A loud cheer rose, and the blue line rushed straight upon him.
Nighthawk's head rose, and he gazed at them with flashing eyes--then he
looked at Mohun and groaned.
Summoning his last remains of strength, he drew from his breast a
pencil and a piece of paper, wrote some words upon the paper, and
affixed it to Mohun's breast.
This seemed to exhaust him. He had scarcely finished, when his head
sank, his shoulders drooped, and falling forward on the breast of
Mohun, he expired.
An hour afterward, all was still. On the summit of the Court-House hill
a blue column was stationary, waving a large white flag.
General Lee had surrendered.
XXIX.
THE SURRENDER.
Lee had surrendered the army of Northern Virginia.
Ask old soldiers of that army to describe their feelings at the
announcement, reader. They will tell you that they can not; and I will
not attempt to record my own.
It was, truly, the bitterness of death that we tasted at ten o'clock on
the morning of that ninth of April, 1865, at Appomattox Court-House.
Gray-haired soldiers cried like children. It was hard to say whether
they would have preferred, at that moment, to return to their families
or to throw themselves upon the bayonets of the enemy, and die.
In that hour of their agony they were not insulted, however.
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