The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-04-09
SEN1-CENTENARY OF
 SURRENDER OF LEE TO
 GRANT AT REFORMATION

The few survivors of the once mighty host of. the Grand rrny of the Republic will celebrate Appomattox Day with unusual enthusiasm today, for this is the semi centennial of the surrender of Gen. Lee to Gen. Grant l Aat the little village of Appomattox Court House, Va. When the brilliant and able military chieftain of the to the leader of the armies of the 1 North on that April day fifty years ago the greatest war of modern times, save that now raging in Europe, was practically ended.
 In that bloody and terrible struggle between brothers of the same blood Grant had proved himself one Of the most brilliant soldiers of all time, but the military genius of the victor was scarcely superior to that of the van qufshed Lee. Grant proved his mag nanimity as well as his soldierlys quaI- ities on that historic day. He handed back Lees pronered sword, and told the Confederate soldiers to keep their horses. as they would need the ami n1als> in making a. crop. Lees first thought was for food for his ragged and half starved soldiers, and cen Grants first order to his orderly was that the hungry Confederates be fed The strictly military but magnani- nous terms offered by Grant went far to reconcile1 the gallant sons of the South to to their defeat.
 Grants military career, which reached its triumphant climax at Ap- pomattox half century ago today, had not been particularly brilliant prior to the civil war He was twenty first in a class of thirty-nine at West Point. He fought in the war against l Mexico--a struggle which he describ- ed in his Memoirs as s'one of the most unjust ever waged by stronger l against a weaker nation''
 When the North and South engag- ed in their death-strugg1e, Grant had retired from the army and was en- l gagged as a clerk at GaIena, III, at a | salary of $50 a month. Four years later to a day the obscure country l town clerk was the leader of a mil lion armed men and hailed as the greatest general of his time and one i of the greatest of all time,
 The Clover Hill of Appomattox. county. Virginia. where history was
 made fifty years ago today, is now a patriotic Mecca for the younger gen 1 eration of both sections of the rellnit- ed nation. Monuments mark the scenes of the momentous conflict
 which terminated the strife of four I bloody years.
 Grants career as the commander
 of all the Union forces commenced in March of 1864, and it took him just
 a little more than a year to fight his
 way to the final victory at Appomat- | tox. Slowly but surely he surrounded the Confederate armies with a gordon
 of blue On the second of April, 1865
 Richmond was evacuated, and Lee be- l gan a retreat toward Lynchburg
 When twenty miles east of that city
 the Confederate leader realized that I further fighting was but a waste of
 human life
 After Lees capftu1ation Gen. Grant
 returned immediately to Washington.
 arriving there on the following day.
 Four days later Lincoln was assas-
 sinated. Johnson procured the in Il dictrnent of Lee for treason, and
 Grant insisted that the paroles given
 by Lee and his men at Appomattox should be lived up to, and threatened
 to resign if full faith with the paroled
 was not observed.