Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [33]
When he is finished, Grant hands the book over to Lee.
Marse Robert digests the words in silence. The terms are remarkable in their lenience. Lee will not even have to surrender his sword. The gist is simple: Put down your guns and go home. Let’s rebuild the nation together. This was President Lincoln’s vision, to which Grant subscribed.
As if to underscore this point, members of Grant’s staff tentatively ask Robert E. Lee for permission to go behind Confederate lines. They have old friends over there, friends they have seen only through the lens of a spyglass, across some great width of battlefield, these last four years.
Appomattox Court House, 1865: victorious Union soldiers in front of the courthouse
Lee grants permission.
There is little else to say. Lee is humiliated but also grateful that his enemies have granted such favorable terms. He will be able to return to his army with some good news. Grant and Lee rise simultaneously and shake hands. The two warriors will never meet again.
As Lee rides back to his lines, the Army of Northern Virginia spontaneously gathers on both sides of the road. Lee fights back tears as his men call out to him. His dissolved army will soon turn over their guns and battle flags. This is their last chance to show their great love and respect for their leader. “Men,” he calls out to them, “we have fought this war together and I have done the best I can for you.”
Each group cheers as Lee rides past, only to give in to their sorrow and break down in sobs, “all along the route to his quarters.”
Meanwhile, the reconciliation is beginning. Confederate and Union officers are renewing old friendships. “They went over, had a pleasant time with their old friends, and brought some of them back with them when they returned,” Grant will write twenty years later, recalling that the McLean household became their de facto meeting place that night. The men swapped stories of their lives and remembrances of battles won and lost. “Here the officers of both armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time while fighting under the same flag.
“For the time being it looked very much as if all thought of the war had escaped their minds.”
But the war is not so easily forgotten by others. Unbeknownst to all those men who risked their lives to fight those great battles—men who deservedly savor the peace—plans are being hatched throughout the South to seek revenge for the Union victory.
Part Two
THE IDES OF DEATH
Lincoln’s most famous profile
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MONDAY, APRIL 10, 1865
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NIGHT
It seems like the entire town is drunk. Lee’s Confederate army has surrendered. In the Union capital whiskey is chugged straight out of the bottle, church bells toll, pistols are fired into the air, fireworks explode, newsboys hawk final editions chock-full of details from Appomattox, brass bands play, church hymns are sung, thirty-five U.S. flags are hoisted, and army howitzers launch an astonishing five-hundred-gun salute, which shatters windows for miles around the city.
The war is done! After four long years, and more than 600,000 dead altogether, euphoria now floats through the air like an opiate.
Complete strangers clasp one another’s hands like long-lost friends. They rub shoulders in taverns, restaurants, cathouses, and the impromptu glow of blazing streetside bonfires. Revelers march from one place to the next, passing the flask, aimless and amazed. Sooner or later it becomes obvious that their passion needs a purpose—or, at the very least, a focus. The human mass snakes toward the White House, handheld torches lighting the way. The people of Washington, D.C., overcome by news of the war’s end, hope to glimpse their president on this historic night. Perhaps, if they are very lucky, he will give one of the speeches for which he has become so famous.
The nation’s capital is not yet the cosmopolitan city it will become. The streets are mostly dirt and mud. It is not uncommon for traffic