The Boys of '61 Part 68

General Lee's Farewell.

"I will order such certificates to be issued to every man," said General Grant; and as soon as the preliminaries were settled, the head-quarters printing-press was put to work striking off blanks for that purpose.

"My army is short of rations," said Lee.

"You shall be supplied," and an order was at once issued to the commissary to furnish rations to the prisoners.

The question of terms had been discussed the evening previous around Grant's camp-fire. Grant stated that he wanted such a surrender as would break down the positions which France and England had taken in recognizing the Rebels as belligerents. He did not wish for humiliating terms. He would not require a formal grounding of arms. The Rebels were Americans, and his object was to restore them to the Union and not to degrade them.

Lee returned to his army and stated the terms of capitulation, which were received with great satisfaction, especially by those who owned horses. They cheered loudly, and no doubt heartily. The terms were such as they had not expected. The newspapers of the South had persistently represented the men of the North as bloodthirsty and vindictive,-as vandals, robbers, and murderers,-capable of doing the work of fiends, and the remarkable leniency of Grant surprised them.

The terms were not altogether acceptable to Grant's army. Many of the officers remembered that General Pickett never had resigned his commission in the United States service, but that he had taken up arms against the country without any scruples of conscience. He was a deserter and a traitor, found in arms. The soldiers remembered that scores of their comrades had been shot or hung for deserting the ranks; the utmost leniency of the government was a long term of imprisonment in a penitentiary or confinement on the Dry Tortugas. Sentinels had been shot for falling asleep while on duty; yet General Pickett and his fellow-traitors were, by the terms of the parole, granted an indulgence which was equivalent to a pardon. It was General Pickett who hung the Union men of North Carolina who had enlisted in the service of the Union, but who, under the fortunes of war, had fallen into his hands. In General Pickett's estimation they had committed an unpardonable crime. He considered them as citizens of the Confederacy, and hung them upon the nearest tree. It was cold-blooded murder. But his desertion, treason, inhumanity, and murders were offset by the plea that the North could afford to be magnanimous to a conquered foe! The soldiers idolized Grant as a commander. They had no objection to his terms with the privates of Lee's army, but there was dissent from including Pickett and Ewell, and other Rebel officers who had been notoriously inhuman to Union soldiers. The Rebel soldiers were generally humane towards prisoners, especially after the first year of the war. Many instances might be cited of their kindness to the wounded on the battle-field and to prisoners in their hands. The officers in the field were also kind, but the political leaders, the women, and officers in charge of prisons were cruel and vindictive.

The hour came for Lee to part with his officers. He retained his calmness and composure, but they could not refrain from shedding tears. It was to be their last meeting. He was to lead them no more in battle.

The occasion brought before them an acute sense that all was over,-all lost; their sacrifices, sufferings, heroism, had been in vain; their pride was humbled; instead of being victors, they were vanquished; history and the impartial verdict of mankind perhaps would hold them responsible for the blood which had been shed. It was a sad hour to that body of men in gray, wearing the stars of a perished Confederacy.

The intelligence of the capitulation was communicated to Grant's army by bulletin. As the news flew along the lines on that Sabbath morning, the cheering was prolonged and vociferous. For the first time in four years the veterans who had toiled in the mud of the Peninsula, who had been beaten back from Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, who had stood like a wall of adamant on the banks of the Antietam, and the heights of Gettysburg, who had pressed Lee from the Wilderness to Five Forks, who had brought him to bay at last, were to have a peaceful night.

Their fighting was over, and there was to be no more charging of batteries; nor long watchings in the trenches, drenched by rains, parched by summer heat, or numbed by the frosts of winter; no more scenes of blood, of wasting away in hospitals, or murders and starvation in Rebel prisons. It was the hour of peace. In the radiant light of that Sabbath sun they could rejoice in the thought that they had once more a reunited country; that an abject people had been redeemed from slavery; that the honor of the nation had been vindicated; that the flag which traitors had trailed in the dust at the beginning of the conflict was more than ever the emblem of the world's best hopes.

Study for a statue of Lincoln.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

CONCLUSION.

April, 1865.

Day was breaking on the 12th of April, when General Grant, accompanied by his staff, alighted from the cars at City Point, after a tedious night ride from Burkesville. He walked slowly up the steep bank to his head-quarters, not with the air of a conqueror, but as if sleep and rest would be far more acceptable than the congratulations of a noisy crowd. Four years had pa.s.sed since he left his quiet home in Illinois, a humble citizen, unknown beyond his village borders; but now his name was inseparably connected with a great moral convulsion, world-wide in its influence, enduring as time in its results. The mighty conflict of ideas had swept round the globe like a tidal wave of the ocean. Industry had been quickened in every land, and new channels of trade opened among the nations. Wherever human language was spoken, men talked of the war between Slavery and Freedom, and aspirations for good were awakened in the hearts of toiling millions in Europe, on the burning sands of Africa, and in the jungles of Hindostan, to whom life was bare existence and the future ever hopeless.

a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln.

The four years of fighting were over; the Rebellion was subdued. On the first of April Lee had a large army, but suddenly he had been overwhelmed. That which seemed so formidable had disappeared like a bubble in the sunshine. Though the Rebels saw that the Confederacy was threatened as it had not been at any other period of the war, there were few, if any, who, up to the latest hour, dreamed that there could be such an overturning of affairs. That Lee had held his ground so long was a warranty that he could successfully resist all Grant's efforts to take Richmond. The Confederate Congress met daily in the capital, pa.s.sed resolutions, enacted laws, and debated questions of state, as if the Confederacy had a place among the nations, with centuries of prosperity and glory in prospect. But their performance came to an unexpected end. The last act of the tragedy was given on the 14th,-the a.s.sa.s.sination of the President.

What drama surpa.s.ses it in interest? What period of the world's history is more replete with great events affecting the welfare of the human race? In 1861, when the curtain rose, the world beheld a nation, peaceful, happy, prosperous. Then came the spectacle,-the procession of seceding States, with bugles sounding, colors flying, the bombardment of Sumter; the uprising of the people of the North, the drum-beat heard in every village, flags floating from all the steeples, streamers and banners from all the house-tops, great battles, defeat, and victory; a ploughman and splitter of rails the liberator of the enslaved, their enlistment as soldiers of the Republic; the patriotism of the people; woman's work of love and mercy; the ghastly scenes in Southern prisons, the conflagration of cities set on fire by the Rebels, the breaking up of the Confederacy, the a.s.sa.s.sination, the capture of the Rebel chief, the return of the victorious armies, the last grand military pageant at Washington, and then the retirement of the soldiers to peaceful life! Sublime the picture!

The conflict commenced as a rebellion, but ended in revolution. Slavery has disappeared. Civil liberty is stronger than in 1861. Four millions of freedmen are candidates for citizenship, who at the beginning of the Rebellion had no rights under the flag of the Union.

"Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves."

The Rebellion was an attempt to suppress Truth and Justice by tyranny. The effort might have been successful in earlier ages, but not in the nineteenth century, and never will the attempt be repeated on American soil, for the tendency of mind is towards a clearer perception of the rights of man. America uttered her protest against despotic power in 1776. "It was an experiment," said the aristocracies of Europe. The "republican bubble has burst," said Earl Russell in 1861; but the Republic lives, and the false and ign.o.ble distinctions in the society of the Old World, which slavery attempted to establish in the New, have been reversed. America teaches this truth to the wondering nations,-that the strongest government rests, not on the few, not on property, never on injustice, but on the people, on diffused wealth and enlightened mind, on obligation to man and G.o.d.

Kings will yet lay aside their sceptres, and subjects will become sovereigns, because the people of America, by example, have shown the world that civil and religious liberty for all, as well as for the few, is of more value than human life.

How lavish the expenditure of blood! How generous the outpouring of the wine of life by the heroic dead!

"Song of peace, nor battle's roar, Ne'er shall break their slumbers more; Death shall keep his solemn trust, 'Earth to earth, and dust to dust.'"

Dead, yet living. Their patriotism, sacrifice, endurance, patience, faith, and hope can never die. Loved and lamented, but immortal. Paeans for the living, dirges for the dead. Their work is done, not for an hour, a day, a year, but for all time; not for fame or ambition, but for the poor, the degraded, the oppressed of all lands, for civilization and Christianity, for the welfare of the human race through Time and Eternity!

Footnotes

1 McDowell's Order.

2 See "Days and Nights on the Battle-Field," p. 58.

3 Our G.o.d is a strong fortress.

4 "North America," by Anthony Trollope, Vol. II. p. 86.

5 North American Review, January, 1866, p. 189.

6 The accompanying ill.u.s.tration is an accurate representation drawn by Mr. Wand, who witnessed the battle. The battery in the foreground is north of the house of Mr. Roulet, near the centre of Sumner's line. French's and Richardson's divisions are seen in the middle of the picture, and the Rebels under D. H. Hill and Longstreet beyond.

7 Want of s.p.a.ce compels me to give only a sketch of the battle; but a full, circ.u.mstantial, and detailed account of the positions and movements of the two armies may be found in "Following the Flag," published by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields of Boston.

8 Pollard's Second Year of the War, p. 152.

9 Letter to Boston Journal, December 9, 1862.

10 Boker's "Crossing at Fredericksburg."

11 Richmond Examiner, December 15, 1862.

12 Lieutenant-Colonel Fizer's Report.

13 Jackson's Report.

14 Lee's Report.

15 General Meade's Testimony, Conduct of the War, Part I. p. 696.

16 See map accompanying General Franklin's reply to Report of Committee on Conduct of the War.

17 Testimony, Conduct of the War, Part I. p. 715.

18 Testimony of Meade and other officers, Conduct of the War.

19 General Howard's Address at Washington.

20 Letter to Richmond Examiner.

21 Richmond Examiner, May 1st 1863.

22 Howard's Report.

23 General Sickles's statement.