Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [472]
Although it was close to 10 p.m., Stanton knew that Seward would want to be awakened for this news. “God bless you,” Seward said when Stanton read the telegram. This was the third time Stanton had come to see Seward that Sunday. “Don’t try to speak,” Stanton said. “You have made me cry for the first time in my life,” Seward replied.
BOTH GRANT AND LEE had acquitted themselves admirably at the courtly surrender ceremony that afternoon at the Appomattox Court House. “One general, magnanimous in victory,” historian Jay Winik writes, “the other, gracious and equally dignified in defeat.” Two days earlier, Grant had sent a note to Lee asking him to surrender. In light of “the result of the last week,” Grant wrote, he hoped that Lee understood “the hopelessness of further resistance” and would choose to prevent “any further effusion of blood.” At first Lee refused to accept the futility of his cause, contemplating one last attempt to escape. But Sunday morning, with his troops almost completely surrounded, Lee sent word to Grant that he was ready to surrender.
As the distinguished silver-haired general dressed for the historic meeting, his biographer writes, he “put on his handsomest sword and his sash of deep, red silk.” Thinking it likely he would be imprisoned before day’s end, he told General William Pendleton, “I must make my best appearance.” He need not have worried, for Grant was determined to follow Lincoln’s lenient guidelines. The terms of surrender allowed Confederate officers, after relinquishing their arms and artillery, “to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority,” on the condition that they never “take up arms” against the Union “until properly exchanged.”
As Grant continued to work out the terms, he later recalled, “the thought occurred to me that the officers had their own private horses and effects, which were important to them, but of no value to us; also that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to call upon them to deliver their side arms.” He therefore added a provision allowing officers to take their sidearms, as well as their private horses and baggage. This permission, Lee observed, “would have a happy effect upon his army.” Before the two men parted, Lee mentioned that “his army was in a very bad condition for want of food.” Grant responded immediately, promising to send rations for twenty-five thousand men.
As Lee rode back to his headquarters, word of the surrender spread through the Confederate lines. He tried to speak to his men, but “tears came into his eyes,” and he could manage to say only “Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you.” If Lee had trouble expressing his grief and pride, his soldiers showed no such reservations. In an overwhelming display of respect and devotion, they spontaneously arranged themselves on “each side of the road to greet him as he passed, and two solid walls of men were formed along the whole distance.” When their cheers brought tears to Lee’s eyes, they, too, began to weep. “Each group began in the same way, with cheers, and ended in the same way, with sobs, all along the route to his quarters.” One soldier spoke for all: “I love you just as well as ever, General Lee!”
At dawn the next day, Noah Brooks heard “a great boom.” The reverberation of a five-hundred-gun salute “startled the misty air of Washington, shaking the very earth, and breaking the windows of houses about Lafayette Square.” The morning newspapers would carry the details, but “this was Secretary Stanton’s way of telling the people that the Army of Northern Virginia had at last laid down its arms.”
“The nation seems delirious with joy,” noted Welles. “Guns are