overruled the convention. On April 26 another conference was held between the two commanders, terms satisfactory to the government were agreed upon and Johnston surrendered his army. A couple of weeks later General Richard Taylor surrendered the Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi, some 40,000 in all, and on May 26 General Kirby Smith surrendered all the forces west of the Mississippi, consisting of over 17,000 men.

In a few weeks the vast armies of both sides were quietly dispersing to their homes and preparing to settle down once more in their accustomed civil pursuits. The Southern soldiers accepted their defeat manfully, and showed no disposition to keep up the contest by guerrilla fighting, while those of the North, thrown out of a service which had become almost a profession with them, retired peacefully and without disorder to private life. This peaceful disbandment of two great armies was one of the most remarkable features of the Civil War, and stands as a test and a proof of the soundness and strength of American character; it could hardly have occurred in any European country. Before mustering out, the two great armies of Grant and Sherman were assembled at Washington on their homeward march, and were reviewed by President Johnson and other high civil and military officials of the nation. For two days, May 23 and 24, this mighty host of battle-scarred veterans, few of whom had slept under a roof for four years, poured through Pennsylvania Avenue, making a magnificent pageant, which was witnessed and applauded by thousands of spectators. The greatest civil war of modern times was ended; the integrity of the Union was assured, and negro slavery, the real cause of the war, and now admitted to have been the greatest drawback of the South, was forever destroyed.

I

Chapter XXXIV

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR

I

NORTHERN OPPOSITION TO THE WAR

T remains to take some account of the difficulties met with and the enormous sacrifices made by the people of both sides in this life and death struggle in support of their respective theories of the nature of the Union and of the rightfulness of slavery. Almost from the outbreak of the war the government of the United States had to encounter a strong opposition to many of its war measures from the Democratic party and its sympathizers at the North. The chief stronghold of this party had always been the Southern States; the Democratic party always won its victories by Southern votes, and consequently the Democrats of the North naturally had a certain amount of sympathy for their Southern brethren. Favoring for the most part the prosecution of the war, they nevertheless maintained the identity of their party as a separate organization, and regarded it as good policy to oppose the measures of the administration whenever there was a possibility of deriving party advantage therefrom. Frequent opportunities of this kind were afforded during the course of the war.

One of the first occasions was that raised by the action of President Lincoln in suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and permitting numerous "arbitrary" arrests of Northern citizens in consequence thereof. Suspended at first only as to the territory between Washington and Philadelphia, it was from time to time extended to cover the entire country. By order of the President many civilians in the North were arrested and confined in military prisons for such offenses as discouraging enlistments, expressing sympathy with the Confederates, falsely exalting their motives, magnifying their resources, disparaging those of the Fed

1

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eral army and other "disloyal practices." A notable case, which gave rise to a controversy between the President and Chief Justice Taney of the Supreme Court, was that of one Merryman, charged with recruiting for the Confederate army in Maryland in May, 1861. Merryman was arrested and denied the privilege of the writ, which Mr. Lincoln on his own authority had suspended. He applied to Chief Justice Taney, and a writ was issued on the ground that Congress, and not the President, could suspend it. The military officer who held Merryman, however, refused to obey, acting thus under the order of the President. The Chief Justice could do nothing but protest that the President was usurping the powers of Congress, posing as a military dictator and treating the judiciary with contempt.2

A more widely known case was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, a former member of Congress from Ohio, and a radical Democrat or "Copperhead," as the anti-war Democrats were called in allusion to one of the well-known characteristics of the poisonous snake of that name. In 1863 Vallandigham was a candidate for governor of Ohio, and in the course of his canvass took occasion to denounce the Lincoln administration in language which the Federal authorities regarded as violent and incendiary and conducive to disloyalty. By order of General Burnside, Vallandigham's house was broken into, he was arrested, tried before a military commission, convicted of disloyal practices, and sentenced to close confinement for the remainder of the war. President Lincoln, however, commuted the sentence to banishment to the lines of the Confederacy, and the sentence was duly executed. The affair created intense indignation in various parts of the North, and large meetings, made up chiefly of those who were stigmatized as Copperheads, were held at various places to protest against the tyrannical and arbitrary action" of the President. A meeting at Albany, presided over by Erastus Corning, a prominent citizen

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1 Mr. Alexander Johnston in Lalor's "Encyclopædia of Political Science" (Art., Habeas Corpus), says 38,000 persons were arrested and confined in Northern prisons. This number is undoubtedly exaggerated, as Mr. Rhodes clearly shows in his "History of the United States," vol. iv. pp. 231–232. For an excellent discussion of Lincoln's dictatorship, see Dunning's Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction," pp. 23-62; see, also, Whiting, "War Powers," p. 197 et seq.

2 See the case of ex parte Merryman, McPherson's "History of the Rebellion," pp. 154-161.