When Lee's emaciated men, living on a handful of parched corn a day, staggered out of their trenches in the spring and tried to join Johnston's army they marched a few miles to Appomattox, dropping from exhaustion, and surrendered. When the news of this tremendous event reached Washington, the Cabinet was in session. Led by the President, in silence and tears, they fell on their knees in a prayer of solemn thanks to Almighty God. General Grant won the gratitude of the South by his generous treatment of Lee and his ragged men. He had received instructions from the loving heart in the White House. Long before the surrender in April, 1865, the end was sure. The President knowing this, proposed to his Cabinet to give the South four hundred millions of dollars, the cost of the war for a hundred days, in payment for their slaves, if they would lay down their arms at once. His ministers unanimously voted against his offer and he sadly withdrew it. Among all his councillors there was not one whose soul was big enough to understand the far-seeing wisdom of his generous plan. He would heal at once one of the Nation's ugliest wounds by soothing the bitterness of defeat. He knew that despair would send the older men of the South to their graves. Edmund Ruffin, who had fired the first shot against Sumter and returned to his Virginia farm when his State seceded, was a type of these ruined, desperate men. On the day that Lee surrendered he placed the muzzle of his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger with his foot, and blew his own head into fragments. When Senator Winter demanded proscription and vengeance against the leaders of the Confederacy, the President shook his head: "No--let down the bars--let them all go--scare them off!" He threw up his big hands in a vivid gesture as if he were shooing a flock of troublesome sheep out of his garden. "Triumphant now, you will receive our enemies with open arms?" the Senator sneered. "Enemies? There are no such things. The Southern States have never really been out of the Union. Their Acts of Secession were null and void. They know now that the issue is forever settled. The restored Union will be a real one. The Southern people at heart are law-abiding. It was their reverence for the letter of the old law which led them to ignore progress and claim the right to secede under the Constitution. They will be true to Lee's pledge of surrender. I'm going to trust them as my brethren. Let us fold up our banners now and smelt the guns--Love rules--let her mightier purpose run!" So big and generous, so broad and statesmanlike was his spirit that in this hour of victory his personality became in a day the soul of the New Republic. The South had already unconsciously grown to respect the man who had loved yet fought her for what he believed to be her highest good.