Stacking Arms “What Ifs?” – Episode V: “What If” Robert E. Lee Had Died at Appomattox Court House?

“How easily I could be rid of this, and be at rest! I have only to ride along the line and all will be over!” Robert E. Lee, April 9, 1865, Appomattox Court House.[1]

General Lee’s lament arose after receipt of a message from his subordinate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon, who reported that it was impossible for the Army of Northern Virginia to break through the U.S. lines blocking the army’s westward escape route. Lee realized that it was over, saying, “Then, there is nothing left me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”[2] And, as his statement quoted above reflects, one manner of those many deaths that Lee contemplated was suicide.[3]

The contemplation was fleeting. Lee mastered himself and resolved to go on, sighing: “But it is our duty to live. What will become of the women and children of the South if we are not here to protect them?”[4] Having regained his equipoise, Lee rode out to meet Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to surrender his army.

As discussed in a prior “What If?” post,[5] however, there was substantial difficulty in arranging that meeting. Grant was not available; he was in transit by a round-about route to Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s lines and had to be tracked down. In the interim, Lee had difficulty stopping the fighting. Indeed, Lee placed himself at risk of being shot by approaching U.S. troops as he stubbornly refused to retire into his own lines as he sought a truce. Finally, just as it seemed that both Sheridan and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade would launch devastating assaults upon the separated and weak wings of Lee’s ragged force, a truce was reached.

Grant and Lee thus did meet and reached a surrender agreement that saved countless lives while providing a model for how a magnanimous victor treats a vanquished, but respected foe. The surrender terms reached in Wilmer McLean’s parlor also were used to peacefully parole thousands of other Confederate soldiers throughout Virginia and ultimately became the basis (with some supplementing) for the surrender of Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee and his entire department of some 90,000 Confederate soldiers, and used as well in surrenders of remaining Confederate armies in the Trans-Mississippi.[6] The gracious Appomattox terms have been credited by historians with helping to ease the reconciliation of the divided country after four horrific years of bloodshed.[7]

Lee returned to his family. He soon became the president of a struggling little college that he revitalized both financially and academically.[8] Lee, widely admired throughout the South, served as an enormously influential national conciliator, encouraging his fellow ex-Confederates to accept the result of the conflict and offering his own example by applying for a pardon.[9] In that regard, the story is told that when an ex-Confederate officer told his father that he (the son) had taken an amnesty oath, his father shouted: “You have disgraced the family!” But when the son replied: “But General Lee told me to do it,” the older man immediately changed his tune: “Oh, that alters the case. Whatever General Lee says is all right, I don’t care what it is.”[10] Such was Lee’s powerful post-war influence for reconciliation.

But what if Lee had not survived Appomattox? What if he had succumbed to his grief and implemented the thought born of his monumental despair? Even lingering on the front lines could have proved fatal, as U.S. Maj. Gen. John “they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” Sedgwick had learned at Spotsylvania.[11] Alternatively, what if one of the U.S. soldiers advancing on Lee while he stubbornly remained between the picket lines insisting on a truce had decided to shoot him? Or what if the impending final federal assaults set to crush the Confederate army had not been called off at the last moment? In this last circumstance, no “Lee to the rear” moment likely could have saved him, either due to the complete absence of any safe rear, or because Lee might well have decided to die leading his men in a final, bloody, cataclysm.

The consequences of Lee’s death at Appomattox could have been widespread. The most prosaic result? Washington College would never have had the benefit of Lee’s presidency. That “broken down college,” effectively bankrupt at the end of the war, was undisputedly saved by Lee. His presence guaranteed an influx of students from throughout the South. His extraordinarily effective fundraising and innovative academic efforts secured the future of what would become Washington & Lee University.[12] Lee’s death at Appomattox almost certainly would have consigned Washington College to oblivion.[13]

It also is fair to presume that Lee’s death in the final battle of the Army of Northern Virginia would have sanctified Lee as a Confederate martyr. Even before 1865, Lee was widely venerated as an unparalleled Christian gentlemen and matchless soldier, a veritable saint. Artillerist Edward Porter Alexander, in describing a review Lee held of the First Corps in April 1864 upon its return from the Western Theater, wrote: “Each man seemed to feel the bond which held us all to Lee. There was no speaking, but the effect was that of a military sacrament, in which we pledged anew our lives.”[14] In 1911, author Thomas Nelson Page effused of Lee: “History may be searched in vain to find Lee’s superior… To find his prototype, we must go back to ancient times, to the ancient heroes…. There was no act or incident of his life on which a light as fierce as that which beats upon a throne did not fall…. His monument is the adoration of the South; his shrine is in every Southern heart.”[15]

What of the reaction in the extant Confederacy to word of Lee’s death in battle? Militarily, would Lee’s glorious death have inspired many of the remaining tens of thousands of Confederates in arms to adhere to Lee’s example and fight on to the death?

Jefferson Davis was determined to continue the struggle even after hearing of Lee’s surrender; certainly, he would have steeled himself to the same course upon hearing of Lee’s death in battle.[16] But would Gen. Joseph Johnston then have been effectively shamed into agreeing with Davis’s determination, rather than surrendering to William T. Sherman his entire department of almost 90,000 men in arms?

For the many Confederate soldiers who essentially worshiped Lee, would grief at hearing of Lee’s fate have turned into bitter determination to continue the struggle, perhaps on the basis of guerilla resistance? Indeed, with Lee’s death Grant would not have had the opportunity to offer Lee the generous terms of surrender that would be used to lure the other existing Confederate forces throughout the South into peaceful surrender. Months of savage fighting throughout the South might have replaced what we know as the peaceful, somewhat anti-climactic, story of the post-Appomattox period leading to the end of the war.

The precise circumstances of Lee’s death also might have played a role in the consequences. Lee dying at the head of his troops as they were overwhelmed by massively superior forces would be one scenario, prompting its own set of responses. But what if Lee had been shot down while still between the lines trying to stop the fighting so he could surrender his army, having originally ridden out under a flag of truce? Although (as described in the prior post), Lee had been expressly warned to withdraw, his killing while literally under a flag of truce could only have sparked the most bitter outrage throughout the South, virtually guaranteeing violent reprisals while severely damaging reconciliation efforts.

And what if Lee had been killed-actually or reportedly-by the African American soldiers of one of the U.S. Colored Troop brigades that faced Gordon, and who perhaps even bragged about the feat?[17] The reaction of white Southerners directed towards the Freedmen in their region can only be imagined.

There might well have been political consequences arising from Lee’s death, whatever the precise circumstances. While there were relatively few ex-Confederates who joined the Republicans during Reconstruction, would prominent men such as James Longstreet and John S. Mosby have been comfortable allying politically with Grant after his troops had killed Lee? Would Lee’s nephew, Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, and former Confederate cavalry commanders Joseph Wheeler and Thomas Rosser have allowed themselves to become symbols of national reconciliation by accepting “Yankee” commissions during the Spanish-American War? Would ex-Confederate Maj. Gen. William Mahone have dared invited African Americans into his Virginia “Readjuster” political party or been able to wield reformative political power on their behalf?

Embittered by Lee’s death, white Southerners might have made the Reconstruction era even more fraught with violence against Freedmen and loyal Unionists than the reality we know. And what might have been the reaction of the North to such enhanced violence? Would the result have been more federal occupation troops, resulting in more friction with the local populace and opportunities for even greater bloodshed?

All “what if” exercises are vulnerable to the charge that they are nothing more than speculative fiction. Yet one thing can be said with reasonable assurance. Even if some historians today question the true extent of Lee’s contribution to post-war reconciliation, at Appomattox Lee’s most valuable contribution to future peace was simply staying alive.

[1] Douglass Southall Freeman, R.E. Lee: A Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY, 1940), Vol. IV, p. 121; John Esten Cooke, A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee (D. Appleton and Company, New York, NY, 1871), p. 461, https://archive.org/details/alifegenroberte00cookgoog/page/460/mode/2up.

[2] Freeman, p. 120; James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox:  Memoirs of the Civil War in America (Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, NY, 2004), p. 537; Burke Davis, To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865 (Eastern Acorn Press, reprint by Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, New York, NY, 1992), p. 350.

[3] Another author reports Lee’s words somewhat differently: ‘Musing sadly for a few seconds, as his men’s favourite cry broke on his ear, “There’s Uncle Robert!” in deep, sad tones he said to those near him, “How soon could I end all this, and be at rest. ‘Tis but to ride down the line, and give the word, and all would be over.”’ Charles Cornwallis Chesney, Essays In Modern Military Biography (Longsman, Green & Co., London, England, 1874), p. 405, https://archive.org/details/essaysinmodernmi00chesuoft/page/n7/mode/2up. In this version, it sounds as if Lee was thinking of leading a final, doomed charge against the enemy, which no “Lee to the rear” shouts could stop.

[4] Freeman, p. 121; Cooke, p. 461.

[5] ‘Stacking Arms “What Ifs?” – Episode IV: “What If” Sheridan Had Gotten His Way & Launched the Final Assault Upon Lee’s Army at Appomattox Court House?,’ Emerging Civil War Blog, April 4, 2025.

[6] Caroline E. Janney, Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army After Appomattox (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2021), pp. 33-34, 87-88, 107, 158; William T. Sherman, The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Vol. II, Chap. XXIII (D. Appleton & Co., New York, NY, 1876), p. 370; Eric J. Wittenberg, We Ride A Whirlwind: Sherman and Johnston At Bennett Place (Fox Run Publishing, Burlington, NC, 2017), pp. 102, 122-126, 132; Walter Coffey, “The Trans-Mississippi Surrender,” The Civil War Months (May 26, 2020), https://civilwarmonths.com/2020/05/26/the-trans-mississippi-surrender/.

[7] See Janney, p. 27 & n. 27.

[8] Lee’s post-war career as president of what was then Washington College is described in depth in Charles Bracelen Flood, Lee: The Last Years (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA, 1981).

[9] Flood, pp. 65, 136 (“conciliation was his creed”), 144, 152, 199; Philip Leigh, “A Good Reason to Honor Robert E. Lee,” The Abbeville Institute Press (January 19, 2021), https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-good-reason-to-honor-robert-e-lee/; Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), pp. 136-148. Nolan agrees that ‘“Conciliator” fairly describes one aspect of Lee’s postwar role,” although Nolan explores certain limits on such.

[10] Leigh, “A Good Reason to Honor Robert E. Lee”; Flood, pp. 64-65.

[11] Bruce Catton, The Army of the Potomac: A Stillness at Appomattox (Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1953), p. 109.

[12] Flood, pp. 78-80, 112-113, 133-134, 175, 204-207.

[13] Also, the great Southern fraternity, Kappa Alpha, founded at Washington College in 1865, presumably would never have been born. Flood, pp. 153-154.

[14] Edward Porter Alexander, edited by Gary W. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1989), p. 346.

[15] Thomas Nelson Page, Robert E. Lee: Man and Soldier (Charles Schribner’s Sons, New York, NY, 1911), pp. 685, 691.

[16] Eric J. Wittenberg, We Ride A Whirlwind: Sherman and Johnston At Bennett Place (Fox Run Publishing, Burlington, NC, 2017), pp. 42, 115-116, 133.

[17] Two brigades of United States Colored Troops were among those confronting Gordon. Elizabeth R. Varon, Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom At The End of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2014), p. 40.