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April 12, 1865, near Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia

By: Achance (Diary)  |  April 12th, 2010 at 04:38 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

On April 9, 1865, the mortal remains of the Provisional Army of the Confederate States’ Army of Northern Virginia, Gen. R. E. Lee, commanding, battered itself in futility against the encircling Yankee troops under Gen. U. S. Grant.  When told by his subordinates that they could do no more with their weak and hungry force, Lee did what he would rather die a thousand times than do and sought terms.  He put on his best dress uniform and sword because he fully expected to be made both a prisoner and a spectacle.

A dirty and bedraggled U.S. Grant suffering from a migraine headache met Lee in Wilbur McLean’s parlor in the town of Appomattox Courthouse.  Grant offered far better terms than Lee expected from a man whose very initials had come to mean Unconditional Surrender.  The men were allowed to keep their personal possessions and horses and mules if they had them.  The officers would be allowed to keep their sidearms and walk or ride away with dignity.  Grant also provided rations to Lees starving army.  The details were worked out on the 10th and 11th.

On April 12th the Army of Northern Virginia made itself up as spit and polished as its bedraggled state would allow, formed ranks and marched to its end.  A few Yankees shouted and taunted at first but their officers put an end to it quickly and in order and in silence, the Army of Northern Virginia led by Georgian Gen. John Brown Gorden, still well-mounted, presented itself to the conquering Yankees.  Brown brought himself to the US commander, Chamberlain, I think, brought his horse to its knee and touched his toe with his sword, then surrendered the sword, which was returned to him.  The men in their ranks stacked their arms and surrendered their colors and The War in the East ended.  Johnson surrendered on April 26th, once commemorated in most of The South as Confederate Memorial Day.  The last Confederate field command, Stand Watie’s Cherokee Brigade didn’t surrrender until May.  The last Confederate flag was struck when the CSS Shenandoah surrendered its colors in Liverpool in November after evading the US and British fleets across the Pacific, around the Horn and through the Atlantic.  And then it was over.

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  • http://www.laborunionreport.comandhttp://www.laborunionreport.blogspot.com LaborUnionReport
    • Achance
  • danasdaddy

    Wilbur McLean’s kitchen in Manassas was destroyed by a shot in the First Battle of Bull Run. He wanted to “get out of the war,” so he moved to the relatively unknown town of Appomattox Courthouse. As mentioned, it was in McLean’s parlor that Lee surrendered to Grant some 4 years later.

    • Achance
  • donnybrooke

    Thanks, Achance. Not many remember this date anymore.

    “The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;?was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier’s salutation, from the “order arms” to the old “carry”?the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,?honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

    ? Joshua L. Chamberlain, Passing of the Armies, pp. 260-61

    • Achance

      The ghosts in the closet remember and they inform my mind.

    • qixlqatl

      I don’t suppose that kind of history will ever again be taught in the schools. (Not sure it ever was, tbh)

    • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

      Multiple times wounded, with many occasions for scores to settle, arguments to win, examples to make of, grudges to hold, humiliations to repay–but because he knew Him to whom vengeance belongs, it was all laid aside and replaced with a lifelong commitment to heal wounds deeper than his own. Would that there had been more like him in the years following.

      Or today.

      On both sides.

  • Section9

    Like Grant, Lee, and Longstreet, he understood the crying need to put the war behind the nation, and “bind up the nation’s wounds”.

    His service to the nation that day, the way he conducted the Pass in Review of the Army of Northern Virginia, is one of the towering moments of that war, and one of his great services to the cause of the Union.

    • Achance

      the rest of his life in constant pain from the wound he suffered at The Wilderness in May of ’64. He was elected governor of Maine four or five times and finally died of his wounds in 1914 at age 93. No doubt a great and good main.

      Contemporary observers didn’t give him and the action at the Little Round Top nearly the significance it has come to have with later writers, but there is no doubt that the action there caused delay and disorganization in Lee’s already too complex and late starting en eschelon attack. The time bought with blood by Chamberlains troops and others on Longstreet’s front gave the US time to move troops to blunt the attack at the copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge late in the day on July 2nd.

      My g/grandfather was on Cemetery Ridge as the sun was setting that fateful day. He took a .69 caliber ball in his left shoulder that shattered his shoulder blade. After Wright’s Brigade withdrew he was treated in a field hospital but since he had only a shoulder wound, he got to walk back to Virginia, fighting in Hill’s rear-guard action at Manassas Gap, where his brother was captured, along the way. He was finally admitted to Chimborazzo Hospital in Richmond on July 16th, two full weeks after he was wounded. He, too, died of his wounds in 1914, though he was twenty years younger than Chamberlain.

  • itrytobenice

    Thanks.

    • Achance
  • Doc Holliday

    Grant acted honorably. Lee acted as Washington. It was Lee, the man who was hamstrung by an idiot, micromanaging president, who chose on this day to bring the nation together and end the bloodshed. When his men said they could fight on as guerrillas, it was the great man who said it was time for peace, time to rebuild our nation.

    As Washington was tempted to be king and turned it down for the greater good, Lee was tempted to stave off defeat, but he knew it would be wrong. Even with Grant’s fair terms, Lee had no assurances that he would not be tried and hanged as a traitor. He was a man who always looked to do right, consequences be damned. His president on the other hand ran off.