Lee requested that the terms to be given his army should be written out. Grant asked General Parker of his staff, a full-blooded American Indian, for writing materials. He had prepared nothing beforehand, but he knew just what he wanted to say and he wrote without hesitation terms such as only a great and magnanimous nation could offer its conquered citizens. After providing for the giving of paroles (that is, an agreement not to take up arms again unless the paroled prisoner is later exchanged for a prisoner of the other side) and for the surrender of arms, artillery, and public property, he added: "This will not embrace the sidearms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they reside." There are some mistakes in grammar in these words, but there are no mistakes in magnanimity. When Lee, having put on his glasses, had read the first sentence quoted above, he said with feeling: [Illustration: LEE SURRENDERS TO GRANT] "This will have a happy effect upon my army." He went on to say that many of the privates in the Confederate cavalry and artillery owned their own horses; could they retain them? Grant did not change the written terms, but he said his officers would be instructed to let every Confederate private who claimed to own a horse or mule take the animal home with him. "It was doubtful," writes Grant, "whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter without the aid of the horses they were then riding." Again Lee remarked that this would have a happy effect. He then wrote and signed an acceptance of the proposed terms of surrender. The war was over. The first act of peace was our issuing 25,000 rations to the army we had captured. For some days it had lived on parched corn. [Illustration: GEN. U. S. GRANT] The news of the surrender flashed along the waiting lines like wildfire and the Union forces began firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the victory. "I at once sent word," says Grant, "to have it stopped. The Confederates were now our prisoners and we did not want to exult over their downfall." This was the spirit of a great man and of a great nation. It was not the soldiers who fought the war who kept its rancors alive after peace had come, It was the politicians, who tore open the old wounds and kept the country bleeding for a dozen years after the Lost Cause was lost.