Grant & Lee Meet Again

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As an amateur historian and genealogist, and if any conflict among mankind might be called my favorite, it would be the American Civil War.

Not least among the reasons I prefer it would be the involvement of one of my relatives; a distant Yankee cousin from the town of Galena, Illinois. (You may have heard of him), Ulysses S. Grant; later to be distinguished by an impressive prefix before his first name. (Both yours truly, Ulysses Grant, and several other of my notable relatives, including President Calvin Coolidge, President Franklin Roosevelt, Alan Shepard, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Robert Redford are descended from a common Mayflower passenger).

My cousin Ulysses’ counterpart in the conflict was an humble Regular Army Colonel by the name of Robert E. Lee. Lee was married to the great granddaughter of Martha Washington, Mary Custis, and was, by default, the great grand step-son in law of President George Washington. It was Lee who put down John Brown’s revolt in Harper’s Ferry, and subsequently, President Lincoln offered him command of the entire Union Army. He declined, and rather took command of the bulk of the Confederate military; The Army of Northern Virginia.

I have walked the grassy fields of Manassas, (referred to as Bull Run by the “Blue Coats”) and the site of the first battle of that awful war, and have stood silently in Wilmer Mclean’s parlor, the location of that historic ceremony, and where my distant cousin, General Grant accepted the regretful surrender of General Robert E. Lee.

In Grant’s memoirs, he included the following reminiscence of a conversation he entertained with the southern commander at the Appomattox surrender ceremony:

("I had known General Lee in the old army, and had served with him in the Mexican War; but did not suppose, owing to the difference in our age and rank, that he would remember me; while I would more naturally remember him distinctly, because he was the chief of staff of General Scott in the Mexican War.")

"We soon fell into a conversation about old army times. He remarked that he remembered me very well in the old army; and I told him that as a matter of course I remembered him perfectly, but from the difference in our rank and years (there being about sixteen years' difference in our ages), I had thought it very likely that I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to be remembered by him after such a long interval. Our conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting."

And though I am a southerner by birth, (and would be hard pressed to tell, at this writing, which side I would have supported had I been living during that time period, since I think both parties to the conflict “had something going for them”) I am proud to be distantly related to the Union general, Ulysses S. Grant.

Interestingly enough, in the past couple of decades I have come into contact with a direct descendant of General Robert E. Lee, Mr. Dennis Sparks, and have served as a mentor, and subsequently, a friend to him. And as time progressed I have come to think of Dennis as my best friend; a friend, as scripture characterizes it, “who sticketh closer than a brother.”

And while we both have our own lives, and are concerned with family, vocation and the like, we exchange emails and texts, (not unlike our famous ancestors exchanged letters during the closing days of the infamous conflict in which they were engaged), and my friend and I set aside time to “break bread” on a recurring basis, (not unlike that historic meeting in which, in spite of their fateful purpose, our ancestors’ conversation turned to quaint and peripheral matters, and gave them pause to enjoy one another’s company).

And almost without exception, one of the other of us, my friend or I, will reflect on how fitting it is that we should meet, and reflect on days long since gone by, and most especially on that day in April of ’65, a century and a half ago, when our two ancestors “worked it all out” and in which the two warring parties found a way to “bury the hatchet” and regard one another as “friends.”

And I think somehow the relationship I enjoy with my friend, and the time we are privileged to spend with one another calls to mind that historic meeting of long ago, and instills, within us, a greater appreciation for both our ancestors’ values, and efforts to mend the national rift.

I think Generals Grant and Lee would be pleased.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 6. Vol.'s 1-15, Copyright 2015

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