Via Billy
A grave expression was on his face as he distractedly put on his gauntlets, mounted Traveller, and rode between the ranks of silent Union soldiers back to the final deployed lines of the Army of Northern Virginia. He had just rendered the nondescript crossroads of Appomattox Court House legendary.
In a fair snipe at contemporary authors, Lee’s own meticulous biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, said that, while he tried to understand and document Lee’s actions, he never presumed to know his subject’s thoughts. Neither should we. And yet…
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It isn’t that difficult to imagine some of them. As Lee guided Traveller back to the old army, his thoughts raced from what General Grant had just said, what the surrender terms had been, what he could say to his soldiers, the effect of the news upon the morale of the men, Mary back in Richmond, what his children would feel, his own precarious future as a Union prisoner, the war, its toll, the good men lost, the cause, the shame, the failure.
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