"
General Grant says in his "Memoirs" that up to the moment when he put
pen to paper he had not thought of a word that he should write. The
terms he had verbally proposed were soon put in writing, and there he
might have stopped. But as he wrote a feeling of sympathy for his
gallant antagonist came over him, and he added the extremely liberal
terms with which his letter closed. The sight of Lee's fine sword
suggested the paragraph allowing officers to retain their side-arms; and
he ended with a phrase he evidently had not thought of, and for which he
had no authority, which practically pardoned and amnestied every man in
Lee's army--a thing he had refused to consider the day before, and which
had been expressly forbidden him in the President's order of March 3.
Yet so great was the joy over the crowning victory, and so deep the
gratitude of the government and people to Grant and his heroic army,
that his terms were accepted as he wrote them, and his exercise of the
Executive prerogative of pardon entirely overlooked. It must be noticed
here, however, that a few days later it led the greatest of Grant's
generals into a serious error.
Lee must have read the memorandum with as much surprise as
gratification. He suggested and gained another important
concession--that those of the cavalry and artillery who owned their own
horses should be allowed to take them home to put in their crops; and
wrote a brief reply accepting the terms.
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