The Boys of '61 / or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy

by Charles Carleton Coffin

General Lee's Farewell.

"I will order such certificates to be issued to every man," said General Grant; and as soon as the preliminaries were settled, the head-quarters printing-press was put to work striking off blanks for that purpose.

"My army is short of rations," said Lee.

"You shall be supplied," and an order was at once issued to the commissary to furnish rations to the prisoners.

The question of terms had been discussed the evening previous around Grant's camp-fire. Grant stated that he wanted such a surrender as would break down the positions which France and England had taken in recognizing the Rebels as belligerents. He did not wish for humiliating terms. He would not require a formal grounding of arms. The Rebels were Americans, and his object was to restore them to the Union and not to degrade them.

Lee returned to his army and stated the terms of capitulation, which were received with great satisfaction, especially by those who owned horses. They cheered loudly, and no doubt heartily. The terms were such as they had not expected. The newspapers of the South had persistently represented the men of the North as bloodthirsty and vindictive,—as vandals, robbers, and murderers,—capable of doing the work of fiends, and the remarkable leniency of Grant surprised them.

The terms were not altogether acceptable to Grant's army. Many of the officers remembered that General Pickett never had resigned his commission in the United States service, but that he had taken up arms against the country without any scruples of conscience. He was a deserter and a traitor, found in arms. The soldiers remembered that scores of their comrades had been shot or hung for deserting the ranks; the utmost leniency of the government was a long term of imprisonment in a penitentiary or confinement on the Dry Tortugas. Sentinels had been shot for falling asleep while on duty; yet General Pickett and his fellow-traitors were, by the terms of the parole, granted an indulgence which was equivalent to a pardon. It was General Pickett who hung the Union men of North Carolina who had enlisted in the service of the Union, but who, under the fortunes of war, had fallen into his hands. In General Pickett's estimation they had committed an unpardonable crime. He considered them as citizens of the Confederacy, and hung them upon the nearest tree. It was cold-blooded murder. But his desertion, treason, inhumanity, and murders were offset by the plea that the North could afford to be magnanimous to a conquered foe! The soldiers idolized Grant as a commander. They had no objection to his terms with the privates of Lee's army, but there was dissent from including Pickett and Ewell, and other Rebel officers who had been notoriously inhuman to Union soldiers. The Rebel soldiers were generally humane towards prisoners, especially after the first year of the war. Many instances might be cited of their kindness to the wounded on the battle-field and to prisoners in their hands. The officers in the field were also kind, but the political leaders, the women, and officers in charge of prisons were cruel and vindictive.

The hour came for Lee to part with his officers. He retained his calmness and composure, but they could not refrain from shedding tears. It was to be their last meeting. He was to lead them no more in battle.

The occasion brought before them an acute sense that all was over,—all lost; their sacrifices, sufferings, heroism, had been in vain; their pride was humbled; instead of being victors, they were vanquished; history and the impartial verdict of mankind perhaps would hold them responsible for the blood which had been shed. It was a sad hour to that body of men in gray, wearing the stars of a perished Confederacy.

The intelligence of the capitulation was communicated to Grant's army by bulletin. As the news flew along the lines on that Sabbath morning, the cheering was prolonged and vociferous. For the first time in four years the veterans who had toiled in the mud of the Peninsula, who had been beaten back from Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, who had stood like a wall of adamant on the banks of the Antietam, and the heights of Gettysburg, who had pressed Lee from the Wilderness to Five Forks, who had brought him to bay at last, were to have a peaceful night.