"The Following Correspondence which Took Place".
- Creator(s):
- Grant, Ulysses S.; Lee, Robert E.
- Title:
- "The Following Correspondence which Took Place".
- Description:
- In his second inaugural address (March 4, 1865), President Lincoln condemned slavery as theft of labor and more directly than ever before invoked the brutality inflicted during more than 250 years of slavery. Acknowledging the sins of “American Slavery,” he raised the question of what was due to those who had been enslaved—without providing an answer. Meanwhile, the war continued. In Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln finally found a military leader with an aggressive instinct to match his own. The president grew to trust his top commander’s decisions, despite the resulting increase in casualties. The brutal Overland Campaign forced the Confederates to abandon Richmond, their capital, on April 3, 1865. Confederate General Lee’s army surrendered a hundred miles west in Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865. The above Union battlefield printing published the letters exchanged between Lee and Grant discussing the surrender. In them, Grant exhorts Lee to avoid “any further effusion of blood.”
- Source:
- Photograph by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.
- Citation:
- Grant, Ulysses S.; Lee, Robert E. "The Following Correspondence which Took Place". Winchester (VA): Head Quarters Middle Military Division, 1865.