Appomattox C.H., Va.
Apr. 9th, 1865.
Gen. R. E. Lee,
Comd. C. S. A.
Gen.
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th instant 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 [sic] and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their command. . . .
Lee perused the text slowly and carefully. After turning to the second page, he looked up and said to Grant: “After the words ‘until properly,’ the word ‘exchanged’ seems to be omitted. You doubtless intended to use that word?”
“Why, yes,” answered Grant, “I thought I had put in the word ‘exchanged.’”
“I presumed it had been omitted inadvertently, and with your permission I will mark where it should be inserted.”
“Certainly.”
Lee did not have a pencil on him, or perhaps he had one but could not find it, but Brigadier General Porter, to whom we owe the most accurate version of the surrender, leaned over and handed him his. Lee thanked him, made the correction, and continued reading.
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,
U. S. GRANT, Lt Gl
Having read the terms, Lee became more relaxed. They were what he had hoped for; he could hardly have expected more generous terms. “This will have a very happy effect on my army,” he said, referring to the words Grant had added about Confederate officers being allowed to retain their sidearms (pistols and swords), horses and personal property. After a brief hesitation Lee brought up his only objection—Confederate artillerists and cavalrymen owned their own horses, he pointed out. Could the terms be altered so that they too could retain them?
But Grant either could not or would not amend what he had written. He had written the words about Confederate officers after Lee’s sword caught his eye, but he did not want to extend them to soldiers and noncommissioned officers. The idea that “private soldiers” each owned their horse was “new” to him, he said, and as a onetime farmer himself, albeit a failed one, he understood the importance that draft horses would play in resuming agriculture in the South. He understood that most of the men in Lee’s army were “small farmers,” as he had once been himself, and he agreed that “it was doubtful whether they will be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they are now riding.” Grant said he would not change his text, but he would instruct his officers to let any men who claimed to own a horse or a mule to take it home with them “to work their little farms.” Grant could have said nothing more likely to aid the restoration of peace between the North and South, or more gratifying to Lee.
Since Colonel Parker had the best handwriting among the Union officers present—he was a graduate of Rensselaer College, was a civil engineer, and would have been a lawyer too, except that Indians were not yet American citizens—Grant ordered him to write out two copies in ink. In the meantime Lee ordered Colonel Marshall to draft a reply. While he was doing so Grant introduced his officers to Lee, who spoke only to Brevet Major General Seth Williams, an old friend from the Mexican War and from the period when Lee had been superintendent of West Point. By this time there was a crowd of Union officers outside the McLean house, including the “boy general” Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer.* The McLean house turned out to contain no paper, and the “stoneware inkstand” on Major McLean’s desk was empty. Colonel Marshall was obliged to borrow a few sheets of paper from Colonel Parker, and in return produced from his pocket a “small boxwood inkstand.” Lee mentioned to Grant that he had 1,000 Union prisoners, and no provisions for them, nor for his own men. He was badly in need “of both rations and forage.” It must have cost a man as proud as Lee a lot to make this plea, but Grant responded quickly, offering to make 25,000 rations available immediately, though he had no forage for Lee’s horses.
“I think it will be ample,” Lee said. “And it will be a great relief, I assure you.”
Lee’s sword apparently continued to catch Grant’s eye, and he apologized for not wearing his. A little before four o’clock the surrender was complete. Lee shook hands with Grant in the center of the parlor, and the entire room moved out onto the porch, where Lee signaled to Sergeant Tucker to bring up Traveller. “While the animal was being bridled the general stood on the lowest step and gazed sadly in the direction of the valley beyond where his army lay—now an army of prisoners. He smote his hands together a number of times in an absent sort of way; seemed not to see the group of Union officers in the yard who rose respectfully at his approach; and appeared unconscious of everything about him. . . . The approach of his horse seemed to recall him from his reverie, and at once he mounted. General Grant now stepped down from the porch, and moving towards him, saluted him by raising his hat. He was followed in this act of courtesy by all our officers present; Lee raised his hat respectfully, and rode off to break the news to the brave fellows he had so long commanded.”
CHAPTER 12
Apotheosis—1865–1870
It seldom happens in history that one man comes not only to embody but to glorify a defeated cause. More exceptionally still, Robert E. Lee would become a national, not just a southern hero: a U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarine of the George Washington class would be named after him; his face would appear on a U.S. thirty-cent postage stamp, a U.S. Army tank (the M3 Lee, very popular with the British Army in the Western Desert of North Africa in 1941 and 1942) would be named after him; and his American citizenship would be posthumously restored to him by President Gerald Ford in 1975.* It is hard to think of any other general who had fought against his own country being so completely reintegrated into national life, or becoming so universally admired even by those who have little or no sympathy toward the cause for which he fought. This process began almost instantly after the surrender.
There was a short period of discomposure when Lee rode through the ranks of his own troops back to the apple orchard outside Appomattox Court House, and dismounted. He was surprised to find himself an object of curiosity, with Federal officers coming forward to introduce themselves, or just to stare at him as if he were “a lion” in a zoo. His staff officers saw that he was in a rage at this invasion of his privacy, and he could not prevent his cheeks from turning red, but he held himself in control until he could make his escape. By the next day, he had recovered his equanimity. He set Colonel Marshall to drafting his farewell address to his army; and hearing that General Grant wished to pay his respects, he mounted Traveller and rode off at once to meet Grant in a field between the two armies—he may not have wanted Grant to see the extent to which the Army of Northern Virginia was lacking in everything from shoes and clothing to food. The two generals talked for over half an hour without dismounting, their staffs at a respectful distance. Grant gently urged Lee to advise the other armies of the Confederacy to surrender, but this was exactly the political role that Lee never wanted—he politely insisted that he could not do such a thing without first consulting his president, and Grant recognized that “there was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right.” Both men realized that with Lee’s surrender, the war was to all intents and purposes over. The Confederacy had lost its capital and its major army; its president* and its maj
or political figures were in flight; its currency was worthless.
Later that day, General Meade rode over to Lee’s camp, and the two opponents at Gettysburg chatted amicably in Lee’s tent, Lee joshing Meade about the gray in his beard, and Meade rejoining that Lee was responsible for putting most of it there. Lee seems to have relaxed now that he was back in his own quarters and meeting senior officers and friends from the past, rather than being gawked at by strangers in uniform. Like Grant and Meade, Lee was a product of West Point—rank, seniority, and the respect due to a senior officer were as important to him as to any other West Pointer, never mind what uniform he wore.
Lee signed his parole on April 9, and he remained in camp until April 12 while the army handed over its weapons and disbanded. He then left for Richmond, accompanied for the first few miles by an honor guard of Federal cavalrymen. He spent the night of April 12 camped in the woods a few miles from Buckingham Court House—where a sign on the road now reads “THE HISTORIC VILLAGE at Lee Wayside.” He was still not willing to give up his tent and accept invitations to spend the night indoors, and was embarrassed by the attention and gifts of food he received, though he gratefully accepted oats for Traveller. At some point the next day Traveller cast a shoe, so Lee was obliged to spend the night at Flanagan’s Mill waiting for his horse to be shod. His “stopping place” is now marked by another roadside historical plaque. The next night he pitched his tent at Windsor, the Powhatan County home of his brother Charles Carter Lee. In the morning, Lee was joined by his son Rooney and his nephew John, and they rode on toward Richmond, in a party of about twenty, followed by Lee’s headquarters wagons and ambulance. A witness described Lee as he neared home: “His steed was bespattered with mud . . . the horseman sat his horse like a master; his face was ridged with self-respecting grief; his garments were worn in the service and stained with travel. . . . Even in the fleeting moment of his passing my gate, I was awed by his incomparable dignity.” Lee had on his gray campaign uniform, with a plain sword that had once belonged to George Washington. Once he reached home he would never wear a sword again.
The Richmond he rode through was a ruined city, the streets reduced to mere tracks made through the rubble and cinders of the fire that had destroyed so much of it. Passersby cheered him as he rode toward 707 Franklin Street, and he acknowledged their cheers with grave dignity. Before the house, he dismounted and handed Traveller’s reins to one of his orderlies, then opened the gate in the wrought iron fence and walked up the steps between the Doric stone porch columns and stepped inside, to start a new life.
He did not give up his uniform, and would not do so for some time. Mathew Brady, the famous photographer, who was a relentless celebrity hunter as well as a great artist, photographed Lee on his back porch only twenty-four hours after his return to Richmond. People had warned Brady that it was “preposterous” to suppose Lee would pose for him at such a moment, but Brady was a man of considerable persuasive powers, and he had photographed Lee before, the first time in 1845. He thought it would be a “historic” image, and apparently Lee agreed: he let Brady take six photographs, in an era when each sitting involved a long period of remaining perfectly motionless. In the mid-nineteenth century having oneself photographed was still a formal and serious occasion. In one of Brady’s photographs, Lee stands in the doorway looking defiant, still wearing his colonel’s stars and Confederate buttons, but without a sword. In another he sits outside in an upholstered easy chair taken from the house, his gray hat in his lap, his expression distant, perhaps even anguished, with his son Major General Custis (“Boo”) Lee standing on his right and his aide Colonel Taylor on his left. It may be that Lee’s civilian clothes had long since been lost. Three months later he was still wearing his old Confederate gray uniform, but by then without the stars and the gilt buttons, and with a different hat. His transition to civilian dress evidently took some time, as it did with countless less famous Confederate veterans.
If Lee’s expression looks shell-shocked in some of Brady’s photographs, it is not surprising. In a matter of days, he had gone from being the commander of all the armies of the Confederacy to a man with nothing to do, besides which he had become an involuntary tourist attraction. Curiosity seekers obliged him to take his walks at night; a constant stream of callers sought his help, blessing, sympathy, or advice. He had already become the symbol of the defeated Confederacy, whether he wished to or not.
Happy as he was to be back among his family, Lee suffered all the privations of that period in the South. The most ordinary of staples, like sugar, tea, and flour, were in short supply or unobtainable; the Confederate currency was (as noted above) worthless; the victorious North was in no hurry to feed the defeated South. Lee’s house was crowded; his wife was virtually bedridden; their daughters Mildred and Agnes were exhausted by trying to look after so many people; and Lee himself struggled with self-reproach and grief, his face, as many observed, as deeply marked as if he had aged overnight: “The sorrows of the South were the burden of [the rest of] his life.”
Yet Lee was only fifty-eight years old, an active man—his advice to all those who sought it was to find work and begin the process of rebuilding, and he did not exempt himself. He encouraged his son Rooney to return to his ruined plantation, White House, and begin farming. Rooney was soon joined by his brother Rob, and Lee clearly needed to find an occupation for himself. The Lees were fortunate, in the sense that the boys still owned properties, which could be farmed, left to them by their grandfather, and that Lee still retained bonds that produced a modest income, though not enough for the family’s needs in Richmond. Their house had been rented by Custis Lee from a Mr. John Stewart—an admiring and sympathetic landlord who urged Lee to remain in the house “as long as your convenience leads you to stay in Richmond,” and refused to accept any payment, unless it were “made in Confederate dollars,” which in effect made the house rent-free. Lee was not one to accept this kind of generosity, however well meant; nor did he want to stay on in Richmond indefinitely. He was not a city person to begin with, and he felt strongly that Mary Lee would be better off away from the ruins of Richmond and the constant presence of a Federal garrison. She was vastly more embittered by the Union victory than her husband was. Once Lee had surrendered, he accepted Federal rule and its consequences; his “submission to civil authority” was genuine. He took every step that was required of him to seek a pardon, and it was through no fault of his that it was delayed by 110 years, but Mary Lee’s feelings toward the North were less forgiving. She still felt that the Confederacy was a holy cause, and Lee feared the consequences of keeping her in what amounted to an occupied city, quite aside from the danger of sickness and contagion there during the summer months.
He thought at first of someplace near White House, but Rooney wrote back to say that the countryside around the charred ruins of the Custis house was devastated by three years of fighting and Federal occupation, not to speak of the effect that the blackened brick chimney, which was all that remained of the house where George Washington had wooed and married Martha Dandridge Custis, would have on his mother. Lee was apparently not convinced, and toward the end of May he decided to see for himself. He rode Traveller past the fields where his army had fought in 1862 and again in 1864, modest places whose names had become famous—Mechanicsville, Gaines’s Mill, the Chickahominy River, Cold Harbor. Getting out into the countryside on Traveller was part of Lee’s healing process. He may not have known this, but he discovered it en route—the horse, the farms, the familiar roads, the friends who came to see him when he spent the night at the home of his dashing young cousin Colonel Thomas Carter, whose guns had supported Pickett’s Charge in 1863, all combined to put the grim reality of Richmond out of his mind for the moment. He had no desire to revisit old battlefields; he enjoyed a sumptuous family dinner in the old antebellum Virginia style, attended by his sons Rooney and Rob, and played with small children for the first time in years; he was among people who wanted nothing fro
m him and did not treat him as a curiosity or an idol. At the same time, he saw at once that Rooney was right: this was not the place to seek a home for himself and Mary. There were too many reminders of the war, too many ghosts, too many battlefields along the Pamunkey River to make this a good choice, but he also understood that his impulse had been right, and that to regain his own balance he must get out of Richmond and seek peace and quiet in which to decide what to do with the rest of his life, for Lee was never a man who could be idle.
While Lee was at Pampatike, Thomas Carter’s house, he learned that full amnesty and pardon were to be offered to all except a few former Confederates on the condition that they take an oath to support the government and the constitution of the United States. Lee cannot have been surprised that he was among those excepted, but reading the proclamation he discovered that he was entitled to make an individual application for pardon, and two weeks later he did so, having ascertained that General Grant would be happy to endorse Lee’s letter to President Johnson, and bring it to the president’s attention. This was a more momentous decision than it sounds. While Lee made no public declaration of the fact that he had sought a pardon, it soon became known. His willingness to submit to Federal authority served as an example, to other Confederates to do likewise. Now that the war was over, he felt strongly that the sooner the Union was fully restored—and accepted in the South—the better for everyone. Once again, in his own quiet way, Lee was acting as a leader for all who had fought for the Confederacy. If he could apply for a pardon, few other men could reasonably be so proud as to refuse, and he thus took the first step in bringing about the reconciliation of North and South.
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