almost forgot the object of our meeting . . . when General Lee again interrupted the course of the conversation by suggesting that the terms I proposed to give his army ought to be written out. I called to General Parker, Secretary on my staff, for writing materials, and commenced writing out the following terms: Appomattox C. H., Va. Gen. R. E. Lee, Ap'l 9th 1865 GEN: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside. Very respectfully I then said to him that I thought this would be about the last battle of the war I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I took it that most of the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole country had been so raided by the two armies that it was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United States did not want them, and I would therefore instruct the officers I left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy effect. He then sat down and wrote out the following letter: GENERAL: Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia I received your letter of this date containing the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect. R. E. Lee, General While duplicates of the two letters were being made, the Union Generals present were severally presented to General Lee. The much talked of surrendering of Lee's sword and my handing it back, this and much more that has been said about it is purest romance. . . . General Lee, after all was completed, and before taking his leave, remarked that his army was in a very bad condition for want of food, and that they were without forage; that his men had been living for some days on parched corn exclusively, and that he would have to ask me for rations and forage. I told him certainly," and asked for how many men he wanted rations. His answer was "about twenty-five thousand": and I authorized him to send his own commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox Station, two or three miles away, where he could have, out of the trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted. . . . ९९ When news of the surrender first reached our lines our men commenced firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our prisoners, and we did not want to exult over their downfall. . . . I suggested to General Lee that there was not a man in the Confederacy whose influence with the soldiery and the whole people was as great as his, and that if he would now advise the surrender of all the armies I had no doubt his advice would be followed with alacrity. But Lee said, that he could not do that 1 This testimony to Lee's influence is corroborated by John S. Wise of Virginia, a second lieutenant in the Confederate army at the close of the war: "Certain it is that the Confederacy contained no other man without consulting the President first. I knew that there was no use urging him to do anything against his ideas of what was right. When Lee and I separated he went back to his lines and I returned to the house of Mr. McLean. Here the officers of both armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting battles under the same flag. tributes to Walt Whitman, the American "poet of democracy," 99. Poetical offered his services as voluntary nurse to the soldiers in Abraham the hospitals in Washington during the Civil War. The Lincoln assassination of President Lincoln called forth no nobler tribute than the famous elegy from Whitman's pen: O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won, O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead! O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; - Rise up for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths- - for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; like Robert E. Lee. When he said that the career of the Confederacy was ended; that the hope of an independent government must be abandoned... and that the duty of the future was to abandon the dream of a confederacy and render a new and cheerful allegiance to a reunited government- his utterances were accepted as true as Holy Writ. No other human being on earth, no other earthly power, could have produced such acquiescence, or have compelled such prompt acceptance of that final and irreversible judgment."— J. S. Wise, The End of an Era, p. 344. [467] Here Captain! dear father! It is some dream that on the deck, My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, Exult O Shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. The following verses by Tom Taylor appeared in the London Punch of May 6, 1865, accompanied by a cartoon of John Tenniel's, representing Britannia placing a wreath on Columbia's bier. The verses are especially significant because Lincoln had been unmercifully caricatured in Punch. You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, His gaunt, gnarl'd hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, Of power or will to shine, or art to please; You, whose smart pen back'd up the pencil's laugh, Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain, Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet Between the mourners at his head and feet, Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer, My shallow judgment I had learn'd to rue, How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; He went about his work-such work as few As one who knows, where there's a task to do, A felon hand, between the goal and him, The words of mercy were upon his lips, The Old World and the New, from sea to sea, |