by Alan Axelrod
The two Confederate commanders marched their men—hard—to Farmville, where the famished army at last found something to eat. But, while they ate, Lee received a note from Grant:
April 7. General: The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the C. S. army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.
Without word, Lee passed the note to Longstreet, a valiant commander, yet one so perpetually gloomy he was known to his closest associates as “Old Pete,” although he was not past his mid-forties. It was Longstreet who had advised Lee against invading Maryland and also against launching “Pickett’s Charge” at Gettysburg. Lee must therefore have expected him to counsel immediate acceptance of the surrender demand. Instead, Old Pete handed the note back to Lee with just two words, “Not yet.”
Lee nevertheless sent a reply not offering surrender but inquiring as to the terms Grant would offer. “Peace being my great desire,” Grant wrote in return, “there is but one condition I would insist upon, namely, that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged.”
Lee withheld his response to this, and (as Grant wrote in his Personal Memoirs), “Early on the morning of the 8th the pursuit was resumed.”
The Confederate general deployed his army between Appomattox Station, along the railroad tracks, and Appomattox Court House, a few miles northeast of the station. Custer led his division in an attack against Appomattox Station, forcing two of Lee’s divisions to retreat and abandon their supply train as well as about thirty cannon. The Confederates then marched toward Appomattox Court House, where they set up a defensive line southwest of town. Custer waited for the arrival of his commanding officer, Phil Sheridan, with the main body of the Union cavalry. Establishing themselves opposite the Confederate defenses, Sheridan and Custer prepared to attack on April 9.
What they expected of Lee was for him to hunker down and resist their onslaught. Instead, Lee launched a preemptive attack. At five o’clock on the morning of April 9, he sent John Brown Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee against the Union’s field fortifications. A sharp and unexpected blow, it nevertheless succeeded only in triggering the Union assault that had been planned for later in the day.
The Army of the Potomac had been pursuing Lee westward in two columns, one to the north, the other to the south. The southern column now wheeled to the north against Appomattox Station southwest of Appomattox Court House while the northern column closed in directly on Appomattox Court House from the east. At this point, Lee had perhaps 30,000 men, of whom no more than half were armed. The two Union columns were set on either side of Lee as the opposing jaws of a vise. The Confederate had no way forward, back, or sideways. Turning to a staff officer, Lee said, “There is nothing left me but to go and see General Grant, and I had rather die a thousand deaths.” With that, he sent one of one of General John Brown Gordon’s young staff officers into the morning mist, bearing a white flag.
* * *
At the invitation of Samuel Langhorne Clemens—Mark Twain—who was majority owner of Charles L. Webster and Company, publishers, Ulysses S. Grant, terminally ill with cancer of the throat, wrote his Personal Memoirs in 1885. Grant turned out a plain-spoken historical and literary masterpiece, completing the manuscript just five days before he died. The work includes our fullest first-person account of Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s farmhouse, April 9, 1865.
It was an event, Grant wrote, that he had hardly expected to take place when he left camp that morning. For this reason, he “was in rough garb” without time to don a dress uniform.
I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted each other, and after shaking hands took our seats. I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview.
What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassable face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter [offering surrender], were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.
Between the lines of Grant’s memoir, we can feel the painful self-consciousness of the victorious general in the presence of the iconic figure he had defeated. Lee was “in a full uniform which was entirely new, and … wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia.” As for Grant, in a “rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-general, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form.” Yet the two men, who, like so many other highly placed officers in the armies of the Union and the Confederacy, had served in the pre-Civil War army together and had even fought as comrades in the US-Mexican War, readily “fell into a conversation about old army times.” It was talk that “grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting,” Grant, almost incredibly, confessed. He admitted that it was Lee who “called my attention to the object of our meeting, and said that he had asked for this interview for the purpose of getting from me the terms I proposed to give his army.”
Some say character is best measured in defeat. Surely, Lee was never more impressive than at this moment. Yet character may be gauged perhaps even more accurately in victory. Grant could have exulted, scolded, damned, threatened, and demanded. Instead, he elaborated on what he had earlier proposed in writing. “I said that I meant merely that his army should lay down their arms, not to take them up again during the continuance of the war unless duly and properly exchanged.” Lee responded by suggesting that “the terms I proposed to give his army ought to be written out.” With that, Grant sat down and did just that.
Grant had made himself infamous throughout the Confederacy by abolishing the practice of prisoner parole and exchange, which had been policy on both sides early in the war. Grant correctly believed that the parole and exchange benefitted the chronically undermanned Confederate military far more than it did the Union army, which had access to a larger population of recruits and conscripts. The abolition of exchange and parole brought into being such POW hellholes as Andersonville in Georgia and Elmira (called “Hellmira”) in New York State. In the McLean parlor, Grant now announced that he would take no prisoners. Instead, he would accept the word of officers and men to lay down arms “until properly exchanged.”
Lee’s surrender did not formally end the Civil War, but it ended the existence of its primary military force. Although the war continued, Grant not only foreswore the taking of prisoners, he also gave permission for Confederate officers to retain their sidearms and allowed all personnel to keep their horses and personal property. Everyone, Grant stipulated, would be “allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles.”
The simple letter of surrender duly signed and witnessed, Lee lingered to inform Grant that the Army of Northern Virginia “was in a very bad condition for want of food, and … had been living for some days on parched corn exclusively.” To Lee’s request “for rations and forage,” Grant responded with a single word: “Certainly.” He asked for how many men were rations req
uired. Lee’s answer revealed just how diminished his great army was—“about twenty-five thousand.” Grant authorized Lee “to send his own commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox Station … where he could have, out of the trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted.”
It now fell to the Confederate general to take up the pen. On April 10, 1865, he distributed General Order No. 9, his last command to the Army of Northern Virginia:
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them. But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain there until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.
With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.
As he and his headquarters staff bade Lee farewell, Grant ordered no ceremony, no lowering of one flag and hoisting of another. The surrender of Lee to Grant began with the conversation of former brothers in arms who had become enemies but were enemies no longer. After this, it turned to practical matters, matters of survival, decency, and the return home.
The surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia did not end the Civil War. There were about seven more weeks of fighting, much of it desultory, but some of it fierce. The Army of Tennessee, the last major Confederate army still in the field, surrendered to William Tecumseh Sherman on April 18. Andrew Johnson, who had become president of the United States following the death of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, repudiated the terms Sherman offered, but Johnson accepted, on April 26, terms identical to those Grant had offered Lee. On May 8, Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Taylor—the son of Zachary Taylor, hero of the US-Mexican War and twelfth president of the United States—surrendered the Department of East Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the very last remaining Confederate military formation of significant size. Despite this, a skirmish developed between Confederate troops under John Salmon “Rip” Ford and Union forces at Palmito Ranch, near Brownsville, Texas on May 13. The final armed exchange of the war, it ended in a Confederate victory. Nevertheless, Ford’s commanding officer, General Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered to Union Major General Edward R. S. Canby on May 26.
These battles and skirmishes prove that the surrender at the McLean house did not officially end the war. In a far more meaningful sense, that surrender, which embodied the character, honor, and goodwill of both Grant and Lee, truly did end the war. Without the simplicity, honor, and humanity of the meeting at Appomattox, the War between the States might well have continued for who knows how long in the chronic spasms of guerrilla conflict that have marked so many other of history’s civil wars. Grant’s generosity and Lee’s frank and wholehearted acceptance of his adversary’s terms set the example for all the former soldiers of both the Confederate and Union forces. The guns fell silent and remained so.
6
November 19, 1863
Two Minutes at Gettysburg
Why it’s significant. The Battle of Megiddo in 1469 BC brought Egypt to the pinnacle of its power. The Battle of Hastings in 1066 made William of Normandy William the Conqueror. The Battle of Yorktown in 1781 transformed a doubtful “American Revolution” into a victorious “American War of Independence.” And the Battle of Gettysburg—July 1–3, 1863—was the beginning of the end of the Civil War, the Confederacy, and a nation divided half-slave and half-free. Abraham Lincoln understood this, and in two minutes of sublime eloquence delivered at the dedication of a military cemetery on the battlefield, the American president lifted the bloodiest three days in American history to their rightful place among the most significant battles in the history of civilization. In just 272 words, he explained to his fellow Americans why Gettysburg was “a new birth of freedom” that rescued and redeemed the imperiled ideal of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and ensured that it would “not perish from the earth.”
CLOSE TO THE Maryland state line in Adams County, southern Pennsylvania, Gettysburg was known, prior to July 1863, for no more than two things. It was the place at which the wagon roads between Shippensburg and Baltimore and between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh crossed and it was home to the nation’s first Lutheran Theological Seminary. The town had some 2,400 residents and about 450 commercial buildings, mostly tanneries, cobblers, and carriage makers.
As these facts suggest, there was nothing of strategic military value in Gettysburg; however, Confederate general Henry Heth might have thought the town’s shoemakers had created a supply of footwear sufficient for his division. In 1877, he wrote, “Hearing that a supply of shoes was to be obtained in Gettysburg … and greatly needing shoes for my men, I directed General Pettigrew to go to Gettysburg and get these supplies.” The fact is, while Gettysburg had a handful of cobblers, it had no shoe factory. So, the idea that the momentous Battle of Gettysburg, the costliest battle of the Civil War and the turning point of that war, was fought over shoes is mistaken. South-central Pennsylvania had few roads in the 1860s, and two of the largest ran through Gettysburg. If you happened to be traveling in Adams or York counties in 1863, it was almost impossible not to pass through Gettysburg sooner or later.
And that was unfortunate for the residents of the town. Having defeated the Union’s Army of the Potomac in two titanic Virginia battles, Fredericksburg (December 11–15, 1862) and Chancellorsville (April 30-May 6, 1863), Robert E. Lee made the decision to take the war into the North for a second time. In September 1862, he had invaded Maryland and was forced to withdraw back to Virginia after the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862). Now he decided to invade Pennsylvania. While some of his top commanders, most notably James Longstreet, tried to talk him out of the plan, Lee argued that the Confederacy, especially war-ravaged Virginia, could endure the attrition of a defensive war no longer. Moreover, an invasion now would take some pressure off besieged Vicksburg, Mississippi, the fall of which would tear the Confederacy in two along its east-west axis and deprive it of Mississippi River navigation. But, more important, invading the North would give the Army of Northern Virginia a position from which it could menace Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington and, in the process, bolster the peace movement developing in many parts of the Union.
So, Lee dismissed all objections and marched northward, with Ewell’s Corps crossing the Potomac on June 15 and the corps of Generals Hill and Longstreet on the 24th and 25th. A portion of Major General Jubal Early’s division of Ewell’s Corps readily brushed aside a unit of Pennsylvania militia and briefly occupied Gettysburg on June 26 before moving on to neighboring York County.
The presence of a Confederate corps was unnerving for the 2,400 people of Gettysburg, but they lost remarkably little by it, General Lee having admonished his commanders to see to it that hardships on civilians were minimized. Lee was, in fact, little concerned with Gettysburg. He was intent on the major cities. As part of his bigger-picture plans, he permitted J. E. B. Stuart to take part of his army’s cavalry on a ride around the left flank of the Army of the Potomac, which had positioned itself between Lee’s main columns and Washington. The problem was that, as Lee’s principal cavalryman, Stuart was supposed to be the eyes of the Army of Northern Virginia. But his long ride put him out of communication with Lee at precisely a time when information was of greatest
importance to the invading army. So when, on June 29, Lee heard that the Army of the Potomac had crossed the Potomac River, he could only assume that he was being pursued, and he could only guess where to concentrate his troops for maximum advantage. He decided to concentrate part of Hill’s Corps near Cashtown east of South Mountain and eight miles west of Gettysburg. It was from Cashtown that Heth, one of Hill’s division commanders, sent a brigade of North Carolina soldiers under Brigadier General J. Johnston Pettigrew toward Gettysburg, perhaps to get shoes. On June 30, Pettigrew’s advance party saw Union cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford riding into the southern outskirts of Gettysburg. Pettigrew returned to Cashtown to report to Hill and Heth what his men had seen. They could not estimate the size of the force, but it did not look very large, and they certainly did not believe it indicated the proximity of anything as grand as the Army of the Potomac. Although Lee had ordered his subordinates to avoid a major engagement until all of the Army of Northern Virginia was concentrated, Hill sent two full brigades of Heth’s division back to Gettysburg to make a reconnaissance in force. At the very least, he wanted to clear those enemy cavalrymen out of Gettysburg. More than that, he wanted to know just how small—or large—that cavalry detachment was.
Neither Hill nor Lee was looking to fight a major battle at Gettysburg. In the end, what they got was a three-day battle, the deadliest and, arguably, the most consequential of the entire war.