Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 09.djvu/148

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We have determined to open this Department in our Papers, where brief comments, notes or queries, concerning men or events, may find a receptacle. We invite contributions from any who may have a question to ask, a brief note, or a pertinent comment, concerning any person or event in Colonial, Revolutionary, Civil, or Confederate History. We do not, of course, promise that we shall be able to answer all queries, or endorse or refute all notes that may be presented; but we will at least give others a chance at them, and will endeavor to make this Department one of interest and historic value.

"?" Poetry, Art, and Romance have combined to paint the "historic scene" of Lee tendering, and Grant magnanimously declining to receive, his sword at Appomattox Court-house; but nothing of the kind occurred.

We published in 1875 (in "Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of General R. E. Lee") General Lee's own account of the surrender, in which he said, with emphasis, that as he had determined from the beginning of negotiations that officers should retain their side-arms, he did not violate the terms by tendering General Grant his own sword. This, of course, settled the question, for the world long since learned to receive implicitly the lightest word of R. E. Lee.

But it has also been recently set at rest by the following correspondence which explains itself: