Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[384] and Trescot, the rebel diplomatist. All were animated by a grateful feeling toward the hero of Appomattox; all were submissive, and anxious to conform to the terms which he had proposed; and Grant himself was still in harmony with the President. There were stanch Union men also present and several prominent soldiers of the command, among whom I remember General Devens, afterward Attorney-General under President Hayes. Altogether it was a remarkable company.

One little circumstance connected with the dinner betrayed the straits to which the most important Southerners had been reduced by the war. When Aiken received his invitation he at once called on Sickles and said he should be happy to avail himself of the courtesy, but his wardrobe would not allow him to show proper respect to the General-in-Chief. He did not possess a coat such as gentlemen wear at dinner; he had nothing indeed but the homespun suit made in the Confederacy during the Rebellion; for all supplies from abroad had been intercepted by the blockade; and thus one of the greatest landholders at the South, the owner once of a thousand slaves, a man at the very head of the aristocracy of South Carolina, was unable to appear at dinner, without, as he feared, displaying disrespect to the illustrious guest, by his attire.

Sickles, however, assured the Governor that General Grant would be happy to meet him in his every-day suit; and the courtly gentleman came in gray and discussed with the Union Chief the affairs of the country, the prospects of the South, the amelioration of the condition of the blacks and whites. The table and the fare were both impromptu and smacked of the camp and the results of war almost as much as the garb of the company. Grant was never punctilious in dress, and at this time in his career even less so than afterward; he wore no epaulettes and his uniform coat was unbuttoned; but the interest and grace of the occasion and the importance of the conversation equaled any of the