Gen. Longstreet’s corps was scarcely 100 yards from our skirmish line and Gen. Humphreys issued orders for an advance upon them. Artillery was being placed in position. The commanders of the contending forces were watching the movements on either side, couriers and staff officers were riding to and fro, and just about the time the ball was about to open Gen. Meade appeared at the front and after issuing orders to suspend operations sent a messenger to Lee granting a truce of an hour, pending the negotiations for the surrender.
LEE UNDER AN APPLE TREE.
The officers who delivered Grant’s last note found the confederate chieftain stretched out on a blanket under an apple tree near Appomattox court house. The famous tree was removed, bit by bit, and for a long time the writer carried a piece of it as well as a splinter from the floor where young Ellsworth fell in the Marshall house at Alexandria, Va. It is understood that a tablet marks the spot where the tree once stood that shaded the vanquished leader.
The officers mounted their horses and rode to the court house, where, meeting a Mr. McLean, Gen. Lee told him that they desired the use of a room in some house, and Mr. McLean invited the party to his home. Later the party was joined by Gen. Grant and other distinguished generals from both sides.
The two great leaders exchanged reminiscences of their service under Gen. Scott in Mexico, after which the formalities of the surrender were gone through with. When Gen. Lee had signed his name to the terms of surrender it is said that with tears in his eyes he whispered in Gen. Grant’s ear “General, my poor men are starving,” and Grant, like the great modest man and soldier that he was, motioned to his side the general of subsistence of the army of the Potomac and quietly told him to “issue, immediately rations to the army of Northern Virginia.”
Gen. Lee rode back to his troops to tell them what he had done and the next day issued his farewell orders.
The parting of Lee with his soldiers at Appomattox was most pathetic. Tears were streaming from his eyes as they crowded around him begging for a last word and to touch his hand. When he could control himself enough to speak, he said, between sobs, “Men, we have fought through the war together. I have done the best that I could for you.” It is said there was not a dry eye among those who witnessed the sad leave-taking.
GRANT’S GENEROSITY TO HIS FOES.
Gen. Grant’s greatness never shone to better advantage than in the generous terms accorded his conquered foes, and his modesty and consideration for the feelings of the confederate soldiers was such that he never paraded himself among them during the preparations for the formal surrender.
When the surrender was announced the Union soldiers, shouted, hurrahed, danced and manifested their joy in all sorts of boyish pranks, but it soon passed off, and as they beheld the ragged, starved, wearied and sad-eyed veterans who had followed Lee into the last ditch their joy was turned to pity and sorrow and the blue divided with the gray their rations and they drank coffee from the same tin cups and water from the same canteens!