ALL AROUND HIM, his soldiers were ragged and hungry. Desperate attempts in the last week to feed, clothe and arm them had been thwarted at every turn. Half his troops had been captured, killed or wounded—or had just left. Enemy armies surrounded him now; decision time had come.
Robert E. Lee huddled with his commanders by a low bivouac in the south central Virginia countryside, the rooftops of the village of Appomattox Court House just visible above the tree line. “There was no tent there, no table, no chairs, and no camp-stools,” Maj. Gen. John Brown Gordon recalled. “On blankets spread upon the ground or on saddles at the roots of the trees we sat around the great commander….No tongue or pen will ever be able to describe the unutterable anguish of Lee’s commanders as they looked into the clouded face of their beloved leader and sought to draw from it some ray of hope.”
