Robert E. Lee's General Orders No. 9, Surrender at Appomattox

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Nov 18, 2016 - Nov 19, 2016

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• Lot Description
  Lee, Robert Edward, General, CSA, General Order No. 9, signed in type "R.E. Lee, General," 1p, 3.5 x 6 in. (6 x 7 in. unfolded), Headquarters Army Northern Virginia [Appomattox Court House], April 10, 1865. This printing is thought to be a hasty field printing. Most versions known are on scraps of paper, often reused forms. This particular one does not have anything printed on verso, but there is a "ghost" of one copy (mirror image) and a bit of printing from another copy - "that...nothing....would" - the terminal words from lines 8, 9 and 10, plus a few other incomplete words in lower left corner. In addition, there is ink from a few words in the center of the front - the very end of the first few lines with only "865," "[m]arked" and "Army" readable. It is almost as if whoever had a scrap of paper just stuck it under the plate to print themselves a copy. The printing is also off-horizontal and contains a few typographical and punctuation errors (i.e., "kiLd" for "kind" in second to last full line), another indication of its haste in production. The text varies slightly from the version published in The Wartime Letters of R.E. Lee, but can be found on many manuscript versions of the Order. At least one other copy of this has appeared on the market printed on the back of a "Lynchburg" commissary form, with the same errors, clearly from the same plate.
  
  After four long years, both sides were weary of the conflict, but the South was sorely stressed for men and supplies. After losing Petersburg following a long siege, and abandoning Richmond, Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia west, hoping to join forces with Joseph Johnston (who was trying to reach Lee), who had the largest remaining Confederate Army, over 80,000 men. Grant's Union forces cut off their movement at the small town of Appomattox Court House. Lee tried to break through the Union lines, but then realized the size of the force that had come out to meet his army. He saw no option other than to surrender.
  
  As early as April 7, Grant wrote to Lee: "The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance." He asked Lee to surrender to avoid any "further effusion of blood." Lee responded that he did not agree with the hopelessness, but "I reciprocate your desire to avoid the useless effusion of blood, and therefore,...ask the terms you will offer on condition of...surrender." Communications continued, at least half a dozen notes passes between the two, until Lee finally agreed, "There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant... and I would rather die a thousand deaths."
  
  Grant's terms were generous - the men would give up public property, but officers could retain their side arms and horses, and any other personal property. All men would be allowed to return home unmolested by Union troops. Grant also gave the starving army food. A couple weeks later, similar arrangements were made to surrender Johnston's Army in North Carolina to General Sherman. Those men also were fed and many given seeds to go home and plant using the horses and mules they took with them.
  
  Lee's aide, Charles Marshall, later described other events that evening. "On the night of April 9th...General Lee sat with several of us at a fire in front of his tent, and after some conversation about the army and the events of the day in which his feelings toward his men were strongly expressed, he told me to prepare an order to the troops..." Marshall had to eventually hide in an ambulance with a guard to have the time to write out the order. Lee did some editing, and Marshall wrote out the corrected order and gave it to a clerk to be copied for commanders and staff. It seems many more copies were made, by every company clerk who could get a copy, and given to General Lee to sign, which he graciously did.
  
  Reports even from years later, while Lee was at the University, indicate that former members of the Confederate army continued to send Lee manuscript copies of General Orders No. 9, and he never refused to sign one. Many of these resided in veterans' halls for the next century and more. It is usually the manuscript copies that surface, written in hundreds of different hands, signed and unsigned. The printed versions are much more rare.
  
  Provenance: Property of N. Flayderman & Co.

  Condition

  A couple of folds and wrinkle (on the unprinted half, which may be why they did not try to print two on this sheet).
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