Grant's Intelligence Chief Helps Star Reconciliation

Photo By Erin Thompson | “The Surrender of Lee” Appomattox C.H., Va., April 9th, 1865 (Library of Congress)  

UNITED STATES

04.10.2023

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Mike E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian

9 APRIL 1865
On 9 April 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union’s armies, at Appomattox Courthouse in central Virginia. Among those that watched the surrender meeting was Col. George H. Sharpe, Grant’s intelligence chief. More than just a spectator, Sharpe’s accurate intelligence estimates helped start the reconciliation between North and South.

A week earlier, Lee and his army had evacuated their lines around Petersburg in an attempt to join Confederate forces in North Carolina [See This Week in MI History #180]. As the Confederate army moved west, Grant’s forces relentlessly pursued and thwarted any attempt for it to turn south. By the morning of 9 April, Grant had forces barring Lee’s way with more forces converging on his rear and flanks. Realizing his army was cornered, Lee sent couriers to Grant, asking for a meeting to discuss terms of surrender.

Shortly after 1:00 p.m., General Lee arrived at the house of Wilmer McLean, the site for the meeting. Grant and his staff arrived about thirty minutes later. For the next ninety minutes, the two generals arranged for the surrender of the Army of the Northern Virginia. They created no elaborate surrender document; instead, an exchange of two short notes enacted the surrender. Grant’s was a mere five sentences long and Lee’s reply was only three short sentences.

In keeping with the simplicity of the proceedings, the event had only a few witnesses other than the two commanders. One of those was Colonel Sharpe. With others of Grant’s staff, Sharpe had accompanied Grant to the McLean house. After the two commanders briefly chatted about serving in the Mexican War, Col. Orville Babcock, Grant’s aide, called Sharpe and the rest of the staff into the room. “We walked in softly,” Col. Horace Porter later wrote, “and ranged ourselves quietly about the sides of the room, very much as people enter a sick chamber when they expect to find the patiently dangerously ill.”

When Sharpe slipped into the room, he immediately saw the two generals sitting apart. Like so many other observers, he noticed the marked contrast between the two. Lee was “the most striking in his appearance...[without] a speck upon his coat” and was “fully and faultlessly equipped.” Grant’s appearance, on the other hand, “contrasted strangely,” with no sword, muddy boots, and “one button of his coat—that is, the buttonhole was not where it should have been—it has clearly gone astray.” Even with disparity between the generals, Sharpe noted that “Everybody felt the overpowering influence of the scene.”

Once the military secretaries prepared the final documents and the generals signed them, Grant introduced his officers to General Lee. Conversation was unsurprisingly awkward and efforts at small talk failed. However, “there was one moment,” Sharpe noted, “when there was a whispered conversation between Grant and Lee, which nobody in the room heard.”

The topic of this conversation became clear after Lee departed. General Grant issued orders to provide Lee’s hungry army with food, ordering his quartermaster to provide rations for 25,000 men. That number, however, did not come from Lee or the Confederate staff, but from Grant’s intelligence officer. Sharpe and his team had estimated Lee’s army to number 25,000, which proved to be remarkably accurate. Thus, based on an intelligence assessment, Grant was able to feed the hungry southerners and set the course for a national reconciliation. As he noted in an order, “The war is over; the rebels are our countrymen again.”

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• Date Taken: 04.10.2023
• Date Posted: 04.10.2023 10:44
• Story ID: 442315
• Location: US