defeat the enemy, but whether he can save his army. He determined
to abandon Richmond, and effect, if possible, a union with Johnstone,
who was again watching and checking Sherman.

Did space permit, it would be a noble task to chronicle the last
wonderful fight of the Lion of the South; how, with an exhausted and
continually diminishing army, he still proved how much he was to be
feared; how he turned on Sheridan and beat him, checked Grant and broke
away again only to find his path barred by another Union army.

At Appomattox Court House the end came. The lion was trapped and caught
at last. There was nothing for it but to make the best terms he could
for his men. The two generals met. Both rose to the nobility of the
occasion. Lee had never been anything but great, and Grant was never so
great again. The terms accorded to the vanquished were generous and
honourable to the utmost limit of the victor's authority. "This will
have the happiest effect on my people," said Lee, in shaking hands with
his conqueror. They talked a little of old times at West Point, where
they had studied together, and parted. Lee rode away to his men and
addressed them: "We have fought through this war together. I did my best
for you." With these few words, worth the whole two volumes of Jefferson
Davis's rather tiresome apologetics, one of the purest, bravest, and
most chivalrous figures among those who have followed the noble
profession of arms rides out of history.

CHAPTER X

"THE BLACK TERROR"

The surrender of Lee and his army was not actually the end of the war.
The army of General Johnstone and some smaller Confederate forces were
still in being; but their suppression seemed clearly only a matter of
time, and all men's eyes were already turned to the problem of
reconstruction, and on no man did the urgency of that problem press more
ominously than on the President.

Slavery was dead. This was already admitted in the South as well as in
the North. Had the Confederacy, by some miracle, achieved its
independence during the last year of the war, it is extremely unlikely
that Slavery would have endured within its borders. This was the
publicly expressed opinion of Jefferson Davis even before the adoption
of Lee's policy of recruiting slaves and liberating them on enlistment
had completed the work which the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln
had begun. Before the war wa