قراءة كتاب On the Trail of Grant and Lee

Grant running the gauntlet of the Mexicans at Monterey
    in riding to the relief of his comrades . . Frontispiece
            September 23, 1846.

Lee with Mrs. Lewis (Nellie Custis) applying to General
    Andrew Jackson to aid in securing his cadetship at
    West Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
                  1825.

Grant on his horse, "York," making exhibition jump in
    the Riding Academy at West Point . . . . . . . . . . 32
               June, 1843.

Lee sending the Rockbridge battery into action for the
    second time at Antietam or Sharpsburg . . . . . . . 144
            September 17, 1862.

Lee rallying his troops at the Battle of the
    Wilderness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
                May 6, 1864.

Grant at the entrenchments before Petersburg . . . . . 260
                March, 1865.

Illustrations in the Text

Signature of Grant on reporting at West Point . . . . 25
    (From the original records of the U. S. Military
     Academy.)

First signature of Grant as U. S. Grant . . . . . . . 27
    (From the original records of the U.S. Military
     Academy.)

Grant's letter demanding unconditional surrender of
    forces at Fort Donnelson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Diagram map (not drawn to scale) showing strategy of
    the opening of the Battle of Chancellorsville, May
    1 and 2, 1863 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Diagram map (not drawn to scale) showing Grant's series
    of movements by the left flank from the Wilderness
    to Petersburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Facsimile of telegraphic message drafted by Lieutenant-
    General Grant, announcing Lee's surrender, May 9,
    1865 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Lee's letter of August 3, 1866, acknowledging receipt of
    the extension of his furlough . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Chapter I. — Three Civil Wars

England was an uncomfortable place to live in during the reign of Charles the First. Almost from the moment that that ill-fated monarch ascended the throne he began quarreling with Parliament; and when he decided to dismiss its members and make himself the supreme ruler of the land, he practically forced his subjects into a revolution. Twelve feverish years followed—years of discontent, indignation and passion—which arrayed the Cavaliers, who supported the King, against the Roundheads, who upheld Parliament, and finally flung them at each other's throats to drench the soil of England with their blood.

Meanwhile, the gathering storm of civil war caused many a resident of the British Isles to seek peace and security across the seas, and among those who turned toward America were Mathew Grant and Richard Lee. It is not probable that either of these men had ever heard of the other, for they came from widely separated parts of the kingdom and were even more effectually divided by the walls of caste. There is no positive proof that Mathew Grant (whose people probably came from Scotland) was a Roundhead, but he was a man of humble origin who would naturally have favored the Parliamentary or popular party, while Richard Lee, whose ancestors had fought at Hastings and in the Crusades, is known to have been an ardent Cavalier, devoted to the King. But whether their opinions on politics differed or agreed, it was apparently the conflict between the King and Parliament that drove them from England. In any event they arrived in America at almost the same moment; Grant reaching Massachusetts in 1630, the year after King Charles dismissed his Parliament, and Lee visiting Virginia about this time to prepare for his permanent residence in the Dominion which began when actual hostilities opened in the mother land.

The trails of Grant and Lee, therefore, first approach each other from out of the smoke of a civil war. This is a strangely significant fact, but it might be regarded merely as a curious coincidence were it not for other and stranger events which seem to suggest that the hand of Fate was guiding the destinies of these two men.

Mathew Grant originally settled in Massachusetts but he soon moved to Connecticut, where he became clerk of the town of Windsor and official surveyor of the whole colony—a position which he held for many years. Meanwhile Richard Lee became the Colonial Secretary and a member of the King's Privy Council in Virginia, and thenceforward the name of his family is closely associated with the history of that colony.

Lee bore the title of colonel, but it was to