By Stephen Smoot

GENERAL R. E. LEE Commanding C. S. A.

The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

U. S. GRANT Lieut. – General. Genl, 7 April ’65

I have rec’d your note of this date. Though not entertaining the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of N. Va. – I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, & therefore before Considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on Condition of its Surrender.”

Very respy your obt. Servt R. E. Lee Genl.

Two of the greatest and most honorable of Americans just a few weeks over 160 years ago thus endeavored to join each other at a table and write up terms that both understood would end America’s bloodiest conflict.

Starting a war is all too easy and ending one much more difficult. But ending a war with an eye to establishing the peace that must come next, that requires the man to rise above what he has seen, heard, and experienced in the war, putting aside any personal feelings in favor of the larger goal.

Moreover, both men also understood God’s Word on war. Lee was a lifelong and devout worshipper in the Presbyterian version of the Christian faith. Grant’s personal faith was quiet and reflective, praying privately and rarely attending services.

This exchange took place after a year a year where, under the orders of Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman made Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina taste the meaning of “scorched earth” and “Little” Phil Sheridan turned the lush Shenandoah Valley into a howling wilderness, both areas barren of food or the means to produce it.

Constant battles had also transformed the Northern Neck of Virginia into a virtual no man’s land.

The Easter holiday, along with services, would come a week after Grant issued the letter. Perhaps both men thought of David’s words, saying “He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Either way, the two men understood that the time for peace had come.

Grant later wrote that the ember of defiance remaining in Lee’s communication “was not satisfactory, but I regarded it as deserving another letter.” The commanding general of all United States armies knew that only those who combined the, in the 1865 Confederate States anyway, qualities of loyalty and ability to continue kept their rifles shouldered.

And there were darned few of those left. Most of them were experiencing some level of starvation to keep to their duty. Conversely, Sheridan’s growing force was streaming south and all too eager to jump into what all knew, if it came, would be the final fight of the legendary Army of Northern Virginia and her beloved commander.

Early in the war, Grant briefly emerged as a media darling. His forces closed in on and surrounded Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, two positions that gave their owner an important strategic position on the waterways of west Tennessee and Kentucky.

Once in an unassailable position, Grant informed the commanders, Simon Bolivar Buckner and Nathan Bedford Forrest, that “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.”

Buckner spat back that Grant was “no gentleman” and promptly surrendered to both Federal forces and reality. Ever since, “Unconditional Surrender” Grant defined to the mass American public a meaning of victory that it could celebrate and easily understand, an issue that bedevils American military and foreign policy makers to this day.

At Appomattox, the quiet and humble man influenced by Methodism came to speak with Lee instead of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, to the irritation of many on the home front who felt the Confederates deserved a reckoning of a final destructive battle or imprisonment, not a quiet walk or ride home.

At this point, days before the end of its existence, Lee had one hope left. George Washington had planned, had the British prevailed, to take the Continental Army and militia groups into what was in 1865 known by the Union as West Virginia. In the Appalachians, such a group could extend the war almost indefinitely, using geography as a citadel.

Lee hoped to connect with Joe Johnston’s thinning and virtually unarmed forces at Danville and go to the mountains. Areas such as Pendleton, Pocahontas, Hardy, or Greenbrier County would likely have welcomed and assisted them.

Remarkably, Lee’s last resort plan in 1865 was practically identical to John Brown’s, should his 1859 raid have succeeded.

On Palm Sunday, April 9, Lee’s forces maneuvered to ascertain any opportunity to escape. None existed.

Lee’s final battle lay with himself. He said in response to one in a series of increasingly bleak reports “there is nothing left me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

One of his men, quoted in Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Lee, asked what history would think of a surrender. “I know they will say hard things of us,” replied the commanding general, who added “They will not understand how we were overwhelmed by numbers. But that is not the question, Colonel. The question is, is it right to surrender this army. If it is right, then I will take all the responsibility.”

Shortly after, gripped by fears of a Federal occupation of the South, Lee said “how easily I could be free of this and be at rest . . . (but) what will become of the women and children of the South if we are not here to protect them?”

The spectre of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, more than the commanding officer who had them in his grip, kindled fear in the hearts of the Confederates. In one of his final meetings with his officers, Lee listened as General Edward Porter Alexander sketched out the likely miserable end of the Army, should it escape.

He explained that younger men would adopt the war habits of partisans, living off the land and people until hunted down and killed. Older officers, not fit for such a life, would be “to go to General Grant and surrender myself and take the consequences of my acts.”

Lee resigned himself to placing the ultimate faith in the mercies of his enemy, saying “I can tell you one thing for your comfort. Grant will not demand an unconditional surrender. He will give us as good of terms as the Army has a right to demand.”

And Grant did not lack for human feelings for the man who had served as his prime adversary. He wrote in his memoirs about regarding Lee at the peace table, saying “what General Lee’s feelings were, I did not know. As he was a man of such dignity, with an impassable face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result and was too manly to show it.”

Lee, judging from his own words to his staff, felt both ways all at once.

Grant’s basic humanity set the tone, not only for peace negotiations, but also for truly restoring the Union. Many, especially those who did not fight, wanted to treat the Confederate States as defeated and conquered provinces. President Abraham Lincoln and General Grant preferred to treat them as wayward Americans, despite the cause of the Confederacy, as Grant described it “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

Grant also remembered decades later that “my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of the letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who fought so long and so valiantly, and had suffered so much.”

And that reluctance to impose even a sliver of unnecessary pain on the defeated guided Grant’s conduct in the negotiations. Grant refused to seize the side arms, baggage, or private mounts of the officers.

Not long after, Lee gently pointed out that the terms of surrender did not allow soldiers to take their horses home with them. Many had brought their own from home. While Grant noted that Lee was correct in saying that, Grant informed that he would instruct his officers to allow the soldiers to take their horses or mules back to their “little farms.”

“This will have the best possible effect on the men,” Lee noted, then added “it will be very gratifying and will do much toward conciliating our people.”

Little kindnesses from the victors helped somewhat. President Lincoln declared that the Confederate anthem “Dixie” was one of the best songs he had ever heard. Years later, while President, Grant appointed Lee’s late-war right hand James Longstreet to a federal job when he fell on hard times.

Their influence also served to cool the fires of war in the soldiers themselves. By the end of the Biblically allotted lifespan of most of the younger soldiers who fought, reunions and even re-enactments brought together men from both the blue and the gray.

The shared experience of battle, even against each other, forged a respect from the highest ranking officers to many of the lowest ranked in both armies.

Now why is this story shrouded by the fog of history important 160 years and two weeks later?

Because men who fired at and killed each other, captured each other, who experienced one side imposing the ravages of modern war on the other without mercy, and who sacrificed so much figured out how to treat each other with civility, respect, and, in some cases, even admiration. They had warmer feelings in regards to each other than those on opposing sides of elections today.

Lee and Grant understood how to separate the humans from their cause, to admire grace, courage, and virtue, even in an opponent, and to see the other in a different light than merely their own. They knew that the United States as it existed from 1865 forward would continually need grace extended from different parts of the Republic to the other – if that Republic was to survive.

Those who let their lives be consumed by political battles should take a page from two of America’s greatest, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.