“
[391]
appearance of having feasted on champagne and poundcake not ten minutes before, and I had not the slightest use for as plebeian a drink as ‘fine brandy.’
”
“He was a true gentleman, begged pardon, and placed the flask in his pocket again without touching the contents in my presence.
If he had taken a drink, and my Confederate olfactories had obtained a whiff of the odor of it, it is possible that I should have ‘caved.’
The truth is, I had not eaten two ounces in two days, and I had my coat tail then full of corn, waiting to parch it as soon as an opportunity might present itself.
I did not leave it behind me, because I had nobody I could trust it with.
As an excuse which I felt I ought to make for refusing his proffered courtesy, I rather haughtily said that I had been sent forward only to receive any communication that was offered, and could not properly accept or offer any courtesies.
In fact, if I had offered what I could, it would have taken my corn.”
Grant's note to Lee being then transferred from Williams to Perry, the Confederate colonel and Federal general bowed profoundly to each other and separated.
On the morning of the 9th General Grant dispatched another note to General Lee as follows:
Humphreys sent it forward by Colonel Whittier, his adjutant general, who met Colonel Marshall, of Lee's staff, by whom he was conducted to the general.
To this note Lee replied:
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.