The report seemed credible to confederates because it confirmed the right over might. It would be written that Union Officers cheered for lee as he left the mclean house. A yankees dared not utter a single insulting word to the defeated rebels. Why were the yankees so reticent, even submissive, in victory . It is explained, they feared the lion even in chains. Lee, the lion, still commanding the deference and respect of northerners, and fear. In the year after the war confederates not only again and again invokes the overwhelming numbers interpretation of their defeat. They also invoked the appomattox terms, and particularly the remainundisturbed clause. They invoked in the clause as a shield against social change and a weapon in a looming battle over black civil rights. Republican efforts to give the free people a measure of inequality and opportunity and protection were met by confederate protests that such a radical agenda was a betrayal of the appomattox terms, the prospect of black citizenship as one virginia newspaper put it , molests and disturbs us. The North Carolina poet clark put it most physically. Urging southerners to model their behavior on that of lee she wrote in 1866 that lee had not stooped his grandly proud head one hairs breath as he surrendered to grant. She said, an honorable enemy should not desire. It is idle to attempt or force them to say they were wrong, for they were right. It will surprise you to know that from the start, this view of things, this emphasis on confederate righteousness and the illegitimacy of the yankee victory, this was resoundingly rejected by grant and his inner circle, and the vast majority of Union Soldiers and civilians. It was precisely an admission of wrongdoing and a change of heart that grant sought from his foes. Appomattox was not designed to exonerate confederates, but to assess repentance. He believed he could be versatile precisely because he rendered lee powerless and his cause discredited. It was right over wrong. Lees rhetoric of restoration held no charm for the union general. Restoration connoted a turning back of the clock. Grants eyes were fixed firmly on the future. He would not consider the rolling back. Repudiation of states rights emancipation of the slaves, and lets meant of black troops. Grant and list meant enlistment of black troops. Appomattox, in grants view, he held all the cards on april 9. He issued the parole passes to confederates not to patron view to courage, but to remind them of the obligations attendant upon their status of prisoners of war. Technically, that is what they were. Grant had released them on the promise of their good behavior. Grant felt a meaning of the surrender terms to be unmistakable. I will allude to what ron told us about his mandate for lincoln and the orders he was under to address military surrender, but not political issues. Grant would write, i never claimed the parole gave the prisoners any Political Rights whatever. I knew that was a matter entirely with congress, over which i had no control. In other words, the fraught political question of when and if the concord confederates would be permitted to vote or hold office these were questions to be settled in the civil round by politicians and elected officials. Grants convention of surrender by parole rested on military calculations. Grant felt certain on april 9 that his lenience to lee would forestall the possibility of guerrilla warfare and affect the swift surrender of the remaining Confederate Army in the field. This calculation was sound. The dominoes fell, and you will hear about other dominoes later today. More than anything, the surrender in grants eyes was a vindication, and that is his keyword, if you will. The triumphal of the just cause the cause of the union. In the eyes of grant and union it vindicated the founders belief in a perpetual union. It vindicated the capacity of citizen soldiers, representing democracy. Tout fight the conscripts and dupes of an autocratic society. Thats how Union Soldiers saw confederates. The downfall of the confederacy unburdened the south and the nation of slavery, and institution of orange to all civilized abhorrent to all civilized people. The way was open for the unions moral progress, and white southerners could be distant trawled from their subservience to the slaveholding class. Granted not believe lee is meant to be blameless. For every sin there must be a chance at atonement. Grants magnanimity was designed to affect that atonement. Union soldiers come up for their fall for their part, a their victory both to their superhuman effort and to divine providence. Thanks and praise to almighty god for the great thing he has done for us in saving our country, wrote a major of the 20th maine. He was expressing the widely shared conviction amid union troops that in the end providence and favor the righteous. Two Union Soldiers at appomattox, there seemed to be a satisfaction, in the moment of victory, they had lee nearly surrounded. How fitting it seemed that the defeated confederates world on the low ground well triumphant Union Soldiers lined they amphitheater sweeping around the town at appomattox. Strange providence was surely a work in the fact that the surrender terms were signed in the home of a man who had owned the house on the battleground of manassas. The first great victory of the confederates. The most during sign of divine favor with to be found in the providential timing of the surrender on palm sunday. It was the universal expression among the Union Soldiers that the surrender was a blessed sabbath work. Union soldiers embraced grants policy of magnanimity in their hour vindication because they believed that in so thoroughly defeating the rebels, the federal army had meted out sufficient punishment to the confederacy. Many Union Soldiers felt the confederates were so desperately beaten that they actually welcome to the surrender. There was evidence of this confederate desperation scrawled on the canvas covers of army wagons that were abandoned by the confederates along the line of retreat. One piece of confederate graffiti had read that we cant with you all without something to eat. Moreover, Union Soldiers reckoned that magnanimity was the best means to secure redemption and construction of the south, change hearts and minds. In the series of letters written in the immediate wake of the surrender, and other Army Chaplain took the measure of confederate defeat. He wrote the war rental rendered the south a charnel house. The south had suffered enough always left all that was left was to forgive and forget. He shared a few common among northern soldiers, a view that you lead slaveholders likely and the officer class had led astray the nonslaveholding common folk of the south. And they believed that the unions mission was to distant trawled these men, and that victorious northerners if animated by the spirit of forgiveness could lift up the south, ignorant and degraded poor whites and open up for them a Brighter Future for themselves and their children. As armstrong put it. General of the 67th ohio agreed, he wrote in his diary on april 15 that a show of kindness by the union would demonstrate that right not my to rules, and it was a superior moral character of the north and the commitment to Free Institution and personal enterprise that had won the war. In other words most northerners favored magnanimity, and believed it had important political work to do, if you will. And civilians joined in this embrace of grants policy of magnanimity. Among those northern civilians who embraced magnanimity were abolitionists and radical republicans, those who most wanted to see the south change. It was charged at the time here in the immediate aftermath of the surrender my confederates and buy some copperhead democrats in the north that abolitionists and radical republicans were aimed on vengeance. In the eyes of abolitionists such as Horace Greeley magnanimity was the means to an end, and means to achieve a sacred purpose, to secure the assent of the south to emancipation. Northerners, including many abolitionists saw grants magnanimity as an emblem of their own moral authority. The moral superiority even. That magnanimity approved that a civilization based on free labor is of a higher and more humane type than that based on slavery. Really favored grants magnanimous terms because come as he put it, i want as many rebels as possible to live to see the south rejuvenated and transformed by the influence of free labor. What fitter fate for the likes of Jefferson Davis and robert ely then to have to live in this brave new world and bear witness to a social revolution. In essence, northerners who embraced grants terms of said to the south, we dont want to inflict further punishments. We want you to change. And confederates responded that the demand for change with a form of punishment. Then any demand for change was inherently punitive and a breaking of a compact that had been made at appomattox. This contest over the surrenders meaning and simply pets the south against the north or even the confederacy against the union, it pitted those who favored a social transformation of the south against those who rejected social transformation. We have northerners and southerners on both sides of the question. Here is a theme of divisions within each side. Lincolns opponent in the north political opponents, the democrats that seemed to favor coming to the confederates, these democrats were loath for the party of lincoln to treat the surrender as a mandate. These nor the democrats rallied behind a confederate interpretation of appomattox. As the copperhead newspaper put it, southerners were equal to the north in valor and skills. The confederacy was subdued by overwhelming numbers, not by lincolns skill as a leader. But the south, too, was divided. White southern unions, a beleaguered minority who oppose confederacy during the war rallied behind grants interpretation, and reveled in the fat that in the fact that grant had brought lees army to heal. In the seed of a loyalist legislature pursuing reconstruction under lincolns percent plan, the announcement of lees surrender touched off days of hilarious rejoicing among the towns unionist. In union occupied nashville, tennessee, newly elected governor long the voice of the tennessee unionists, had marked the surrender by issuing a proclamation, setting aside may 4 as a day of thanksgiving prayer to almighty god. For the surrender at appomattox. In his capacity of editor of the unions paper in nashville, he rejoiced that the greatest army and general of the socalled confederacy had been defeated and scattered, made to surrender to grant upon grants own terms. But in the year after the surrender, this dominant union interpretation, with its emphasis on vindication of the norths way of war, vindication of free society, vindication of grants leadership, this dominant interpretation would come to interpretation the betrayal of the true spirit of grants magnanimity. We will see in the postwar period that political partisans will accuse their opponents of betraying the spirit of appomattox. In this case, for granted his followers, the arch betrayer of the truce in upham the true spirit of appomattox was andy johnson, lincoln successor. He comes to power after lincoln is assassinated, johnson very liberally pardons members of the x confederate elites, thousands of pardons to prominent confederates. Under johnsons reconstruction plan, state governments are handed back over to former confederates. They enact black codes, laws very close to the old laws of slavery. Designed to enforce white supremacy. These codes make it a crime for free blacks, free people to act insolence, quote unquote, to whites. They permit white judges to seize children of black families who might be politically active. They levy taxes on black property instituted vagrancy statutes that forced africanamericans to sign annual labor contracts with white employers, typically therefore masters. And this regime of surveillance and regulation passed under the johnson reconstruction was enforced in the south by an allwhite police and judiciary system and white patrollers, often former confederate veterans wearing still there gray uniforms. Under johnson, scores of former confederate officials, including the Vice President , six cabinet officers, for generals, and 58 members of the Confederate Congress were elected to office to serve in the 39th u. S. Congress, which would convene in december of 1865. Some of them yet hadnt been pardoned and needed to be pardoned by johnson. To take their seats. This resurgence of southern political power set the stage for a showdown with congress. The republican majority in congress refused to recognize the government to see these representatives, and congress began to elaborate its own plan for reconstruction, the centerpiece of which was the africanamerican voting. This drama, this recalcitrance on the part of the defeated south radicalized u. S. Grants. Granted not a radical republican by any means during the war. But he watched these developments with some disappointments and even horror. Grant would write that confronted with what he called the foolhardiness of the far too lenient andrew johnson, and the blindness of the southern people to their own interests, granted adapted, and gradually worked up to the point where i favored immediate is for africanamericans. It was a position he hadnt taken at the beginning of reconstruction. He saw this as politically necessary, that the only way that grant would argue to dispel the x confederates pretension that they would be able to control the nation again, and were entitled to do so. Heres the thing i found most surprising in my research, the discovery that most surprised me. It was the discovery that grant was deeply disappointed by an resentful of lees refusal to give the victors there do. In a may 1866 newspaper interview, this is little more than a year after the surrender grant took lead to task. He told the reporter he talked to that lee was behaving badly, setting an example, of forced acquiescence, grudging and pernicious as to be hardly realized. An example of forced acquiescence, the grudging and pernicious this effect is to be hardly realized. This image of a grand resentful of lee hardly accords with an image of a gentlemans agreement and a meeting of the minds. A healing moment that has come down to us as myth. Grant presented lee for denigrating the Union Victory as a mere show of force. He resented him for encouraging federate confederates to resist change in the name of restoration. He learned in the year after the war that he would need to enter the political arena to finish the work he had begun on april 9, 1865. I would like to turn out to the third interpretive frame here which talked a little bit about restoration, and vindication. I want to turn to the theme of liberation. No americans hoped more keenly or asserted more fervently that the surrender marked a new era then africanamericans. I will turn to them now. For them, the Union Victory vindicated the cause of black freedom and of racial justice. At appomattox, blacks had been both among the liberators and the liberated. The last clash of grant and lee at the end of this desperate chase across the Central Virginia countryside, weve heard about now from many angles, lees army had tried to break free of the federal trap only to find that its last escape route was blocked by black soldiers in blue. Six regiments of the United States colored troop with one other waiting in the wings. When they heard confirmation of lees capitulation, the black troops exultation new no bounds. They shouted, danced and saying, and embraced each other with exuberant joy. These black regimens at appomattox were an microcosm of black life in america. They included southerners, ex slaves trained to kentuckys cant now think. A Training Ground for troops recruited in the south. They included northern freed blacks trained at camp william penn. They included a group of fascinating individuals, men who would become great leaders in the postwar era, the renowned historian George Washington williams, the baptist editor william j simmons, who was a journalistic mentor to the antilynching crusade or idle wells, and they included these regimens a man, george edmonson, the descendent of the hemmings family for monticello. A fascinating story here in these regimens. For all of these soldiers, regardless of background, their presence on the battlefield was itself the culmination of a long struggle. The struggle dramatized in the movie glory. We know the federal army had initially turned away black volunteers, races ran very deep in the north area north of authorities claim that African American men did not possess the attributes of patriotism encourage and turned them away. Black troops have kept faith that the war was there golden moment. And when regiments finally got their chance to fight, they prove their mettle. The regiments at appomattox had seen considerable action. The eighth u. S. Ct for example survived a bloody initiation and the combat in florida of february, 1864. They joined in the grinding warfare of the Overland Campaign in virginia, and manned the trenches through the siege of petersburg. Entering that city in triumph when it fell in early april. Africanamerican soldiers were keenly aware that even after giving all of this proof of their courage, their march towards equality could still be turned back, so long as powerful confederate armies were still in the field. The confederate government view black Union Soldiers as so many rebellious slaves liable to be insulated executed captured. Black soldiers were aware also that many white northerners viewed their enlistment as a social experiment, testing the capacity of blacks for citizenship. And that many of those whites hoped and expected that the experiment would in the end, fail. Not surprisingly, given this context, black soldiers quickly seized on the Critical Role in lees surrender as a vindication. As william a of the 29th regiment put it in a may 1865 letter, we the colored soldiers have fairly won our rights by loyalty and bravery. Many of these fellow officers shared the c