University of Virginia Library

12. XII.
LEE'S RETREAT AND SURRENDER.

In the month of March, 1865, Lee—that is to say,
the Southern Confederacy—was at bay, circled by
enemies.

The gigantic drama which for nearly four years had
unfolded its bloody scenes on the soil of Virginia, approached
the catastrophe. Four acts had been played
by such actors as the earth has rarely seen; those acts
had been full of hurrying events, fierce passions, terrible
shocks; the world, that grand audience, had
looked on with absorbing emotion; and now, at last,
the curtain was to fall, the actors were to disappear,
the lights were to be extinguished, and the audience
were to draw a long breath of relief.

There was cause for that emotion. In April, 1865,
one of the most illustrious banners of all history was
furled; and at the foot of a record blazing all over
with glory, was written the sombre word, “Surrender.”

Of this great Act V., only a sketch is here attempted.
But that sketch will be accurate. The
writer did not gain his information of the events described
from books, but saw them. They passed before

his eyes, and burnt themselves forever into his
memory.

In February, 1865, the roads were drying, and Gen.
Grant's heart must have thrilled at the thought, “At
last the end is near.”

There was no doubt of that fact. The South was
tired of the war; the Executive was unpopular; the
heads of departments were worse; the Confederate
money was mere paper; there was a quarter of a
pound of decayed meat for the army; and that army
—the sole bulwark of the cause—numbered less than
forty thousand men, while Grant's numbered about
one hundred and fifty thousand.

Now, one hundred and fifty thousand men, against
forty thousand—a large estimate of the Confederate
“effective”—is an ugly thing in open field. It is
even worse when the forty thousand have forty or
fifty miles of earthworks to guard—as at Petersburg.
The day when Grant anywhere broke through that
thin and tremulous obstacle, Lee was lost.

The “country”—that dull critic of military things
—had, however, a different opinion. They scouted the
idea. Lee was a Titan of so great bulk that nothing
could overwhelm him. The Army of Northern Virginia
was unconquerable. Everything was going well.
Grant could do nothing. He might stretch his lines
from the Jerusalem Plank Road to the Weldon Railroad—from
the Weldon Railroad to the Squirrel
Level Road—from the Squirrel Level Road to Hatcher's
Run—from Hatcher's Run to the Quaker Road
—from the Quaker Road to the Boydton and White
Oak Roads—to Five Forks—to the Southside Railroad—to

the crack of doom. It was nothing. Was
not Lee there with his great and invincible army—of
forty thousand men?

Gen. Lee took a different view of things. There
never beat in human breast a braver soul—a truer
heart of oak—than in the great Virginian's. But to
that trained military brain, one thing was obvious—
that when Gen. Grant received his expected reinforcements
from Sherman, the lines around Petersburg
would be torn asunder, and his army captured or destroyed.

“At this time,” says Gen. Grant, “the greatest
source of uneasiness to me was the fear that the
enemy would leave his strong lines around Petersburg
and Richmond before he was driven from them by
battle, or I was prepared to make an effectual pursuit.”

Lee and his officers understood perfectly the design
of their great adversary. The Generals of the Southern
army looked at the situation with grim horror, and
jested about it.

“If Grant once breaks through our lines,” said one
of them, “we might as well go back to Father Abraham,
and say, `Father, we have sinned!' ”

Such was the situation in the last days of February,
1865, at Petersburg; Lee's army of about thirty-nine
thousand men, gaunt and starving, in the trenches; no
reinforcements arriving; Grant fighting day and
night, while awaiting his great accessions of strength
from Sherman; the Southern force dwindling, the
Northern force growing larger; the Confederacy prostrate,
silent, laboring under a sort of stupor—the

North joyous, laughing, preparing to shout “Hosannah!”

It was plain to all who saw clearly, that unless Lee
extricated his army from that man-trap, he was lost.
And he made the attempt.

The fact is not in print, but it is a fact that, before
the end of February, Gen. Lee gave orders for the
evacuation of his lines around Petersburg, and, consequently,
of Virginia. At the word, his heavy stores
began to move; his artillery and ammunition were
sent to Amelia Court House, on the straight line of
retreat to North Carolina—and then, one morning,
Gen. Lee went up to Richmond.

When he returned to the army, the movement was
arrested. From that moment, the Confederacy was
dead.

The great soldier, commanding its greatest army,
must have shuddered then at the prospect before him.
That he did not lose heart, only proves that his was
truly an obstinate soul—a fibre which no weight of
care, no pressure of discouragement could shake.

Honour is due to the stubborn persistence of Grant,
but greater honour to the unshrinking nerve of Lee.

The problem was now reduced to a frightful simplicity.
Could Gen. Grant attain the Southside Railroad,
on Lee's right? If so, Lee was lost. Figure it
out as they might at Richmond; talk as they might
about the possibility of holding Virginia; the bad policy
of abandoning it—with Grant at Five Forks, the
game was ended.

Everything advanced now. The winds of March
dried the roads—Grant's gigantic war engine began to

move. That commander was still, however, haunted
by his old fear.

While the outside world was blundering on, as to the
situation, the two great chess-players were bending over
the board; and it was the brow of the Northern soldier
that was the most deeply corrugated.

“I had spent days of anxiety,” writes Gen. Grant,
“lest each morning should bring the report that the
enemy had retreated the night before.”

And that anxiety was natural. Grant was a good
soldier; knew that Lee ought to retreat; and Lee, too,
knew that he ought to. Why did he not?

Answer, “Department of Rebel Archives,” in the
city of Washington.

A month had passed since that attempt to evacuate
Petersburg, and Gen. Lee was still there. Those who
saw him then will remember that his expression and
whole bearing were of supreme repose. Never had
his smile been sweeter, his eye more limpid and unclouded.

The March winds blew, the roads grew firm, the
moment had come, and Gen. Grant fixed upon the last
day of the month for a great assault upon Lee's right,
with the view of seizing the Southside Railroad.

One would have said that his adversary saw the
shadow of the gigantic arm raised to strike. Before
the hammer fell, the world was to witness the last
great offensive movement of Lee—the final lunge of
the keen rapier which had so often drunk blood.

To relieve his right from the enormous pressure there
—to open his line of retreat for a junction with Johnston,
and to end at one blow the elaborate programme

of his opponent—Lee, on March 25th, had recourse to
a project of unsurpassing boldness. This was to attack
his adversary's centre, at Hare's Hill, near Petersburg,
cut the Federal line, root his whole army then between
the Federal wings, and either force Grant to retire his
whole left wing, or march upon and destroy it.

There was so much genius and audacity in this conception,
that it ought to have succeeded. It did nearly
succeed. Here are the facts briefly narrated:

Fort Steadman, the point selected for assault, was a
powerful Federal work opposite Petersburg, defended
in front by abattis, and every species of obstacle, and
flanked by other forts commanding it.

The Federal and Confederate lines were at this point
less than two hundred yards distant from each other,
and each was eternally on the watch.

Surprise seemed impossible,—attack hopeless. In
the night, toward morning of March 25th, Lee surprised
and attacked.

The storming column was three or four thousand
men, under Gordon—that brave of braves—the man
who never failed to do the utmost that could be done,
—who electrified the soldiers that fought under him,
and whose name will electrify history. Gordon went
through the abattis in the dark March morning, over
the Federal breastworks, driving before him, or capturing
the Federal infantry there—seized Fort Steadman
—was at dawn rooted immovably in the centre of
Grant's line.

The last great blow of the Army of Northern Virginia
had been struck. Gordon's sword-point was at the

throat of Grant—an hour afterwards his whole command
was dead, or captured, or retreating.

A few words will explain that. He was not supported
by the troops which Gen. Lee had ordered to
follow him—the Federal forts, right and left, opened
a terrible fire upon him; he was ringed round with
artillery, crushed by heavy masses of infantry—scarce
was there time for the remnant of his little force to
save themselves.

The great blow had completely failed—nearly two
thousand men were dead or prisoners—the last hope
of successful retreat to North Carolina was lost.

What was foreseen by Lee speedily followed. Grant
threw his whole force, now amounting to one hundred
and sixty thousand men, against Lee's entire front—
making his heaviest attack on the Confederate right.

The trumpets had thus sounded; the knights, with
lance in rest, had rushed together, and the soil trembled.
The days thundered, and the nights were like
the days. From the White Oak Road, west of Petersburg,
to the Williamsburg Road, east of Richmond,
cannon glared and roared, musketry rattled, mortar
shell rose, described their fiery curves, like flocks of
flame-birds, burst, and rained their iron fragments in
the trenches. The cannoneer, sighting his gun, fell
pierced by bullets entering the embrasure; the musketeer,
who sank to sleep in the trenches for an instant,
was torn asunder by the mortar shells, and never woke.
At midnight, gaunt and dusky figures, moving to and
fro in the baleful light, plied their deadly work, never
resting, scarce ever eating—not hoping, but fighting
still.

Those who remember those days do not dwell with
serene pleasure on the souvenir. A lurid glare seems
ever to hover over those scenes of nightmare, when two
armies were in the death-wrestle.

Let others chronicle the events of those days of decisive
struggle—the present writer has neither space
nor inclination. Bloodshed is repulsive; an army of
supremely glorious history undergoing the ceremony
of annihilation is not a cheerful spectacle.

Lee fought to the end. The soul of the Confederate
commander seemed only to grow more resolute and
unconquerable, as he felt upon his breast the pressure,
ever heavier and more deadly, of the Federal anaconda,
wrapping its huge folds around him.

History nowhere exhibits a more obstinate combativeness,
a more inexorable will, a more trained and
daring courage than that of Lee in the fights around
Five Forks.

When his right was cut, repulsed, crushed there—
when Warren and Sheridan had gained a victory there,
resembling in every particular—in relative numbers
more especially—the victory of the latter over Early
at the Opequon—when the whole Confederate right
wing was completely torn to pieces, and the rest of the
little army driven back into Petersburg—then, when
all was lost, when every heart despaired, when every
brow was overshadowed, Lee was still as cool as on the
days of Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville; in his eyes
was the same clear light; his voice was as grave, measured,
and courteous as before.

This soldier was grand and imposing on the days of

his great battles. On the 2d of April, 1865, he was
sublime.

On that morning the long agony was decided. The
right wing of the Confederate army was captured or
dispersed. Grant had broken through in front of Petersburg.
A. P. Hill was dead, and his little handful,
called a corps in a spirit of bitter humor only, scattered.
The Federal army was pouring in one huge mass upon
the few thousands of men still in line of battle.

On the green slope of his headquarters, a mile or two
west of the city, Gen. Lee was looking through his
glasses at the Federal column pushing on to charge his
inner breastworks. On the left of Petersburg Gordon
was thundering,—fighting, with his mere skirmish
line, the triple Federal order of battle. Longstreet
was coming in with his skeleton regiments from the
James. The tragedy touched its last scenes.

When the bullets of the Federal infantry began to
whistle round him, and their shot and shell to tear up
the ground, Gen. Lee slowly mounted his iron gray,
and rode toward his line.

“This is a bad business, Colonel,” he said, in his
calm, deep voice, wholly untouched by emotion.

As he spoke, a shell burst above him, and killed a
horse at his side; but a slight movement of the head
and a latent fire in the eye were the only proof that
the fact had attracted his attention. Meanwhile his
ragged infantry—scattered, a mere skirmish line along
the low inner works—were laughing, greeted him as
he approached, with cheers, and exclaimed, with the
mirthful accent of schoolboys,—

“Let 'em come on! We'll give 'em h—l!”

That expression was not classic, reader, and it may
offend your idea of decorum. But admit that it was
“game.” The men of that brigade were laughing in
face of triple lines of Federal infantry, advancing to
destroy them.

At night Gen. Lee put his army in motion—crossed
the Appomattox—blew up his magazines, and dawn
saw fifteen thousand unshaken veterans steadily marching
up the north bank of the stream, commanded in
person by Lee.

They were out of the trenches, and in the budding
woods. They were moving, not massing—going to
fight, not to stand a siege in ditches full of mud and
water—and Lee, on his gray horse, was leading them!
The writer of this page sat his horse, and looked curiously
into the faces of the troops as they passed—
not a face was gloomy or careworn—not a man had
lost the heart of hope.

And they kept that heart to the last. They starved,
and grew faint, and fell by the wayside, on that terrible
retreat; but as long as they could handle a musket,
the men fought. Ask their veteran opponents of the
old Army of the Potomac if they did not.

A freshet in the Appomattox swamping the bridges,
delayed the crossing of the army to the south side
again. It was not until Wednesday, the 5th of April,
that Lee had concentrated his little army at Amelia
Court House.

Glance now at the tragic situation of affairs. Lee
was retreating, or trying to retreat from Virginia.
Richmond was evacuated, like Petersburg. The officers
of government—President, secretaries, all—had hurried

southward. There was no longer any Confederate
Capitol; or, if there was any, it was at Lee's
head-quarters. What remained of the great edifice,
tottering to its fall, was held aloft upon the bayonets of
the Army of Northern Virginia.

What was that army? Here is the statement of one
who had the best opportunity of knowing the exact
truth. Colonel Walter H. Taylor, A. A. G. of the
army, in MS. statement, says,—

“Strength at Petersburg, April 1, 1865:

     

“Infantry (effective)	37,000
Around Richmond (locals)	2,000
	39,000

“This I believe to be accurate.

“On the 2d of April, the troops were much scattered
—that is, separated from regular commands. Pickett
had been sent up to Five Forks. Anderson had been
sent up Southside Road with three brigades. Our
lines had been cut on Hill's front, and then Heth was
cut off; so that it was impossible to say what force
Gen. Lee took with him when Petersburg was evacuated,
but I think somewhere in the neighborhood of
fifteen thousand infantry. He was afterwards joined
by Heth and Anderson. At the time of the surrender,
we had in line of battle about eight thousand muskets.
We surrendered, officers and men, a little over twenty-six
thousand, including all departments and arms of
service.”

Such was the force—some twenty thousand “effective”
troops—with which Lee faced the one hundred

and fifty thousand men of Grant, hurrying forward to
Burksville Junction, on the Danville Railroad, to cut
off and destroy him.

To this point had all things come on April 5th. And
now what was Lee's design? What had been his intention
in evacuating Petersburg? Was he out-genereraled,
checkmated—out-thought as out-fought by
Grant?

A few words will answer these questions. Lee never
had the least intention to surrender; let that be stated
first. He foresaw the almost mortal blow at Petersburg;
the shadow of the approaching fate ran on before,
and he prepared for the ordeal. The first great
question was that of rations. There was rarely at
Petersburg as much as three days' supply of bread and
meat for the army; now, when it was going to make a
rapid retreat, that little supply would fail. Rations
must be sent from the South to meet the army on its
march. The order was given. Amelia Court House
was the point to which the supplies were ordered. Lee
would march thither, provision his army from the
railroad trains sent up from North Carolina, destroy
his surplus baggage, mass his little handful of tried
veterans, move toward Johnston, and cut his way
through any force in his path.

This was his plain and simple programme. To provision
his army at Amelia Court House, attack the
scattered Federal forces, not yet massed across his line
of retreat, burst through them, and, forming a junction
with Jonhston, retreat into the heart of the Gulf States.
The rest was left to the future. If the war could be
carried on, he would carry it on. If not, he would be

able to make terms of peace, and surrender, en règle,
at the head of his army. Better that than to be
tracked like a wild beast, torn at every step, and die—
panting bleeding, starving—circled by enemies.

Two foes reversed this entire programme—man
and the elements. The freshet in the Appomattox delayed
his crossing until Tuesday, April 4th. Grant
was hurrying by the straight road to cut him off, but
there was still time, when the last, the fatal, the irresistible
blow fell. Reaching Amelia Court House, with
an army, staggering and starving for want of food,
Lee looked around, and saw not a trace of flour, bacon
or corn—nothing. The trains from the South, loaded
with rations, had duly arrived. At the Court House, a
telegram from Richmond said, “Bring on the trains.”
They continued their way, and reached Richmond; the
rations were thrown in the street; the cars were loaded
with the rubbish of the department, hurried Southward,
and when the army of Northern Virginia reached
the Court House, starving, falling by the way, and
perishing from exhaustion, they found nothing.

That blow was terrible; those who reversed Lee's
orders assumed a frightful responsibility. It is only
just to say that the trains only, when emptied, are said
to have been referred to in the telegram, and no one
acquainted with the brave and resolute Executive,
Jefferson Davis, will believe him capable of that terrible
fault. Let history decide, and place the blame
where blame is due—we narrate. The trains passed
through the Court House upon Sunday, April 2d; their
contents were thrown out in the streets of Richmond;

that night the same cars were hastening southward,
and when Lee arrived, there was nothing.[1]

Then despair must have knocked at the doors of that
stout heart. Those who saw Gen. Lee at this moment
will not soon forget his expression. The hope and
defiant courage of a soul which nothing could bend,
had not deserted him, but that instant was enough to
test the fibre of the strongest heart.

All his plans were thus overthrown. He could no
longer advance; he must stop to collect provisions for
his men. He could no longer form line of battle and
fight; he must cut up his army into foraging parties—
half going out into the country to collect bread and
meat for the other half. Starving men do not fight—
starving horses do not pull artillery. There is something
which paralyzes courage, hope, skill, nerve, heroism—it
is famine.

From all these circumstances, thus narrated briefly,
resulted that terrible delay. On Wednesday, April
5th—that is to say, three days after the evacuation of
Petersburg—Lee was still at Amelia Court House.
His veterans were scattered around him, in the fields;
his trains halted—wagons, artillery, carriages, and caissons—because
the horses could no longer draw them.
Parties were penetrating everywhere to the houses, appealing
to the inhabitants with, “Bread, bread, the
army is starving!”—and all this time Gen. Grant
was hastening forward over the line of the Southside

Railroad to Burksville Junction; concentrating there
corps after corps of his superbly equipped and provisioned
army, to meet the little handful of Lee, when
they attempted to continue their retreat.

One course only was left to Lee—to change his line
of retreat, and make for the Virginia mountains. If
he could attain Lynchburg, he was out of the enemy's
clutch. That sole hope remained to him, and placing
himself at the head of his veterans, he resolutely began
his march toward Farmville.

From that moment commenced the horrors of a retreat
which will remain forever famous in history—
famous for the baleful tragedy of the subject, but more
famous still for the heroic nerve of the little army of
Southerners who marched on, fighting day and night,
and starved and sunk down, and died without a murmur.

Who can paint it? What man of the South has the
heart to describe that retreat in detail, tracing step by
step the great tragedy to the fall of the curtain? Not
the present writer, who saw it all; starved with his
comrades; heard the bay of the Federal war-dogs day
and night on the track; and now, when two years have
passed, recalls with sombre emotions that bitter frightful,
hopeless struggle to emerge from the toils in
which numbers had enveloped the little fainting handful—fainting,
but defiant and unconquered to the last.

Here are some memoranda only of the retreat. Lee
had just begun to move from Amelia Court House,
when news came that the Federal cavalry, pushing
ahead, had attacked and burned his ordnance trains at
Paynesville. Thus even his small numbers were to be

paralyzed—the army must be disarmed in advance.
Lee moved on steadily, reached the vicinity of High
Bridge on the 6th, and here the Federal cavalry and
infantry burst into the trains; tore to pieces their rear-guard
under Ewell and others; captured, destroyed, or
dispersed the whole; and pressed forward to annihilate
the remainder of the army.

This was just at nightfall, and the woods glared;
the sky was a great canopy of crimson; artillery
roared; muskets cracked; the Federal forces rushed
on to finish their work, when in their path they saw a
hedge of bayonets, flanked by cannon, whose grim
mouths seemed to say, “Come on!” In fact, Gen.
Lee had hastened with a handful of men to erect this
barrier between the disordered remnant of Ewell,
Anderson and Custis Lee—and it was a magnificent
spectacle, the reception of the old cavalier by the half-starved,
unarmed, and tumultuous crowd, who seemed
in a wild rage at having been thus driven by the
enemy.

With hands clenched and raised aloft; eyes fiery
and menacing; accents hoarse, defiant, full of unshrinking
“fight,” the ragged infantry rose from the
ground upon which they had thrown themselves around
the cannon, exclaiming,—

“General Lee!”

“It's old Uncle Robert.”

“Where's the man who won't follow old Uncle
Robert?”

Fancy that scene, reader, if you can. These tatterdemalions,
burning with rage and defiance; with
hands clenched, eyes like coals of fire, hoarse and vibrating

voices—faces gaunt, dirty, emaciated by hunger,
but showing, by the close, set teeth under the
rough-bearded lips, that the nerve of the bull-dog was
all there still—imagine this scene, lit up by the glare
of the burning wagons, by the horizon all flaming,
above which rose, red and threatening, the Federal signal
rockets, and in the midst of all, on his iron gray,
the old cavalier, Lee, sitting calm and collected, with a
face as unmoved as on some peaceful parade.

Before that rock, bristling with bayonets, the Federal
wave went back. Night fell, and with cannon thundering
upon the long drawn line of Federal horsemen,
ready to rush forward on his rear, Lee continued his
retreat, crossing the river at Farmville, and making for
Lynchburg.

Then commenced, on the 7th of April, 1865, the
most terrible scenes of the retreat. Men were fighting,
falling, and dying all around. The musket was
fired, then it fell from the nerveless hand. The men
charged, drove back the enemy, swarming upon them,
pursued with wild yells, triumphant cheers—then they
staggered and fell. All along the immense line of
trains the enemy attacked; the “stragglers,” as they
were called—that is, the men who could not carry
musket or cartridge-box—fought them with sticks and
rocks. The horses and mules were fainting from exhaustion,
like the troops. Wagons mired, and the
teams could not move. Cannon sunk in mudholes, and
the horses fell and died beside them, up to the girth in
ooze. The teams had become skeleton animals, with
emaciated limbs, and eyes full of dumb despair. The
most cruel blows scarcely pushed them to a slow walk.

Corn there was none, or if a little was discovered, the
starving troops clutched it, struggled for the ears,
crushed the grains between their teeth like horses, and
swallowed it half masticated. Meanwhile, to the
right, to the left, in rear, in front, the enemy thundered;
and the muskets of the Confederates replied.
Lee was fighting still—meant to fight to the end.

Hope had not even then deserted that breast, cased
in “triple steel.” When, on the 8th, Gen. Pendleton
was deputed by the corps commanders of the army to
inform Gen. Lee that surrender, in their opinion, was
inevitable, Lee exclaimed, with flushed cheeks:

“Surrender! I have too many good fighting men
for that.”

On the morning of April 9th, as he drew near Appomattox
Court House, these fighting men were reduced
to less than eight thousand, and the enemy had struck
a last blow. Sheridan's cavalry, pushing, on had captured
and destroyed a train of supplies sent down from
Lynchburg, and Grant's infantry had hurried up, and
massed in front. Then Lee's last hope was gone, and
nothing remained for him but to surrender the army.

Up to that moment he had resolutely refused to do
so, when Grant summoned him. On the 7th, and
again on the 8th, the Federal commander had written
him notes, urging the hopeless situation of his army;
but as late as the evening of the 8th, the day before
the surrender, Lee replied:

“To be frank, I do not think the emergency has
arisen to call for the surrender of this army.”

A Federal writer sees in that reply “a kind of grim
humor;” and in truth there was something grim, if

not humorous, in such an answer on that 8th of April.
Gen. Grant was “up”—on Lee's front, rear, right, and
left—with about one hundred and thirty thousand
men. On all sides, the Confederates were enveloped;
infantry, cavalry, and artillery ringed them round;
through every opening they saw the swarming Federal
horse, the glittering Federal bayonets; from every
knoll grinned the muzzles of Federal cannon.

The prey was hunted down; one hundred and thirty
thousand men had surrounded and had in their clutch
less than eight thousand armed infantry, and the commander
of the eight thousand, when summoned to surrender,
replied that in his opinion the emergency for
that step had not arisen.

That was on the 8th. On the morning of the 9th,
as we have said, the tragedy had reached the last
scene.

As the little skirmish line of Gordon mounted the
Appomattox Court House hill, the advance force of the
Federal army was extending steadily across his front—
infantry, cavalry, and artillery barred the way.

Then a last attack was made, and the Federal lines
were driven nearly half a mile. Raked by the artillery
of Col. Carter—that brave and resolute spirit—
their ranks were broken, and Gordon made his last
great charge. Before it the huge mass fell back, but
then the great wave returned. Artillery thundered,
musketry rattled—fainting, staggering, dying of starvation,
the men fought on.

Then the last moment came. The time seemed to
have arrived when the Old Guard of the Army of
Northern Virginia, under Gordon and Longstreet, bebeath

the eye of Lee, would be called on to shed over
the last scene of the war, the glory of an heroic death.
Longstreet was marching slowly and steadily from the
rear to the front. Every veteran grasped his musket
and moved on with measured tramp,—when all at
once Gordon's poor little skirmish line was seen emerging
from the woods, still fighting as they retreated;
and on the left, beyond the forest, a great mass of dark
cavalry came steadily on, with drawn sabre, to the work
of butchery. Then, at that last moment, something
like a magical calm, a mysterious silence, came. The
storm lulled all at once, as if at the bidding of some
enchanter's wand; and on the heights of Appomattox
appeared a dark-blue column, waving in front of them
a white flag.

Lee had surrendered the army. The odds of one
hundred and thirty thousand against eight thousand
was too great, and the long and terrible wrestle ended.

When the old cavalier came back from his interview
with Grant, the men crowded around him with
pale faces, eyes full of fiery tears, and bosoms shaken
by fierce sobs. Does any reader regard this picture as
overdrawn? Ask those who saw it; demand of any
one present whether the firm hand of Lee was not
necessary to suppress the veritable rage of many, from
General to private soldier. But Lee was still the great
directing head of the army; what he had done, all felt
was well done; and the men crowded round him,
uttering hoarse exclamations.

“I have done what I thought was best for you,” he
said; “my heart is too full to speak, but I wish you all
health and happiness.”

The day passed, then the night—on the 10th the
army surrendered formally, stacked arms, abandoned
their columns, and dispersed to their homes. The
Federal commander had acted throughout all with the
generosity of a soldier, and the breeding of a gentleman.
Not a cheer was heard, not a band played in
the Federal army. When far-off a shout rose over the
woods, one of the Federal officers hastened to apologize
for it.

“That is the rear-guard—those fellows did none of
the fighting,” he said.

As to those who had fought—the veteran Army of
the Potomac, tried in battle, in victory, in defeat, in
all the hard life of the soldier—they did not cheer
when their old adversaries surrendered. They were
silent, and saluted when a ragged Confederate passed.
They felt what surrender must be to the men of that
army which they had fought for four years—and not
a cheer or a brass band was heard.

Why humiliate their old enemies? Why make
more bitter their misfortune?

On the 10th of April, 1865, the old soldiers of the
Army of the Potomac stretched the hands of comrades
to the foe they had fought so long. To-day they are
ready to do as much, if the civilians would only let them.
There is a personage more ferocious and implacable
than the fiercest soldier—it is the man who has staid
at home and never smelt the odor of powder;—who,
while the rest fought, clapped his hands, crying:

“Fight on, my brave boys! You are covering yourselves
with glory, and we are watching you!”

If the civilians had been at Appomattox, they would

have butchered or handcuffed the men of Lee—would
you not, messieurs? You would certainly have split
the air with every brass band of the army, and shouted
“Hosannah” at their humiliation.

Well, see the difference between men who fight, and
men who do not. The old soldiers of the Army of the
Potomac kept quiet—when Lee appeared at Gen.
Grant's quarters, every head was uncovered. Victory
saluted defeat.

So ended the war. With Lee's surrender, all other
armed resistance disappeared, and the great conflict
which for four years had desolated Virginia, terminated
suddenly as a tragedy terminates at the fall
of the curtain.

We have followed rapidly the steps of that gigantic
struggle; looked on its shifting scenes, its varying fortunes.
The aim of the writer of these pages has been
to draw a truthful outline of the mighty wrestle, and
to give to friend and foe his just due. If he has been
unjust, it was not willingly. Nothing has been extenuated
on the one side—on the other naught has
been set down in malice. Of the great American Revolution,
the world will doubtless always differ in their
views; parties will hold opposing opinions, and during
the lifetime of the present generation those opinions
will doubtless be colored by the rancor of partisan
feeling.

What men will not differ about, however—what all
will agree upon—is the reluctance with which the
great Commonwealth of Virginia entered upon the
struggle, and the constancy and courage which she
brought to the long, bitter, and terrible ordeal. Right

or wrong, she was brave—was she not? Ask her
desolated fields, her vacant firesides, her broken hearts.
Prostrate, panting, bleeding at every pore, she was
faithful to the last, in defence of her principles; and
rather than yield those principles, dear as her heart's
blood, she bared her breast for four years of destroying
war, to the torch and the sword—the one laying
waste her beautiful fields, the other drinking the blood
of the flower of her youth.

In that sombre conflict she dared all, risked all,
suffered all—and to-day has lost all.

No! Her stainless escutcheon is still left to her—
and her broken sword, which no taint of bad faith or
dishonor ever tarnished.

That escutcheon is to-day, as it always was, the spotless
mirror of honor. In the past it was held aloft by
Washington, the Father of the Country; Jefferson,
the author of the Declaration; Mason, who wrote the
Bill of Rights; Henry, the orator; Marshall, the
Judge; Taylor, the soldier; Madison, Monroe, Randolph,
Clay—Presidents, statesmen, soldiers, orators
—working with the pen, the tongue, and the sword, a
work which speaks, and will ever speak for them.

These men were the supporters of the Virginia
shield in the past.

Let the world decide whether Lee, and his great
associates, were unworthy to follow them in history.