Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[27] was indeed always inclined to be more formal than the Northern general. The former enemies shook hands; Grant asked Lee to be seated, and presented Motley. The interview was short, and all that Grant could remember afterward was that they spoke of building railroads, and he said playfully to Lee:

‘You and I, General, have had more to do with destroying railroads than building them.’

But Lee refused to smile, or to recognize the raillery. He went on gravely with the conversation, and no other reference was made to the past. Lee soon arose, and the soldiers parted, not to meet again until their mighty shades saluted each other in that region where conquerors and conquered alike lay down their arms.

Scores of Southern officers besides Lee applied to Grant for protection, and literally hundreds of civilians who wished to avail themselves of the amnesty requested his favorable indorsement. It was my duty to examine these applications and lay them before him; and seldom indeed was one refused. General J. Kirby Smith, in command west of the Mississippi, did not surrender with the other armies in rebellion, and even when his forces yielded he fled to Mexico. But in a month or two he wrote to Grant, applying to be placed on the same footing with those who had surrendered earlier. Grant thereupon obtained the assurance of the President that if Smith would return and take the prescribed oath, he should be treated exactly as if he had surrendered and been paroled.

In September, 1865, Alexander Stephens, the VicePres-ident of the Southern Confederacy, appealed to General Grant in the following letter from Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, where he was imprisoned, asking for his release on parole or bail. This was soon afterward granted.