The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1915-05-25

event. One Of them is the fact that
Grants soldiers and Lees soldiers be-
gan to fraternize as soon as possible
after the surrender.
For nearly four years they had
made it their business to kill, MAIN
and capture as many as possible of
each other
Look at them now, at Appomattox,
at the end of the awful struggle. The
one dining and trying to minimize the
embarrassment and humiliation of the
other.
They had marched thousands of
miles hunting for Or trying to get away
from each other-they had met on
the plains of Bull Run, at Antietam,
Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, Get
tysburg, in the Wilderness, at Spott-
sylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg
and on score or more of other
battlefelds, and there they were at
Appomattox, On friendly terms, re-
specting each other, the Yankee with
the delight he did not try to express
| lest he wound his brother in a diff
ferent uniform, and tn D Johnny in the
gloom of defeat, but making the best
| of it, and his fellow soldier in blue
helping him to make the best of it.
Here is another happening at APP
pomattox which it is well for US to
remember-for all classes: The broad
humanity and timely generosity ex-
hibited by our silent but great brave
old leader, Grant He who had been
by far the most successful of the
Union commanders, who had inflicted
the severest blows the Confederacy
had received, and had won the Unions
browning victory by compelling the
| surrender of the South's best general
and its most powerful army, showed
! himself to be statesman Of unusual
| wisdom and penetration, and at the
same time man of great heart-the
very best type of manhood. l do
not feel that l can do justice to the
| painting, hence recall an interview
| Chaplain George w Pepper had with
| General Lee in 1865, in which the Con-
federate commander pictured the old
/ commander who died on Mount Nc
| Gregor in 1885 in way that touches
the hearts Of all who served under
Grant. The chaplain said:
! Lee adYerted to the character of
Grant, of whom he spoke at length
| in the most enthusiastic terms. He
ascribed to him the possession of the
| grandest attributes of American man.
| hood and said that he possessed the
military talents requisite for the or
| ganization of armies. In the generous
| terms accorded to the impoverished
South, of which he spoke several
times, Grant had won for himself i'm
perishable renown.
| at WISH said Lee, to do simple
| justice to General Grant, when ] say
that his action toward my army is
without parallel in the annals of ma
tons. When my poor soldiers, with
famished faces, having neither food
nor raiment, hungry and footsore, came
before him in the hour of surrender,
i it was then that General Grant i'm
mediately issued the humane order
that 10000 rations should be given
them. And that was not all. 1 was
giving orders to one of my subordi-
nate officers, who was making out the
! list of things to be surrendered.
told him to include the horses. At
that very moment General Grant, who
seemed to be paying no attention to
what was going on. quickly rose from
the camp stool and said: mo, no,
| General Lee, no surrender of horses
| Not one, not one. Keep them all.
Your poor people will need them for
the spring crops" 1t was a scene
never to be forgotten
'tAs Lee spoke he paced the room,
and with tears streaming down his
cheeks repeated two or three times
the incident of the surrender
81 asked him whom he thought to
be the greatest of federal soldiers. IN
/ deed, sir, judged by Napoleon's test Of
who did that?" General Grant is the
greatest of living American or Euro
pean soldi1rs.'
Nearly twenty years ago, in story
for the Chicago Times-Herald, l ex-
pressed the hope that some day there
I would be a peace monument at Apo
| mattox with four figures suitably dis
| played, those of General Grant and
General Lee, and a soldier in blue and
another in gray; and / hope the ma
ton will not wait nearly one hundred
years, as in the case of Yorktown,
where another war ended.