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At the dedication of the Mausoleum erected at Riverside Park, New York, in memory of General Grant, Colonel Charles Marshall, who had been Chief of Staff to General Lee, the Confederate commander, was the orator. In the course of his address he said,—

“When General Grant first opened the correspondence with General Lee which led to the meeting at Appomattox, General Lee proposed to give a wide scope to the subject to be treated of between him and General Grant, and to discuss with the latter the terms of a general pacification.

“General Grant declined to consider anything except the surrender of General Lee’s army, assigning as a reason for his refusal his want of authority to deal with political matters, or any other than those pertaining to his position as the commander of the army. The day after the meeting at McLain’s house, at which the terms of surrender were agreed upon, another interview took place between Grant and Lee, upon the invitation of General Grant, and when General Lee returned from that meeting he repeated, in the presence of several of his staff, the substance of the conversation, in one part of which, you will see, as we all did, the feeling that controlled the actions of General Grant at that critical period.

“The conversation turned on the subject of a general peace, as to which General Grant had already declared the want of power to treat, but, in speaking of the means by which a general pacification might be effected, General Grant said to General Lee, with great emphasis and strong feeling: ‘General Lee, I want this war to end without the shedding of another drop of American blood’—not Northern blood, not Southern blood, but ‘American blood’—for in his eyes all the men around him, and those who might be then confronting each other on other fields over the wide area of war, were ‘Americans.’

“These words made a great impression upon all who heard them, as they did upon General Lee, who told us, with no little emotion, that he took occasion to express to General Grant his appreciation of the noble and generous sentiments uttered by him, and assured him that he would render all the assistance in his power to bring about the restoration of peace and good-will without shedding another drop of ‘American blood.’ This ‘American blood,’ sacred in the eyes of both these great American soldiers, flows in the veins of all of us, and let it be sacred in our eyes also, henceforth and forever, ready to be poured without stint as a libation upon the altar of our common country, never to be shed again in fratricidal war.

“It is in the light of this noble thought of General Grant that I have always considered the course pursued by him at the moment of his supreme triumph at Appomattox, and, seen in that light, nothing could be grander, nobler, more magnanimous, nor more patriotic than his conduct on that occasion.

“Look at the state of affairs on the morning of the 9th of April, 1865. The bleeding and half-starved remnant of that great army which for four years had baffled all the efforts of the Federal government to reach the Confederate capital, and had twice borne the flag of the Confederacy beyond the Potomac, confronted with undaunted resolution, but without hope save the hope of an honorable death on the battle-field, the overwhelming forces under General Grant.

“At the head of that remnant of a great army was a great soldier, whose name was a name of fear, whose name is recorded in a high place on the roll of great soldiers of history. That remnant of a great army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander at its head, after the long siege at Richmond and Petersburg, had been forced to retreat, and on the 9th of April, 1865, was brought to bay at Appomattox, surrounded by the host of its great enemy.

“There was no reasonable doubt that the destruction of that army would seal the fate of the Confederacy and put an end to further organized resistance to the Federal arms, and no doubt that if that remnant were driven to desperation by the exactness of terms of surrender against which its honor and its valor would revolt, that resistance would have been made, and that General Grant and his army might have been left in the possession of a solitude that they might have called peace, but which would have been the peace of Poland, the peace of Ireland. Under such circumstances, had General Grant been governed by the mere selfish desire of the rewards of military success, had he been content to gather the fruits that grew nearest the earth on the tree of victory, the fruits that Napoleon and all selfish conquerors of his time have gathered, the fruits that our Washington put away from him, what a triumph lay before him!

“What Roman triumph would have approached the triumph of General Grant had he led the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander in chains, up Pennsylvania Avenue, thenceforth to be known as the ‘Way of Triumph!’

“But so simple, so patriotic was the mind of General Grant that the thought of self seems never to have affected his conduct.

“He was no more tempted at Appomattox to forego the true interests of his country for his own advantage than Washington was tempted when the time came for him to lay down his commission at Annapolis. I doubt if the self-abnegation of Washington at Annapolis was greater than that of Grant at Appomattox, and it is the glory of America that her institutions breed men who are equal to the greatest strain that can be put upon their courage and their patriotism.

“On that eventful morning of April 9, 1865, General Grant was called upon to decide the most momentous question that any American soldier or statesman has ever been required to decide. The great question was, How shall the war end? What shall be the relations between the victors and vanquished?

“Upon the decision of that question depended the future of American institutions. If the extreme rights of military success had been insisted upon, and had the vanquished been required to pass under the yoke of defeat and bitter humiliation, the war would have ended as a successful war of conquest—the Southern States would have been conquered States, and the Southern people would have been a conquered people, in whose hearts would have been sown all the enmity and ill-will of the conquered to the conquerors, to be transmitted from sire to son.

“With such an ending of the war there would have been United States without a united people. The power of the Union would then have reposed upon the strength of Grant’s battalions and the thunder of Grant’s artillery. Its bonds would have stood upon the security of its military power, and not upon the honor and good faith and good-will of its people. The federal government would have been compelled to adopt a coercive policy toward the disaffected people of the South, which would soon have established between the government and those States the relations between England and Ireland, and some Northern Gladstone would be demanding for the Southern people the natural right that the English Gladstone claimed for the Irish against their haughty conquerors.

“Does any man desire to exchange the present relations between the people of the Northern and Southern States for the relations of conqueror and conquered? Does any wish to have a union of the States without a union of the people?

“General Grant was called upon to decide this great question on the morning of April 9, 1865. The Southern military power was exhausted. He was in a position to exact the supreme rights of a conqueror, and the unconditional submission of his adversary, unless that adversary should elect to risk all on the event of a desperate battle, in which much ‘American blood’ would certainly be shed.

“The question was gravely considered in Confederate councils whether we should not accept the extreme risk, and cut our way through the hosts of General Grant, or perish in the attempt. This plan had many advocates, but General Lee was not one of them, as will be seen by his farewell order to his army.

“Under these circumstances General Lee and General Grant met to discuss the terms of surrender of General Lee’s army, and, at the request of General Lee, General Grant wrote the terms of surrender he proposed to offer to the Confederate general. They were liberal and honorable, alike to the victor and the vanquished, and General Lee at once accepted them.

“Any one who reads General Grant’s proposal cannot fail to see how careful he is to avoid any unnecessary humiliation to his adversary. As far as it was possible, General Grant took away the sting of defeat from the Confederate army. He triumphed, but he triumphed without exultation, and with a noble respect to his enemy.

“There was never a nobler knight than Grant of Appomattox—no knight more magnanimous or more generous. No statesman ever decided a vital question more wisely—more in the interest of his country and of all mankind—than General Grant decided the great question presented to him when he and General Lee met that morning of April 9, 1865, to consider the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The words of his magnanimous proposal to his enemy were carried by the Confederate soldiers to the furthest borders of the South. They reached ears and hearts that had never quailed at the sound of war. They disarmed and reconciled those who knew not fear, and the noble words of General Grant’s offer of peace brought peace without humiliation, peace with honor.”