ty years after the war, and their
greeting of each other was a memorable one.

CHAPTER XXIX

APPOMATTOX

Another night was now at hand, and while it might be supposed that
nothing could be added to intensify the suspense there certainly was
nothing to allay it. Although there was little left to destroy, we
passed heaps of burning papers, abandoned wagons, etc., along the
roadsides.

As each new scene or condition in our lives gives rise to some new and
corresponding feeling or emotion, our environment at this time was such
as to evoke sensations of dread and apprehension hitherto unknown.
Moving parallel with us, and extending its folds like some huge reptile,
was an army equipped with the best the world could afford--three-fold
greater in numbers than our own--which in four years had never succeeded
in defeating us in a general battle, but which we had repeatedly routed
and driven to cover. Impatient of delay in effecting our overthrow in
battle, in order to starve us out, marauding bands had scoured the
country, leaving ashes and desolation in their wake.

That now their opportunity to pay up old scores had come, we fully
realized, and anticipated with dread the day of reckoning. General
Grant, who was Commander-in-Chief of all the Federal armies, and at
present personally in command of the army about us, was by no means
regarded as a man of mercy. He had positively refused to exchange
prisoners, thousands of whom on both sides were languishing and dying in
the hands of their captors. It should be borne in mind, in this
connection, that the offers to exchange had come from the Confederate
authorities, and for the last two years of the war had been invariably
rejected by the Federal Government. In the campaign beginning in May,
1864, and ending with the evacuation of Richmond, Grant's army had
sustained a loss greater in number than that of the whole army opposed
to him.

Among the ranks were foreigners of every nationality. I had seen, as
prisoners in our hands, a whole brigade of Germans who could not speak a
word of English. During the preceding winter we had been confronted with
regiments of our former slaves. Our homes and people we were leaving
behind to the mercy of these hordes, as if forever.

Another and by no means unimportant consideration was whether to remain
and meet results with the command, or for each man to shift for himself.
Setting out from Richmond on the preceding Sunday, with no