After the conference, at which Lincoln expressed his sympathy with the desperate situation in which the Confederates were placed, Grant sent a note through the lines to Lee, saying, "The results of the last week must have convinced you of the hopelessness of further resistance," and added that he regarded it a duty "to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood" by asking Lee's surrender. Lee replied that he reciprocated the desire to avoid further bloodshed, and asked for terms. Grant answered that there was only one condition, that the officers and men surrendered should be disqualified from taking up arms again. Lee replied the next day that he did not think the emergency had arisen for the surrender of his army, but offered to meet Grant at ten o'clock the next morning on the old stage line to Richmond between the pickets of the two armies. Grant answered that "the terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms they will hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds of millions of property." Lee had hoped to arrest the movement of the Union troops by entering into negotiations, but found that Grant understood his purpose and was drawing more closely around him, so he accepted the inevitable and asked an interview for the surrender of his army. The meeting at the McLean mansion at Appomattox has been too often described to require reference in these pages, except to call attention to the fact that General Grant's letter accepting the surrender of Lee's army was in direct violation of the amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863, and President Lincoln's order sent from the Capital on the night of March 3. No one knows whether Lincoln ever called his attention to that fact. There is no record of a reprimand or even a comment from the President, and it is probable that his joy and gratitude were so overwhelming that he did not even question the terms. General Grant, however, in his "Memoirs," says that he was overcome by feelings of sympathy for his heroic antagonist, and that the closing sentence of his letter, which practically pardoned the entire army, was written without a thought of its far-reaching significance. President Lincoln was the same man in triumph that he had been in distress. Neither joy nor grief could disconcert him, but no one witnessed the enthusiasm of the public over the news from Appomattox with greater gratification. The story of his visit to Richmond is told in Chapter VI. Upon his return to Washington he took up at once the important work of restoring order in the South with as much zeal and energy as he had shown in the prosecution of the war.