LEE AND GRANT AT APPOMATTOI Vol. VIII

by MacKinlay Kantor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 1950

**This story of Lee and Grant and the peace negotiations at Appomattox is history in the grand manner -- with the great gestures, personalities, and rough sentiment leavened for this generation by a realistic, terse, camera technique and illuminating details but giving a wide range of space and time. The author follows the anxious exchange of early negotiations--Grant's repeated demands for surrender, Lee's reluctant pleas for terms, a last minute truce, and the final meeting at Appomattox. With a vivid pictorial imagination the author gives the young reader scenes to remember--a cigar-coal glowing silently on a dark porch in Farmville, Virginia, as the northern troops cheer their brown-bearded general; a grey-faced general with a grey beard and uniform on a powerful grey horse, named Traveller; an exchange of notes by Lee and Northern soldiers, as Union and Rebel troops finger their rifles; and then, two hats and two pairs of gloves on a marble-topped table and a shocking clatter of spurs in a quiet room at Appomattox. But there are off-stage flashes, too,--the faces of weary, hungry men, thin hands touching Traveller who carries his heart-broken master away from Appomattox, a glimpse in the future as an old man at a soldiers' home reminisces. Living, dramatic history in a modern idiom.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1950

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1950

Categories: NONFICTION