The next morning he rode out beyond the Union lines toward Lee's headquarters, and Lee, perceiving who it was, rode out to meet him. They talked again, this time about the need for peace. Lee hoped that there would be no further sacrifice of life, but could not say; the South was a big country and time might pass before the war could be entirely ended; he could not foretell. Then Grant told him that his influence was greater than that of any other man in the Confederacy and said that if he should now advise surrendering all the armies, no doubt his counsel would be followed with alacrity. But Lee said that he could not do that without consulting Davis, and Grant knew that there would be no use in urging him to do what he did not think was right. So Lee went back again among his men, and shortly home to lay aside his uniform. Davis was even then in flight toward Texas, hoping to keep rebellion there alive; but he was caught in Georgia on the way.

Grant went to Washington at once. They would make much of him, but he would not be lionized. He talked with Lincoln, but declined an invitation to Ford's Theater, hurrying on to Burlington, New Jersey, where his children were at school. At Philadelphia he heard of Lincoln's murder and came back to be a tower of strength in the grief-stricken city. In Washington, a few days later, he received from

Sherman the news of Johnston's surrender, and learned the impossible terms which Sherman had innocently given, terms which invaded the province of politics and reconstruction, and which inflamed the North when Stanton made them public. Stanton's announcement conveying the information that Sherman had been disciplined, and carrying a sinister suggestion that the hero of the march through Georgia was implicated in a scheme to let Confederate officials get away with plunder from the Richmond banks, for a time made Sherman a target for the people's wrath. Grant was sent to Raleigh to cancel Sherman's terms and order the resumption of hostilities. Instead of superseding Sherman and humiliating him before a beaten enemy, he tactfully allowed him on his own initiative to reverse his course and to exact surrender on the terms Grant gave to Lee according to instructions from the powers in Washington, then stole away from Raleigh without letting any one but Sherman know that he was there.

Thus the war ended, a gentle spirit pervading the spent armies North and South, due in chief measure to the generosity of Grant, who shortly after received his army's salutations in the solemn pageant of the Grand Review crowned with the glory of his country's gratitude.

CHAPTER XXIII

A GENERAL WITHOUT HIS ARMY

AT the crest of his renown Grant found himself in Washington encumbered with high military rank, but shorn of power. The day he came from Appomattox he put himself to work curtailing the expense of war by canceling the orders for superfluous munitions and supplies. He set out also to disband the armies, so that in a little while he, who yesterday had headed half a million men, commanded a small force of regulars, in numbers hardly more imposing than Scott had handled just before the war. Congress in 1866 revived for him the grade of General, but did not couple with it new battalions or brigades. There was not much for him to do except to trim the ragged edges of rebellion by clearing up the stragglers in the South who were reluctant about laying down their arms. He was a stranger to the Capital, and had a limited acquaintance with public men.

He had brought with him several members of his staff; but there were hardly half a dozen men in Congress whom he knew except by name, and in the Cabinet, Stanton and Seward were the only two with whom he had been closely brought in touch.