Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/98

 90 Southern Historical Society Papers.

with arms, with an average of seventy-five rounds of ammunition per man." The wonder, under all the circumstances, is not that he had so few, but that he had so many muskets in line.

remarks, if the statement is true many of the infantry must have thrown away their muskets after the surrender became known. If documentary evidence existed as to the number of men surrendered with arms in their hands at Appomattox, a writer of Humphreys' ability and great research, who had the aid of the War Department in making his investigation, would surely have found the evidence and cited it.
 * Humphreys does not deny the statement or attempt to refute it. He

Publications as to the number of armed men Lee surrendered, as will be seen from the extract below, had come to General Grant's attention. He does not attempt to refute or deny them. He says: "When Lee finally surrendered at Appcmattox there were only 28,356 officers and men left to be paroled, and many of these were without arms. It was probably this latter fact [that many were without arms] which gave rise to the statement sometimes made, North and South, that Lee surrendered a smaller number of men than what the official figures show." Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 500.

Badeau, however, attempts to be equal to the emergency. In a note of singular venom and malignity for a soldier writing fifteen years after the close of the war, he says :

" Every rebel who has written about Appomattox, declares that only 8,000 of those who surrendered bore arms a statement which would not be creditable to them if true. But as every rebel who was at Appomattox was himself a prisoner, the assertion is worthless. The fact is that 22,633 small arms were surrendered ; and Lee did not carry many extra muskets around on wagons during the retreat from Petersburg." Vol. Ill, p. 624.

One would infer from this paragraph that there were official reports showing the number of small arms surrendered at Appomattox. If any such exist they have not yet been found, and the documentary evidence to which Badeau refers, so far from disputing the Confederate statements, tends strongly to confirm them. Badeau, Vol. Ill, p. 714 of his work, pub- lishes the following :

" STATEMENT OF CANNON AND SMALL ARMS SURRENDERED TO THE UNITED- STATES FROM APRIL 8TH T.J DECEMBER 3OTH, 1865.

April ii, 1865, Army of the James Cannon, 263; small arms, 11,000. Lee's army.

May 31, 1865, Army of the Potomac Cannon, 251; small arms, 22,633. Lee's army.

[Here follow other places outside Virginia.]

The records of the ordnance office do not show from what General the surrendered arms, etc., were received, except in the case of Johnston's