Thank you very much. It is a pleasure and honor to be here and share the stage with these wonderful scholars. Im grateful to Patrick Schroeder to having included me. So you have the surrender scene and i would like to turn to the surrender aftermath and the political debates spawned by appomattox and ill argue that lee and grant had distinct visions of what an honorable possess would look like and peace would look like and the two of the myths of the gentlemens meeting of the minds and they had fundamental visions of what an honorable peace would look like and why the war turned out the way it did. But i will try to take us beyond lee and grant as the appomattox drama unfolded the countrymen and women would crowd the scene and vest the surrender with their oesh as pir own aspirations and agendas and dreams and the dream in the eyes of africanamericans and soldiers and former slaves and lees surrender was a freedom day, the day that the moment the moment that the promise of emancipation was finally fulfilled. Lee vision of an honorable peace emphasized confederate precisiveness and the vindication, africanamerican would associate it with liberation. So ill talk about the three visions of the peace. And lets start first with the lee and the confederates. Lee and the men saw that even as the surrender took place in april 1965, to turn military defeat into morale victory. It was a victory of might over right and this interpretation of might over right was enshrined in his farewell address on april 10 drafted by his aid we his over sight and he says famously, the army of Northern Virginia was been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. Lee was implying unmistakablely in making this reference to overwhelming numbers and resources, both that the confederate men were blameless and also that the northern victory was illegitimate, the overwhelming numbers and resources was an argument about the outcome of the war, a staking of the claim that the yankees had won, not because of their virtue and skill and bravery but because of brute force and numbers and resources. Now in lees eyes, honorable peace would on literate what he considered the grief as effects of the war those were his words and restore to the country what it had lost. The civic virtue he had of the housy an days of the past of the founders and the republic of lees background and the founders from ron wilson. Those were the days, as lee saw it, when americans had taken it for granted that virginia would lead the nation. Those were the days as lee saw it before abolitionists had views africanamericans with false hopes and freedom and equality. And indeed the word restoration which he uses in letters with grant would become his political key word in the postwar period. We see it crop up again and again. For example, six months after the sur rend he he wrote to his friend mori about what had been and what might yet again be. He wrote quote as long as virtue was dominant in the republic, so long was the happiness of the people secure may an ever merciful god save us from reconstruction and restore us to the past. This was a fundamentally nostalgic view of the peace, nostalgic for the long gone days. Lee moved at appomattox to cast the surrender terms in the best possible light. He believed and those in his inner circle believed it was a negotiation in which he had extracted concessions from grant and they believed that the peace was contingent on the norths Good Behavior. Eager to help his troops against any possible reprisals of yankees, he requested a grant at appomattox on the meeting of horseback the day after the april 9 surrender that they be issued a printed certificate, paroles, that such a soldier came under the april 9 terms. The certificates vouched that if a surrendered confederate soldier went home and observed the laws where he resided, that he would remain undisturbed unquote. These were cherished artifacts of the war. They represented the consciousness of duty faithfully performed for the member there until the men there until the final days. But these also represented in the eyes of the confederates that the promise that the men would not be treated dishonorable by the yankees and lee intended to hold the union to that promise. A few weeks after the surrender on april 29 1865 lee gave an interview with a northern reporter with the New York Herald and he warned in interview and if, and im quoting him, if arbitrary or vindictive policies were adopted by the yankee government were breached they would renew the fight. Lee has a reputation in the modern day for having counseled resignation to defeat among southerners, accept the situation, but for the confederates, the postwar period, lee shows, lee was not a symbol of submission, he was a symbol of measured defiance. So ill say how southern soldiers observed the surrender and then the civilians. His righteousness bleed with the religious convictions of confederate soldiers. Many clung to the idea that god, however he might now chast ize his chosen people would some day deliver them. Such a conviction was the most comfortable answer to a pervasive question had all of the suffering been in vain. In his april 9 diary entry, William Wyatt asked has god forsake ebb us forsake ebb us saying i cant believe us. I believe he will yet grant unto us prosperity and honor. That night he noted that his men song the hymn god moves in mysterious ways. And theology was flexible enough to accommodate defeat for the confederates. Many believed god will approve victory in his own appointed way and time. And a second theme in the confederate soldiers was the resources claim was an argument about the size of the yankee army. In confederate eyes the yankee numbers have filled the ranks with foreigners of every nationality and regiments of our former slaves. And confederate soldiers believed they had been compelled to sur render to their social inferiors, well suited to the unions hard war tactics. In short confidents did not believe they had relinquished the moral high ground at appomattox. And if we look at the reactions of confederate civilians we see them echo the sentiments expressed by soldiers. Confederate civilians imagined the surrender scene, the very scene at the mclean house as an enactment of lees superiority to grant. A revealing of the report at the conference at the mcclain house sur rending through april of 1865 purporting to be accurate but not accurate at all, but lee offers grant his sword and grant refuses to take it and according to the account, grant turns to lee and says quote general lee, keep that sword, you have won it by your galantry. You have not been whipped and i cannot receive it as a token from a man. But of course grant never said such a thing to robert e. Lee but the report was credible because it confirmed the fight over right interpretation. Emma holmes would write of the surrender scene that Union Officers cheered for lee as he left the mclean house and the rank and file yankees dare not utter a single word to the rebels. Why were they so submissive in victory. She wrote they feared the lion in chains, still commanding the deference and respect of northerners and fear. In the year after the war, confederates not only again and guenin volked the overwhelming numbers interpretation of their defeat, they invoked the appomattox terms and particularly the remain undushed clause on the paroles an the pashes and they invoked it as a shield against social change and a in a weapon over black civil rights. Republican efforts to give the freed people a measure of quality and opportunity and reflection were met by confident protests that such a radical agenda was a betrayal of the appomattox terms and the prospect of black citizenship as one newspaper put it molests and disturbs us. The North Carolina poet Mary Bayer Clark put it most succinctly urging others to model on the behavior of lee she wrote in the summer of 1866, lee had not stooped his head one hairs breath since surrendering and she said more than this an honorable surrender should not desire them for feel they were wrong, for they were right. And that wont surprise you to know that this emphasis on confederate righteousness over the yankee this was rejected by u. S. Grant and his circle and the vast majority of Union Soldiers and civilians. It was precisely precisely an admission of wrongdoing and a change of heart that grant sought from his defeated foes. His mercy at appomattox was designed not to exonerate the confederates but to effect their repentance. Grant believed he could be merciful because he had rendered lee pourless and his cause discredited and it was a view of right over wrong not might over right. And again restoration con noted a turning back of the clock but grants eyes were mixed firmly on the future. Grant would not countenance the rolling back of the transformation the war had wrought, the consolidation of republican power and repudiation of the right and enlistment of black troops. Grant rejected the idea that he had in any sense negotiated with robert e. Lee at appomattox and in his view he grant, had all of the carts on april 9. He issued the parole passes to confederates not to pay tribute to the courage but to remind them to be paid on their status as tributes of war and issued on the promise of their Good Behavior and felt the terms to be unmistakeable and what ron told us about the mandate from lincoln and the orders to address military surrender and grant would write i never claimed this gave them any rights whatsoever that was entirely with congress over which i had no control. In other words the fraught political questions of when and if the conquered confederates would again be permitted to vote or hold office or property other than slaves restored to them, these were questioned to be settled in the civil realm by politicians and elected officials. Grants surrender by parole was rested on military calculation and grant felt certain on april 9 that his lien yens to lee for forestall the possibility of gorilla warfare and stop the swift surrender of the armies in the field. Once he capitulated the other dominos would fall and youll hear more about those dominos later on today. And in contrast to lees emphasis on restoration, the triumph of a just cause, family the cause of a union. In the eyes of grant and union men, the norths triumph vindicated the principle of rule by the majority and vindicated the founders belief in a union and vindicated the citizen soldiers representing democracy, to outfight the con scripts and dukes of an autocratic society. And the downfall of the confederacy unburdened the south in slavery and abhor ept to all civilized people. Now the way was open for the ethos of moral progress and the massive white southerners could be disen tlaled to the subservient class. They did not believe lees people to be blameless and grant thought for every sin there must be a chance at atonement and his mag anyone imity was designed to agreat that atonement. Union soldiers attributed their victory boerng to their superhuman effort as one soldier put it and to devine providence. Thanks and praise to almighty god in saving our country wrote elker expressing that in the union troops that in the end providence had favored the righteous. For appomattox there was something prove den shall in the physical setting. And many said at the moment of defeat they were massed on the low ground laid in a valley while the triumphant lined the hills around the town of appomattox. A strange prove difference was surely at work too as one Union Chaplain put in the fact the surrender terms were signed in the home of mclean about those who we heard owned on the battleground of manassas how wonderous the devine retribution wrote this army chaplain. The most stirring sign of devine favor was to be found in the prove den shall timing on palm sunday it. Was the expression that the surrender was a blessed sabbath sabbaths work. They embraced grants policy in their hour of vindication, because they believed that in so thoroughly defeating the rebels the army had meted out sufficient punishment to the confederates. They felt they were so desperately beaten they welcomed the surrender. Allen of massachusetts had seen evidence of this scrawled on the canvass covers of army wagons abandoned on the line of re treat. One piece of graffiti said we cant whip you all without something to eat. More over Union Soldiers reckoned that mag none imity was best to reduce the reconstruction of the south, to change the hearts and minds. In a series of letters to his wife mary in the immediate wake of the surrender hallic armstrong, another chaplain took the measure of defeat and wrote the war had rendered the south a charnal house and the south had suffered enough. All that was left was to forgive and forget. And armstrong shared a view very common among northern shoulders and an soldiers and a ten nabt of lincolns party that elite slave holders like lee and the officer class had led astray the nonslave Holding Common folk of the south and they believed ive alluded to this already, they believed the Union Mission was to disen tlal these men and victorious northerners could lift up the souths poor whites and open up for them a Brighter Future for themselves and their children as armstrong put it. Private major alvin morris of the 67th ohio agreed and wrote in his diary on april 13th that a show of kindness by the union would show that right not might rules and the superior moral character of the north and the commitment to free intertusion and enterprise that had won the war. In other words most of the northern favored mag none imity believed it had important work to do, if you will. And civilians joined in this embrace of grants policy of mag none imity and those who em graced the nag none imity were those that wanted to see the south changed. It was charged here at the time in the aftermath of the surrender by confederates and copper head democrats in the north that abolitionist radical republicans were intent on surrender but the evidence suggests a complex picture. In the eyes of the newspaper editor whoas greeley was the mean to an end to secure the asent of the south to emancipation. Northerns and abolitionists saw this as an emblem of their own moral authority and their moral superiority and that proves as he would write that a civilization based on the free labor is of a higher and more human type of that than based on slavery. Greeley favored grants terms because 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 in greeley eyes for the likes of Jefferson Davis and robert e. Lee than have to live in the brave new world and be witness to an unfolding social new revolution n. Essence, northerns said to the south, we dont want to inflict further punishments, we want you to change and confederates responded that any demand for change was a punishment and a breaking of a compact made at appomattox. And this contest over the surrenders meaning didnt simply pit 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 such a transformation and we have northerners and southerners on both sides of the questions. Here is a theme of divisions within each society. Lincolns opponents in the north and political opponents the democrats particularly and the peace democrats or copperheads who seemed during the war who favored coming to the negotiating table with the confederates and seeming independent, but they were loathe for lincolns party to create the sender as a vindication and to mandate and the northern democrats rallied behind the confederate interpretation of appomattox. As the copperhead newspaper, the new york world put it in their valor and endurance and marshall skill, southerners were equal to the north and the confederacy were subdued by overwhelming numbers and not by the virtue and daring of the northern soldiers. But the south too was divided. White southern unionists and opposed the confederacy rebelled that they had brought grant to heel. And in little rock pursuing reconstruction under lincolns 10 plan the announcement of lees surrender touched off days of hilarious rejoicing among the towns unionists. In nashville, tennessee, newly elected governor william g. Brown low had marked the surrender by issuing a proclamation set ago side may 47th as a day of thanksgiving prayer to almighty god for the surrender at appomattox and as editor of the knoxville rebel ventilator, a newspaper in nashville, he rejoiced that the confederacy had been defeated and scattered and made to surrender on grants own terms. But in the fwreer year after the surrender, this dominant interpretation with the emphasis on vindication of the norths way of war and free society and grants and lincolns leadership, this would come to incorporate an argument about the lost promise of appomattox. The betrayal of the true spirit of grants mag none imity. Well see that political partisans will accuse their opponents for betraying and those charges will fly back and forth. In this case for grant and his followers, the betrayer of the true spirit of appomattox was andy johnson, liefrpgs successor. Andy johnson comes to power after lincoln is assassinated and johnson pardons ex members of the confederate elite and thousands of pardons to confederates and state governments are handed back over to former confederates and they enact black codes and laws close to the old laws of slavery designed to enforce White Supremacy and these codes make it a crime for free people to actin sole ant to whites and permit white judges to seize any black children whose white parents dont meet approval and they levy taxes on black property and institute a past system and vagrancy that forced africanamerican to sipe annual labor contracts with white employer employers, typically former masters and this regime of surveillance and regulation passed under the reconstruction was enforced in the south by an all white police and judicial system and white patrollers often former confederate veterans wearing still their gray uniforms. Scores of officials including a cabinet and four 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 hadnt yet 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 recognition these representatives and congress began to elaborate its own plan for reconstructi