For generations, Americans learned the same basic story about the end of the Civil War. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va. In a sublime moment of selflessness, the two great leaders nobly transcended their differences and chose the path of peace and reconciliation. Grant paid homage to Confederate courage by setting lenient surrender terms, which let the defeated rebels go home unpunished. In a reciprocal show of respect, Lee handed over his ceremonial sword to Grant, only to have his counterpart return it. The two men effectively ended the war and set the stage for America’s rise as a world power.
This story, however, was never true. Instead, it originated in 19th-century Americans’ yearning for a swift reunion, which could sweep away the unresolved issues of the war. The story served as a resolution to help prove that America was unique and not destined to experience the interminable rivalries and miseries of the Old World.
But politically, Appomattox settled nothing. Rather than a time of reconciliation, Lee’s surrender was a moment in which a wide range of Americans, including both generals, staked rival political claims.
Neither Grant nor Lee arrived at Appomattox expecting to heal, in one grand gesture, the fractured country. Both men were fierce warriors, deeply committed to their respective causes. Far from proposing lenient surrender terms to exonerate the Confederates, Grant did so in an effort to change their hearts and minds. He regarded the Union victory as one of right over wrong and wanted to secure Confederate repentance and compliance. The story that he handed back Lee’s sword was “the purest romance,” as Grant later wrote in his memoirs.
Grant and his army believed that their victory vindicated the superiority of a free labor society over a slave labor society. African American Union regiments, which consisted mostly of men who had escaped slavery, felt their patriotic sacrifices had earned them the full rights of citizenship, including the right to vote. As William McCoslin of the 29th Regiment USCT put it in a May 1865 letter, “We the colored soldiers, have fairly won our rights by loyalty and bravery. ...shall we obtain them? If they are refused now, we shall demand them!”
Confederates, by contrast, recoiled from both of these ideas and had little interest in repentance. Instead, Lee tried to claim the moral high ground, asserting that the Union victory was one of might over right. The goal was to deny the victors a mandate to govern the vanquished.