Land of the Brave and the Free (Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book 7)

by Michael Phillips

  “Is your heart filled with hatred, General?” I said, hardly realizing what a bold and pointed question I had asked. If I could have, I would have taken the words back instantly. But it was too late, and they hung there in the air for what seemed like forever.

  I thought I detected a momentary wince in the proud face, but he continued to look forward. I felt like I had stabbed him in the very heart of his faith.

  “I have fought against the people of the North,” he finally answered, still not looking toward me, “because I believed they were seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings.”

  He paused, and his next words, I could tell, came from his very depths. “And,” he added, “I have never seen the day when I did not pray for them. So to answer your question, young lady—no, there is no hatred in my heart for any man of God’s making, nor has there been throughout the years of this conflict.”

  So many more questions began to fill my mind. I wanted to ask the general what he thought about slavery, and why he had continued the fight against General Grant so long, at the cost of so many thousands of lives, even though there had been no possible way for his forces to win. I found myself wanting to know how his spiritual beliefs could allow him to consider so many lives expendable long after the cause he was fighting for was lost. It seemed so cruel, so stubborn, so proud. Yet this man beside me appeared none of those things, but rather a godly and upstanding man. I found myself wanting to know him and to understand him more deeply.

  But there was no time. Already we were approaching the edges of the encampment of the Confederate troops. Seeing their general approach, foot soldiers began running toward him with cheers, some crying. Others just stood as he passed, grim and silent, or covered their face with their hands. A few officers merely saluted. I heard someone call out, “I love you just as much as ever, General!”

  I knew my interview was over, and I wanted to get back to the town. I turned my horse and led it away. General Lee had already stopped to greet the troops who were running toward him. He had never once looked at me.

  I slowly rode away in the opposite direction, but when I heard his voice addressing his men, I stopped one last time, turned around, and listened.

  “Boys,” he said, “I have done the best I could for you. Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you. Good-bye, and God bless you all.”

  That was all. I turned again and hurried back to Appomattox Court House. I had not been gone more than ten minutes. I dismounted, tied up the horse, and waited. Most of the Union officers still had not come out of the house, Jacob said.

  A few minutes later General Grant emerged.

  While they had been inside, quite a crowd of Union soldiers had assembled outside. At Grant’s appearance they began to cheer. Then artillery fire began salutes of victory.

  General Grant’s hand went up.

  “Stop . . . stop !” he cried. “We will not exult over the downfall of these Rebels,” he said in a loud voice. “The war is over. They are our countrymen once again.”

  The outbursts subsided. General Grant mounted his horse, and without waiting for the rest of his detail, rode back to his tent.

  I kept my eye peeled for Major Dyles. He came out of the house between Generals Sheridan and Custer, both carrying pieces of furniture they had bought as souvenirs from the owner of the house.

  Major Dyles walked to his horse. I ran up to him. “Do you mind if I accompany you back?” I asked.

  “Hollister, if you don’t turn up everywhere!” he exclaimed. “No, of course not. You got a mount?”

  I said I did. I ran back, retrieved my horse, and soon was riding along at Geoffrey’s side.

  “Can you tell me what happened in there?” I asked.

  “Back to being a newspaper lady, eh?” he grinned.

  “Can’t get good stories without asking questions.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything confidential about it,” he said. “There’s plenty of other fellows around interviewing all the generals. But you, Corrie Hollister, you got a major all your own to ask anything you want. I owe you, and I always pay my debts!”

  “Then just tell me everything that went on inside that house,” I said, “and we’ll call it square for getting you out of Libby.”

  “A fair exchange!”

  Major Dyles got serious for a moment, then started talking, like he was giving a speech.

  “Well,” he began, “Ol’ Bobbie Lee was already there waiting. He was all decked out in his finest gray uniform and his polished boots and parade sword. And then when General Grant came in with just a dirty private’s shirt and boots and trousers all splattered with mud, the two couldn’t have looked more different.

  “The two men shook hands. Grant said something about having met General Lee once before, during the Mexican war. Lee said he recalled it, but could not remember what Grant looked like.”

  “Could you tell what they were thinking?” I asked.

  “Lee looked stoic and pained. He didn’t let so much as a hair of his stern dignity down for a second. His face was impassible. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there, but he held himself up.”

  “What about General Grant?”

  “He was at ease. Not overly friendly, but tried to make pleasant conversation. He even seemed inclined to talk more about the Mexican campaign, but then General Lee reminded them what they were there for. General Grant got down to the business of the terms as he was prepared to offer them. As near as I can recall them, Corrie, he listed them something like this: Officers and soldiers of the Confederate army who owned their own horses could keep them. Officers could keep their pistols and personal possessions. All soldiers would be allowed to return to their homes and would not be in any way prosecuted or disturbed by the authorities of the United States government.

  “ ‘How many men do you have under your charge?’ General Grant then asked. ‘I understand they are in need of food.’

  “ ‘I no longer know the number,’ answered Lee, ‘but I am sure they are all hungry.’

  “ ‘Will rations for twenty-five thousand men be sufficient?’ asked Grant.

  “ ‘That is more than generous,’ replied Lee. ‘It will have the best possible effect upon the morale of my men. It will be very gratifying and do much toward conciliating our people.’ ”

  “Then a brief articles of surrender document was drawn up to indicate those things they had discussed. Both generals signed it. Then they shook hands again, and that was it.”

  We were nearly back to General Grant’s headquarters by then. I thanked him, said good-bye to him and Jacob, then rode back to find Christopher where I had left him at one of the field hospitals.

  It was a time of returnings.

  Soldiers everywhere returned home to try to piece together the broken fragments of shattered lives.

  Robert E. Lee returned to his stately plantation outside Richmond, suddenly, and forever after, a civilian again.

  President Lincoln and his wife and son returned, after a week in Richmond and Petersburg, back to Washington. He had been fighting innumerable battles since first taking office. Now he could relax briefly before undertaking the enormous burdens ahead, socialize some, perhaps attend the theater.

  Christopher and I returned from Appomattox Court House to Mrs. Timms’ farm.

  Even as we rode back, my brain was full of what I’d seen in the small town—especially the two men playing the lead roles on the stage that neither of them, had they been able to change the course of events, wished existed at all. Growing within me was the reporter’s urge to find some larger meaning to the events I had witnessed. Most of all, I could not get out of my mind the significance and symbolism of Lee and Grant’s peaceful meeting after four years of bloodshed.

  Almost the moment we were back to the farm, I got out my things to try to begin working on
the first article I had attempted in some time.

  Two men from such different backgrounds—one of education, society, and gentlemanly stature, the other from more common roots, and whose military career had ended in ignominy before the war—symbolize the two diverse personalities of the North and the South, and the great diversity found in the United States of America.

  Robert E. Lee, the stoic, proud, gentleman Southerner, and Ulysses S. Grant, the practical, rugged, down-to-earth Northerner, are like two brothers of very different temperaments, yet from the same lineage. Brothers but enemies, whose loyalties and strong wills inevitably would clash because of the intense pride of their convictions and loyalties.

  Perhaps the face-to-face battle between these two great generals for control of Richmond in the closing months of the war was inevitable from the beginning. In the same way, perhaps this civil clash between North and South, between two opposing views of freedom and what the Constitution means when it grants its citizens freedom, was also inevitable, even from the very beginnings of this nation and that Constitution. As two brothers grow side by side, the time often comes when conflict must resolve their differences in order to prepare them for manhood. From the very beginning there was in the Constitution, and in the fabric of this country, a flaw, an unresolved corner where freedom did not exist. One of the brothers detected the flaw, the other denied it. And ultimately the time had to come when they would come to blows over it. For the country and the two brothers were growing and had to mature sometime.

  When the war began, Ulysses S. Grant was serving in total obscurity in the distant west, while Robert E. Lee already commanded the imposing Army of Northern Virginia. Their posts, ranks, and power could not have been more different, and the likelihood that the two would ever meet on the field of battle seemed impossibly remote.

  However, both proved themselves in battle, command, and loyalty, and both moved steadily up in the ranks of their respective armies. Grant rose from being an unknown whose career had already been declared over, higher and higher in the Union ranks, to become general, then lieutenant general. Gradually destiny seemed to bring him ever eastward, ever closer to the center of the conflict, ever higher toward the very top of Abraham Lincoln’s command.

  Inexorably, they both climbed, moving closer together all the time as if being drawn by fate toward a final face-to-face confrontation that would decide the outcome of the entire war. In a fitting climax, by 1864, there they both were, the two great generals, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—the former in command of the entire Union army, the latter in command of the Confederate, and squaring off against each other between the two capitals, Washington and Richmond.

  Had the end been scripted, it could not have come down to a more dramatic and appropriate conclusion. Grant vs. Lee, Washington vs. Richmond, the Union vs. the Confederacy. Only one would emerge victorious from the battle. Either Richmond or Washington would fall, and with it, only one—the Union or the Confederacy—would prevail.

  When their armies met in the spring of 1864 in the wilderness of northern Virginia, indeed the battle between two giants had begun. All the war had, in a sense, prepared for this. And now, strategy and might and cunning and sheer determination and willpower would decide which of these two titans, these brother Americans, would be the greatest.

  Far superior numbers were by that time on the side of the North. But the titan of the South did not give in without a fight. For a year the two armies battled to a stalemate, steel against steel, unflinching eye against unflinching eye, Grant against Lee, both determined—Grant about whom it was said, “He always wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall and was about to do it,” and Lee who seemed as if he would fight on without surrendering until his army was down to a dozen men . . . until at last the end, which had long been as inevitable as the clash, arrived in a quiet little Virginia town called Appomattox Court House.

  When the black-bearded face of Ulysses Grant stared across the small table at the white-bearded face of Robert Lee, and the two determined sets of eyes met, and the two hands clasped at last in peace, it was the moment of brotherhood for which the nation—united now again—had so long struggled, when the brothers North and South, in spite of their conflict, and perhaps even because of them, were now ready to stand and become men . . . together . . . united as one to move ahead toward a future.

  I put my pen down and drew in a long sigh.

  I didn’t know what I was trying to say. This would never be an article any newspaper would print! I hadn’t written anything newsworthy for so long, maybe I had forgotten how.

  I read over what I had done. What future? Where was the country moving . . . where was my article going? A rambling discussion of Lee and Grant, that’s all it was. They had both been so on my mind, such forceful men . . . I could get the gaze of neither out of my memory.

  But I still couldn’t lay hold of what it all meant!

  That’s what I needed to find out if I was going to write an article on the war that had just ended—what was its purpose, what had it achieved . . . what did it mean?

  The Wednesday following the Palm Sunday surrender, the Army of Northern Virginia formally laid down its arms. Twenty thousand men marched in formation toward the Union army to stack their rifles on the ground and surrender all their battle flags. The long Union lines of dark blue saluted their brother Americans clad in gray.

  In Washington, fireworks and celebration and parades filled the air and the streets.

  It was Good Friday, two days before Easter. “Listen to this,” said Christopher, reading from Thursday’s paper, which had come down by ship to Richmond and which he had just received the day after that. “There was a huge crowd about the White House, a band, fireworks, and they were all clamoring for the President to make a speech. He insisted he was too weary, but they wanted something from him in this moment of victory. Now listen to what he said, Corrie. What a diplomat! I can see why you are so fond of him. ‘I have always thought “Dixie” one of the best tunes I ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted that we fairly captured it with the signing of the papers at Appomattox. I presented the question to the attorney general and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize. I now request the band to favor me with its performance.’ Imagine that, playing ‘Dixie’ to commemorate the end of the war!”

  There was no way I could have known, but I would find out later, that even as the band was playing its rousing rendition of “Dixie” for the President, just a few blocks away John Surratt had gone in search of his friend, the actor, where the latter was drinking himself into a stupor at the National Hotel.

  It was a dark time for the nation, he said, between swallows of brandy.

  Surratt agreed.

  Something must be done.

  Would Booth like to come over to his mother’s? All the others were there—Atzerodt, Powell, Herold. They had plenty of brandy.

  Anything to drive away the blues of the terrible defeat, said Booth. He rose and accompanied him back to Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse.

  That same afternoon, Christopher, Mrs. Timms, and I read the Good Friday story and prayed together to remember the death of Jesus and what it signified to each of us.

  “The willing, sacrificing death of Jesus is the foundation for the entire gospel message,” Christopher said as we sat together after reading the biblical account. “Not merely the death he underwent on our behalf,” he said, “but the willing death. It is the most overlooked aspect of the crucifixion by most Christians, it seems to me.”

  “I thought it was his dying, the shedding of his blood, that paid the price for our sin,” I said.

  “It was, of course. But the huge truth of Jesus’ death is that he didn’t have to die. The Father didn’t force him onto the cross. He chose it. It was his God-nature that made atonement by the shedding of his blood. But it was his man-nature that chose to do it. And that is
what is so wonderfully real and present about the crucifixion. That willing choosing is what makes us able likewise to enter into the death on the cross with him. Paul’s words about us sharing the cross are such a puzzle to many. But once you grasp this willing choosing, this laying down of life, that is central to what Jesus did by allowing himself to be crucified, then it becomes clear that that same choice, that same willing laying down of our own motives of self-interest, is open to us too. And thus we become partakers in the divine nature by sharing in the choice that Jesus made as a man.”

  “I’m sorry, Christopher,” I said, “but you sound more like a preacher than I’ve ever heard you. And I’m afraid it’s still a puzzle to me.”

  He laughed. “Forgive me. Sometimes I get carried away with an idea, and I have to follow it out wherever it leads me.”

  “But I do want to understand what you’re saying.”

  “All right, then let me see if I can explain it this way.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “What is the one way in which we can be just like Jesus?” he asked at length.

  “I don’t want to say the answer you’re not thinking of,” I replied with a smile, “so you tell me.”

  Christopher laughed. “I’m thinking of having the power to choose, as I said before. God gave us a will. It’s our choosing mechanism. We can use it to choose good or bad. We can use it to exalt ourselves or exalt someone else. I can use it to put myself first, or to put you first.”

  “I see.”

  “Jesus shared all that completely. He had a man’s will. In other words, he could have chosen to exalt himself. The Bible makes it clear that he had that very clear choice. He did not have to die. He was not coerced into it.”

  “And we have the same kind of will?”

  “Exactly the same. And the choice we face is the same choice that Jesus did. We face it every day. I would even go so far as to say we face it almost every minute of every day.”