but one would find difficulty in discovering any thing in the incident of the surrender other than those of a negative character calculated to produce decided changes in an opinion preconceived of General Grant’s character: and one’s opinions in matters of this sort are not usually affected by negative influences. The views expressed by General Lee in his letter were not those popularly accepted after the war as expressing a high regard for General Grant, but were the views generally entertained and expressed of General Grant by the Southern people in the South during the war, except that General Lee was utterly incapable of voicing the popular Southern expression wherein General Grant was styled in the South during the war by the Southern press and by popular expression there, horrible as it now sounds, a “butcher” in consequence of the apparently heartless way in which he subjected great bodies of his troops to what appeared useless loss of life. In one of my interviews with Colonel Charles Marshall of Baltimore with whom I enjoyed many years of intimate professional relation, I stated to him what I have above referred to, mentioning the sentiments expressed by General Lee in his letters to my father. Colonel Marshall who had been General Lee’s private secretary during the war gave me to understand that he knew they were the sentiments actually entertained. Governor Letcher was the war governor of Virginia. Those who called upon him were received in a room in the State House at one end of which stood a large side board occupied by decanters and glasses, a part of his Creed was to extend the hospitality of this side board to each visitor. Virginia hospitality required him to keep company in the partaking of the refreshments with the result that he had a phenomenally red face, perpetually wreathed in smiles. It can be understood that delegations of legislators often called upon him. He also frequently held evening receptions that were exceedingly agreeable and very popular, although never crowded and at one of these receptions which I attended I remember viewing with astonishment, a portly man with long black curls hanging down his back and with him an exceedingly pretty young girl whom I learned was his daughter. This individual was well known in Richmond and will be recognized without further description by any one conversant with Richmond life during the war. At the time General Hunter burned the Military Institute at Lexington he also burned Governor Letcher’s house located there in revenge for which it will be remembered that Harry Gilmor on his raid into Maryland burned the house of Governor Bradford on Charles Street Avenue a few miles out from Baltimore. This same Harry Gilmor possessed qualities of a superior character, for I remember that after the war when he returned to Baltimore, with the occupation for which nature fitted him as a soldier, gone, instead of his becoming a