would therefore instruct the
officers I left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every
man of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule take the
animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this would have a happy
effect.

He then sat down and wrote out the following letter:--

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 9th, 1865.

GENERAL:--I received your letter of this date containing the
terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as
proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those
expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted.
I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the
stipulations into effect.

R. E. LEE,
General.

_Lieut.-General U. S. Grant._

While duplicates of the two letters were being made, the Union generals
present were severally presented to General Lee.

The much-talked-of surrendering of Lee's sword and my handing it back,
this and much more that has been said about it is the purest romance.
The word sword or side-arms was not mentioned by either of us until I
wrote it in the terms. There was no premeditation, and it did not occur
to me until the moment I wrote it down. If I had happened to omit it,
and General Lee had called my attention to it, I should have put it in
the terms, precisely as I acceded to the provision about the soldiers
retaining their horses.

General Lee, after all was completed and before taking his leave,
remarked that his army was in a very bad condition for want of food, and
that they were without forage; that his men had been living for some
days on parched corn exclusively, and that he would have to ask me for
rations and forage. I told him "Certainly," and asked for how many men
he wanted rations. His answer was "About twenty-five thousand"; and I
authorized him to send his own commissary and quartermaster to
Appomattox Station, two or three miles away, where he could have, out of
the trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted. As for forage, we
had ourselves depended almost entirely upon the country for that.

Generals Gibbon, Griffin, and Merritt were designated by me to carry
into effect the paroling of Lee's troops before they should start for
their homes,--General Lee leaving Generals Longstreet, Gordon, and
Pendleto