But his desertion, treason, inhumanity, and murders were offset by the plea that the North could afford to be magnanimous to a conquered foe! The soldiers idolized Grant as a commander. They had no objection to his terms with the privates of Lee's army, but there was dissent from including Pickett and Ewell, and other Rebel officers who had been notoriously inhuman to Union soldiers. The Rebel soldiers were generally humane towards prisoners, especially after the first year of the war. Many instances might be cited of their kindness to the wounded on the battle-field and to prisoners in their hands. The officers in the field were also kind, but the political leaders, the women, and officers in charge of prisons were cruel and vindictive. The hour came for Lee to part with his officers. He retained his calmness and composure, but they could not refrain from shedding tears. It was to be their last meeting. He was to lead them no more in battle. The occasion brought before them an acute sense that all was over, all lost; their sacrifices, sufferings, heroism, had been in vain; their pride was humbled; instead of being victors, they were vanquished; history and the impartial verdict of mankind perhaps would hold them responsible for the blood which had been shed. It was a sad hour to that body of men in gray, wearing the stars of a perished Confederacy. The intelligence of the capitulation was communicated to Grant's army by bulletin. As the news flew along the lines on that Sabbath morning, the cheering was prolonged and vociferous. For the first time in four years the veterans who had toiled in the mud of the Peninsula, who had been beaten back from Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, who had stood like a wall of adamant on the banks of the Antietam, and the heights of Gettysburg, who had pressed Lee from the Wilderness to Five Forks, who had brought him to bay at last, were to have a peaceful night. Their fighting was over, and there was to be no more charging of batteries; nor long watchings in the trenches, drenched by rains, parched by summer heat, or numbed by the frosts of winter; no more scenes of blood, of wasting away in hospitals, or murders and starvation in Rebel prisons. It was the hour of peace. In the radiant light of that Sabbath sun they could rejoice in the thought that they had once more a reunited country; that an abject people had been redeemed from slavery; that the honor of the nation had been vindicated; that the flag which traitors had trailed in the dust at the beginning of the conflict was more than ever the emblem of the world's best hopes. CHAPTER XXXIV. CONCLUSION. DAY was breaking on the 12th of April, when General Grant, accompanied by his staff, alighted from the cars at City Point, after a tedious night ride from Burkesville. He walked slowly up the steep bank to his head-quarters, not with the air of a conqueror, but as if sleep and rest would be far more acceptable than the congratulations of a noisy crowd. Four years had passed since he left his quiet home in Illinois, a humble citizen, unknown beyond his village borders; but now his name was inseparably connected with a great moral convulsion, world-wide in its influence, enduring as time in its results. The mighty conflict of ideas had swept round the globe like a tidal wave of the ocean. Industry had been quickened in every land, and new channels of trade opened among the nations. Wherever human language was spoken, men talked of the war between Slavery and Freedom, and aspirations for good were awakened in the hearts of toiling millions in Europe, on the burning sands of Africa, and in the jungles of Hindostan, to whom life was bare existence and the future ever hopeless. The four years of fighting were over; the Rebellion was subdued. On the first of April Lee had a large army, but suddenly he had been overwhelmed. That which seemed so formidable had disappeared like a bubble in the sunshine. Though the Rebels saw that the Confederacy was threatened as it had not been at any other period of the war, there were few, if any, who, up to the latest hour, dreamed that there could be such an overturning of affairs. That Lee had held his ground so long was a warranty that he could successfully resist all Grant's efforts to take Richmond. The Confederate Congress met daily in the capital, passed resolutions, enacted laws, and debated questions of state, as if the Confederacy had a place among the nations, with centuries of prosperity and glory in prospect. But their performance came to an unexpected end. The last act of the tragedy was given on the 14th,— the assassination of the President. What drama surpasses it in interest? What period of the world's history is more replete with great events affecting the welfare of the human race? In 1861, when the curtain rose, the world beheld a nation, peaceful, happy, prosperous. Then came the spectacle, - the procession of seceding States, with bugles sounding, colors flying, the bombardment of Sumter; the uprising of the people of the North, the drum-beat heard in every village, flags floating from all the steeples, streamers and banners from all the house-tops, great battles, defeat, and victory; a ploughman and splitter of rails the liberator of the enslaved, their enlistment as soldiers of the Republic; the patriotism of the people; woman's work of love and mercy; the ghastly scenes in Southern prisons, the conflagration of cities set on fire by the Rebels, the breaking up of the Confederacy, the assassination, the capture of the Rebel chief, the return of the victorious armies, the last grand military pageant at Washington, and then the retirement of the soldiers to peaceful life! Sublime the picture! The conflict commenced as a rebellion, but ended in revolution. Slavery has disappeared. Civil liberty is stronger than in 1861. Four millions of freedmen are candidates for citizenship, who at the beginning of the Rebellion had no rights under the flag of the Union. "Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves.” The Rebellion was an attempt to suppress Truth and Justice by tyranny. The effort might have been successful in earlier ages, but not in the nineteenth century, and never will the attempt be repeated on American soil, for the tendency of mind is towards a clearer perception of the rights of man. America uttered her protest against despotic power in 1776. "It was an experiment," said the aristocracies of Europe. The "republican bubble has burst," said Earl Russell in 1861; but the Republic lives, and the false and ignoble distinctions in the society of the Old World, which slavery attempted to establish in the New, have been reversed. America teaches this truth to the wondering nations, that the strongest government rests, not on the few, not on property, never on injustice, but on the people, on diffused wealth and enlightened mind, on obligation to man and God. Kings will yet lay aside their sceptres, and subjects will become sovereigns, because the people of America, by example, have shown the world that civil and religious liberty for all, as well as for the few, is of more value than human life. How lavish the expenditure of blood! How generous the outpouring of the wine of life by the heroic dead! "Song of peace, nor battle's roar, Ne'er shall break their slumbers more; Dead, yet living. Their patriotism, sacrifice, endurance, patience, faith, and hope can never die. Loved and lamented, but immortal. Pæans for the living, dirges for the dead. Their work is done, not for an hour, a day, a year, but for all time; not for fame or ambition, but for the poor, the degraded, the oppressed of all lands, for civilization and Christianity, for the welfare of the human race through Time and Eternity! THE END. Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. |