, 1886-07-17
GEN. GRANT AT APPoMATTox.



Terms of the urrender-Thc Command
er's Judgment-The 'side-Arms."
He had indeed long felt that when the
war was ended there should be no vim
dictive policy toward the ~vanquished,
and he informed Lee at once when they
met that he meant to accept paroles: but
the important final provision, that which
gives all its peculiar character to the cap
itulation, was unstudied and its language
spontaneous. Yet the language is as
precise as words can make it, and nun
ciates a policy which has done as much
as victory itself to secure the results of
the war: Each officer and man will be
allowed to return to his home, not to be
disturbed by the United States authority
so long as they observe their paroles and
the laws in force where they reside
The terms, however, were not in the
least the result of chance or carelessness,
or indifference. They were the legiti-
mate outgrowth of Grants judgment
the consequence OF all that had gone be-
fo~re-embodied then for the first time,
because then for the first time the neces-
sity for the embodiment had arrived.
In this way Grant always did his great
est thingg. 1t may be strange or mex
plicable, but he could not often explain
his methods, nor, indeed, always his rea-
sons.
He had at this moment no defined
large views about separating the mill
tary from the civil power, far less any
intent of encroaching on the domain or
prerogative of politics. Heidi not ven
like Sherman, take into consideration
the fate or condition of other forces of
the enemy, although he. was general-in-
chief; he confined himself strictly to the
business before him-the disbanding and
dispersion of Lees army. He wanted to
secure that neither that army nor any OF
its members could ever again resist or
confront the national authority; and
when this was determined he was IN
willing to infiict on one Of those men,
bers a single unnecessary humiliation or
suffering. He was, l am sure, uncon-
scious of any special magnanimity inthis
course. He thought nothing of himself,
and little as yet of the f~ar-reaching ef-
feet of his terms on the population of the
south. What his hand found to do, it
did, and no more; in peace as well as
war.
The confederation Of all this is the fact
that the idea of allowing the officers to
retain their side-arms and personal eff
fects was suggested to him as he wrote.
He wore no sword, having been sum-
moned hastily from his own headquar-
tiers two days before to a distant
portion of the field with no opportu-
nifty of returning afterward. Lee, how
ever, had dressed himself with
care for the ceremony. His headquar-
tiers train had been burned by Sheridan
in the pursuit, and Lee and his officers,
able to ave only a single suit of clothes,
had secured the finest. In this way Lee
was handsomely clad; he wore embroid-
cred gauntlets and the sword presented
to him by the ladies of Virginia. The
conqueror, battle-stained, in a common
soldiers coat, looked up at his foe, elabo-
rately arrayed, and the glitter Of the
rebel weapon suggested to him to spare
the conquered the humiliation of sur
rendering it. Then he wrote the line per-
hitting officers to retain their side-arms,
horses, and personal effects. This state
lhsiit has oeeh qucsliohcu, put 1 BiNo ~
on Gen. Grants authority. He saw and
corrected the account of the interview in
my history of his campaigns.
l stood zeal him as Leo left the room
and thus happened TO be the first to on
graduate hir. upon the result. / said
something about the event being one
that would live forever in history. / am
sure the idea had not occurred to him
until uttered it. The effect upon his
fame, upon history, ava not what he
was considering. He was thinking of
the captured soldiery returning home
without their weapons, to work their lit
tie farms; of a destitute country, ravaged
by war, but now to be restored.-Adam
Badeau's Letter.