Existing comment:
Surrender of General Lee
Most written accounts of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, note the difference between Lee's stiff dignity and Grant's more relaxed demeanor. This lithograph of the event, showing the two men seated at a table as they negotiate and sign the terms of peace, idealizes that historic end to the Civil War. In reality, they used two different tables.
After the South surrendered to the North, Wilmer McLean, the owner of the house where the signing took place, lost much of his furniture to soldiers desiring mementos. The chairs in which Grant and Lee sat are now in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Currier & Ives Lithography Company, 1865 |