Easter Greetings

[David Lockmiller]

(06-20-2020 11:31 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Richmond Circuit Judge Bradley B. Cavedo and General Robert E. Lee statue

The following are excerpts from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, at pages 731-32.

Good Friday, April 14, 1865, was surely one of Lincoln’s happiest days. . . .

At 11 a.m., Grant arrived at the White House to attend the regularly scheduled Friday cabinet meeting. He had hoped for word that Johnston’s army, the last substantial rebel force remaining, had surrendered to Sherman, but no news had yet arrived. Lincoln told Grant not to worry. [Note: Johnston followed the lead of General Lee; there would not be many years of guerilla warfare following the American Civil War. General Johnston signed the surrender of his army to General Sherman on April 26, 1865.]

[Lincoln] hoped that there would be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over.”

As for rebel leaders, Lincoln reiterated his resolve to perpetrate no further violence. “None need expect he would take any part in hanging or killing those men, even the worst of them.” While their continued presence on American soil might prove troublesome, he preferred to “frighten them out of the country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off.” To illustrate his point, he shook “his hands as if scaring sheep,” and said, “Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.”

Stanton later wrote that Lincoln seemed “more cheerful and happy” than at any previous cabinet meeting, thrilled by “the near prospect of firm and durable peace at home and abroad.”Throughout the discussion, Stanton recalled, Lincoln “spoke very kindly of General Lee and others of the Confederacy,” exhibiting in marked degree the kindness and humanity of his disposition, and the tender and forgiving spirit that so eminently distinguished him.”

Letter from General Robert E. Lee to President (Confederacy) Jefferson Davis

April 20, 1865

the end of this letter reads:

A partisan war may be continued, and hostilities protracted, causing individual suffering and the devastation of the country, but I see no prospect by that means of achieving a separate independence. It is for Your Excellency to decide, should you agree with me in opinion, what is proper to be done. To save useless effusion of blood [my own emphasis added], I would recommend measures be taken for suspension of hostilities and the restoration of peace.

I am with great respect, yr obdt svt
R. E. Lee
Genl