Robery E. Lee

A flag of truce was sent to General Grant requesting a suspension of hostilities for the arrangement of preliminaries of surrender. Then an order to cease firing passed along the lines.

This order, on being received by General Long, was sent by him, through Major South-all and other members of his staff, to the different batteries to direct them to discontinue firing. General Long then proceeded to the court-house. On reaching that point he discovered that the order had not been carried to a battery that occupied the hill immediately above the village, which continued to fire rapidly at an advancing line of Federal infantry. He at once rode in person to the battery and gave the order to the captain to cease firing and to withdraw his battery to a point east of the town, where the artillery was ordered to be parked. These were the last shots fired by the Army of Northern Virginia. . The artillery had been withdrawn from the heights, as above stated, and parked in the small valley east of the village, while the infantry, who were formed on the left, stacked arms and silently waited the result of the interview between the opposing commanders. The flag of truce was sent out from General Gordon's lines. Grant had not yet come up, and while waiting for his arrival General Lee seated himself upon some rails which Colonel Talcott of the Engineers had fixed at the foot of an apple-tree for his convenience. This tree was half a mile distant from the point where the meeting of Lee and Grant took place, yet wide-spread currency has been given to the story that the surrender took place under its shade, and "apple-tree" jewelry has been profusely distributed from the orchard in which it grew. About eleven o'clock General Lee, accompanied only by Colonel Marshall of his staff, proceeded to the village to meet General Grant, who had now arrived. The meeting between the two renowned generals took place at the house of a Mr. McLean at Appomattox Court-House, to which mansion, after exchanging courteous salutations, they repaired to settle the terms on which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia should be concluded. A conversation here took place which General Grant, as he himself tells us, led to various subjects divergent from the immediate purpose of the meeting, talking of old army matters and comparing recollections with General Lee. As he says, the conversation grew so pleasant that he almost forgot the object of the meeting. General Lee