Elizabeth R. Varon

“There can be no discredit to a conquered people for accepting the conditions offered by their conquerors. Nor is there any occasion for a feeling of humiliation. We have made an honest, and I hope that I may say, a creditable fight, but we have lost. Let us come forward, then, and accept the ends involved in the struggle....Let us accept the terms, as we are in duty bound to do. -- JAMES LONGSTREET, Letter to New Orleans Times, March 18, 1867.”
― Elizabeth Varon, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

“Grant believed that generous terms were essential to pacification. In Grant's eyes, the surrender was a triumph of right over wrong: proof of the moral and material superiority of the North's free-labor democratic society over the South's slave-labor autocratic one. Grant's hope, in extending clemency, was to change hearts and minds--to effect Confederate repentance and submission.

In Lee's view, by contrast, the United States' victory was one of might over right, attributable to brutal force, not to skill and virtue. Although Lee rejected the option of guerrilla warfare as impractical and dishonorable, he did not admit moral defeat or counsel submission.”
― Elizabeth Varon, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South