The Union army followed as fast as it could march, and the cavalry rode on until it was ahead of the Confederates. Then General Lee saw that he was surrounded by an army far stronger than his own. He could fight no longer. His men were nearly starved. To fight would be to have them all killed. So on the 9th of April he offered his sword to General Grant, and the long and bloody war was at an end. No one was gladder of this than President Lincoln, who had done so much to bring it about. Poor man! five days afterwards he was shot in a theatre at Washington by an actor named John Wilkes Booth. This was done out of revenge for the defeat of the South. But the people of the South did not approve of this act of murder, and in Abraham Lincoln they lost one whom they would have found a good friend. Booth was followed and killed, but his death could not bring back to life the murdered President, whom the people loved so warmly that they mourned for him as if he had been, like Washington, the Father of his Country. It was a terrible crime, and it turned the joy which the people felt, at the end of the war, into the deepest sorrow and grief. CHAPTER XXIV THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE LET us suppose that the history of the whole world is spread out before us like a picture, and that we are looking down on it. What will we see? Well, we will see places where a terrible storm seems to have swept over the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its track. And we will see other places where the sun seems to have poured down its bright beams, and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The dark places are those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and happiness to the nations.