Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/101

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records of the Adjutant-General's office give the same figures. The difference in number must consist in the killed and the "missing"

Meade's infantry was in our rear at Appomattox, over three miles from the Courthouse. His ordnance officers doubtless gathered from the trains which were nearest his troops all small arms found in the wagons which remained to us. In the short interval elapsing between the retreat and the hour when orders were given for it, the ordnance officers gathered up some muskets of the sick and wounded about Petersburg and put them in wagons which started with the trains; and after leaving Amelia many of the ex- hausted infantry, rather than abandon their arms, put them in the wagons. It is true that hundreds and hundreds of these wagons were captured or destroyed in the retreat at Sailor's Creek, Painesville and Farmville, but it is probable that a few of these wagons reached Appomattox, and, therefore, that some small arms were taken from the wagons there. Meade's corps had made large captures of men with arms in their hands when the Peters- burg lines were broken and at Five Forks and at Sailor's Creek. His ord- nance officers gleaned these battle-fields, and cared for the arms. His provost marshals, after his return from Appomattox, required citizens who had arms to turn them over. The aggregate of all the arms thus obtained was naturally reported by Meade's ordnance officers as surrendered to his army; and they as naturally included in the number of " cannon " not only field pieces taken at Appomattox and on the retreat, but heavy artillery on the part of the line captured by Meade's troops.

It is quite plain, therefore, that these reports of the ordnance officers, cited by Badeau, were intended to give the number of small arms and " cannon " which came into their hands between the 8th of April and the date of the making of these reports, without any reference to the particular place or the number at such place where the " cannon " and small arms were actually captured. In no other way can their truth be maintained or the large numbers of " cannon " and small arms reported captured ac- counted for. If there could be any doubt about this, General Grant himself makes it plain. In his Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 500, he speaks as a matter "of official record" of prisoners captured ''between March 29th and the date of surrender," and then says " the same record shows the number of can- non, including those at Appomattox, to have been 689, between the dates named." This is the exact numb'er of " cannon " included in those reports given in the official statement which Badeau relies on to wit : 263,251 and 175 total, 689.

All in all, these two reports of captured small arms, in view of the well- known facts referred to, go strongly to prove that the number of infantry surrendered, with arms in their hands, was as about as stated by Confederate writers, and, more important than all, by General Robert E. Lee himself.

Badeau, evidently much worried by this statement, assails it in another note, Volume III., page 607, He says Lee, when asked by Grant the