army, cut off from their supplies, slowly but
surely began to starve behind their impregnable breastworks. Sherman's
march to the sea and through the Carolinas was merely a torchlight
parade. The fighting was done.

When Lee's emaciated men, living on a handful of parched corn a day,
staggered out of their trenches in the spring and tried to join
Johnston's army they marched a few miles to Appomattox, dropping from
exhaustion, and surrendered.

When the news of this tremendous event reached Washington, the Cabinet
was in session. Led by the President, in silence and tears, they fell on
their knees in a prayer of solemn thanks to Almighty God.

General Grant won the gratitude of the South by his generous treatment
of Lee and his ragged men. He had received instructions from the loving
heart in the White House.

Long before the surrender in April, 1865, the end was sure. The
President knowing this, proposed to his Cabinet to give the South four
hundred millions of dollars, the cost of the war for a hundred days, in
payment for their slaves, if they would lay down their arms at once. His
ministers unanimously voted against his offer and he sadly withdrew it.
Among all his councillors there was not one whose soul was big enough to
understand the far-seeing wisdom of his generous plan. He would heal at
once one of the Nation's ugliest wounds by soothing the bitterness of
defeat. He knew that despair would send the older men of the South to
their graves.

Edmund Ruffin, who had fired the first shot against Sumter and returned
to his Virginia farm when his State seceded, was a type of these ruined,
desperate men. On the day that Lee surrendered he placed the muzzle of
his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger with his foot, and blew his own
head into fragments.

When Senator Winter demanded proscription and vengeance against the
leaders of the Confederacy, the President shook his head:

"No--let down the bars--let them all go--scare them off!"

He threw up his big hands in a vivid gesture as if he were shooing a
flock of troublesome sheep out of his garden.

"Triumphant now, you will receive our enemies with open arms?" the
Senator sneered.

"Enemies? There are no such things. The Southern States have never
really been out of the Union. Their Acts of Secession were null and
void. They know now that the issue is forever settled. The restored
Union will be a real one. The Southern people at heart are law-abiding.
It