>> and now at precisely 3:15 on the afternoon of april 9, 2015, bells will ring across america. [ applause ] on c-span

three.-- c-span a live look from the appomattox courthouse national historic park, if the site where 150 years ago, confederate general robert e lee surrendered his army to union general ulysses s. grant, effectively ending the civil war. we will be live from the park for the next three hours as the commemoration continues with reenactments of the gun stacking that took place on this day in 1860 five when more than 22,000 of general lee's infantry troops turned over their weapons and battle flags. we will bring you the sights and sounds of the ceremony throughout the coverage and later in the program, you will hear remarks from historian david blight who will talk about the legacy of appomattox. we will also give you a chance

to call in and talk with him and elizabeth varon from the university of virginia. we are joined by two men who played a starring role in the surrender ceremony you just saw. ulysses s. grant and robert e lee. general grant is portrayed by kurt field and general lee by thomas jesse. you want to invite you to be part of the conversation. here's how to do that -- call us at the numbers on your screen. at c-spantweet history and you can also join us on facebook. saw moment our viewers just on american history tv, gentlemen, what were you thinking as general lee wrote away? guest: sadness. i knew how much they were suffering with the surrender

after they had fought so hard for four long years. i felt it was almost anti-climactic. one of the things i noted was the silence. there were no guns, no candidate in, no shouts, no battle sounds. the silence was a sound we had not heard for four years and it approached the eerie. , as we watchedee that site just moments ago, you seemed to pause for a moment before mounting traveler. what was going through your mind? guest: at that particular moment, i was concerned for my horse. we were putting the bridle on and i removed the forelock from under the bridle but what was going on in my mind for most was how i was going to tell my soldiers they were surrendering and be able to do it, to actually say the words and let

those men that had followed me for four years, sacrifice everything, marched in the rain and the mud from petersburg and finally tell them you are surrendered and it is over. that is what was going through my mind. host: a reminder to our american history tv viewers, we will be here for the next 20 or 25 minutes talking to ulysses s grant and general robert e lee. we will talk to them both in and out of character and we invite you to do the same. let's go to donald in jacksonville. i don't hear that. let's continue on and we will get to your calls in just a moment. general lee, in the days before the surrender on april 9, i had read in your memoirs you had a severe headache.

but the moment you received the news, you became instantly well. guest: the headache immediately disappeared, never to return again. i expect it was because of the great relief for the note i had just been given from general lee -- it was the first time he had used the word surrender and i knew the end was near. -- theief was torment us relief was tremendous. the stress of pounding through the virginia countryside to stop the killing. host: what was the final straw in your decision-making, general lee, for calling for a meeting with general grant? guest: i said to general gordon forward -- i sent general gordon forward to see if we could break through. general corps of, general long street and myself decided we were going to give it one more

time and see if there was any way out and stop when general gordon sent me the message back that the way was blocked by infantry, i knew right then it was time to meet general grant. i think we have donald on the line from jacksonville. go ahead. what i am trying to find ,ut is after all these years the confederacy was and is today still flying the flag around this country, which is kind of to blacks and people who fought and died to represent the union. why is the confederate flag -- it is a bit offensive. if a swastika was flying around in somebody's yard, you know what is going to happen. is 2015 and i have a

couple of granddaughters coming -- i don't want the confederate flag lying around. it is offensive. can you comment on that? host: any thoughts on the meaning of the flag? -- guest: i have no comment on that. there was an unfurling of the flags. guest: what i should point out is the flags were treated with reverence by the army of the potomac and by general grant and that is good enough for me. call is fromt travis in florence, alabama. can you hear me? i'm travis from florence,

alabama. i had several relatives in the army of northern virginia. my question is hadley been able to link up with johnston in north carolina, could the war have been turned in the south's favor? guest: no. host: why not? guest: the south was fought out. the south had done more with longer and less than any army in history. they had worn out. able torally been escape my forces, he could not have lasted any longer than days. his men were starved, out of ammunition, barefoot, many of defeated in were everything except spirit. had generally been able to break loose from my forces, it would not have prolonged the war and

certainly would not have changed the outcome of the war. host: generally? guest: i had a duty to try. i .. general johnson, there's no telling how many men i would have had left. men every mile because they were exhausted and starving. they could not go any further. if i had managed to escape general grant here, i'm convinced he would have caught up with me before i made it into the valley. host: how many days in advance to begin to devise the terms of surrender? guest: at our last meeting on the river queen with resident lincoln, general sherman, admiral david dixon porter and myself, we asked the president. we said it's almost over, what then? president clinton said let them up easy.

that was my plan. -- president lincoln said let them up easy. he said get them to stop fighting and lay down the arms and leave the politics to me, general. i began thinking about what i would write in the surrender terms and i wrote the most verbally economic document i could write because i did not want to put a jot or tittle in that document about which anyone could debate, argue or harangue. i kept it simple and if you will read it, as i'm sure you have, it is strictly military. there is no politics in it. of a reunion a bit for you. what were your impressions of general grant seeing him with a first-time? that first, address general?

was nervous. i met general lee in the mexican war, but even then, he was the great captain lee with a long shadow. lieutenant, second not long out of the academy. generally was quite the distinguished man. he was born to be the war hero he obviously is all stop when i met him in the parlor of the maclean house, i was disheveled, muddy as you find me now, and general lee was resplendent in a uniform that had never been more before with a jeweled presentation sword. i was nervous. in fact, and chatting with him, i tried to break the tension and general lee had to cough and say we must be about the business we are here to attend to. i have been trying to recollect what i looked like from the mexican war. good memory but

i remember in the incident of meeting him, but it was briefly and i cannot recall a single feature. shaven atas clean that time. i had not yet grown a beard. when heore importantly, arrived, i was relieved he was there and i was not concerned with his appearance. i was concerned with mine because i did not know what the terms would be. there was a possibility i would be his prisoner. i am a gentleman and you make your best appearance. our wagons had been burnt and the uniform i wore, as new as it was an fine as it was was the last uniform i had. host: we are joined by kurt here atd thomas jesse appomattox on the 150th anniversary of the surrender of the army of northern virginia. we are taking your calls here on

american history tv. joe in new york, you are on the air. caller: i have a question for general grant. the surrender ceremony, and general lee appeared in an immaculate uniform, as he appears to be wearing right now because he thought he would be come that she would become general grant's prisoner. i would like to ask generally did he consider he might be arrested and charged with the crime of treason? thank you very much. guest: that did come up after the war and i communicated with general grant, pointing out i .ad a parole politically,me and there was a call to have me arrested and tried for treason. i wanted to settle the matter

and i communicated with general grant and the matter died. concerned you had not had a chance to speak to confederate president jefferson davis? guest: i communicated with him, but i don't know if he received any of my communications will stop the lines of communication were bad and jefferson davis had gone on ahead by rail. i sent him the message, letting him know the situation and i felt like i had a duty to my soldiers. once that happened, it was my decision. to jay and miami, florida. caller: i'm calling from miami. my question dealt with the same topic -- which was surrendering before president jefferson.

thatpeople have said perhaps he should have waited for his commander-in-chief to surrender, that perhaps, he took that step further than he should have. i know his men were suffering greatly, however, is he still convinced it was the correct situation? absolutely it was the right decision. i was the commander of the army and commander-in-chief. there was no way to communicate with general davis. i made the decision and it was the right decision. decision tode the allow union rations to be distributed, but your own rations were starved from the chase as well. guest: they were hungry because we had been on the run for several days and pursued the army of northern virginia.

theve general lee provisions i had kept him from getting. it was his rations i gave him. host: magnanimous of you to do some -- to do so. thought so. his men were starving. mine were hungry but we had been in a headlong rush to get into this place. for the first time, i saw a phenomenon that there were no stragglers in my army. andll knew the end was near every man was pushing to be at the front. no one wanted to be at the rear. host: a question from facebook. what happened to the weapons that were turned in by southern soldiers on this date, april 12, 1865? guest: they were destroyed. you allow the generals

officers to keep their sidearms. issues -- important the important question is not has slidd, but what off the pages of the history book into the binding is i have spoken to making the document as economically verbal as possible. i had let the officers keep their sidearms and horses, but the reason i did that was not criticized by was leading a bunch of rebbe's loose in the countryside, i knew they were men of honor and i knew they would stand by their pledge. what the significance of that is is that by letting them keep their sidearms, i let them keep not aswords, so confederate officer had to surrender his sword to the victor. --liminated injury

eliminated insult to injury. they were able to keep their sword and take them home and hang them over the mantle. it is american history tv live from appomattox and store it park with general ulysses s grant and general robert e lee taking your comment that calls for the next 10 minutes or so. mountain and pacific, 202-748-8901. i'm going to ask you to step out of character for a moment. curt fields, tell us your background and how you came to play general grant on this day. >> i'm a retired career educator. i hold a ph.d. in education from michigan state university. i was a principal for 25 years, taught for eight years, been a memphis police officer, professional drummer, was a hostage negotiator for the

memphis police department. i like to refer to it as a defunct professor. i'm an adjunct professor at the university of memphis in bell haven university in the memphis campus. i teach sociology. >> and thomas jessee? >> i'm an electrician, superintendent for an electrical contractor in tampa, florida. i live in lakeland, florida. and i've been a reenactor since i've been 18 years old. not only a historian, a re-enactor. >> what's the difference there? we hear that term used by different people. what's the difference? >> as a reenactor, you're showing a battle. you're showing an event, reenacting the event. that's a reenactor. a living historian is presenting as a person and they're telling that person -- they're being that person. like thursday, if you believed i was robert e. lee and you believed he was general grant,

then we did living history exactly like it's supposed to be done. the reenactors are the gentlemen over here having to surrender their weapons. they're not particular people. they're re-enacting an event. they're re-creating it. that's the difference. as far as the details behind the scenes, there's not a lot of difference. >> we allow people to part the curtains of history and look down that long corridor of time and see things as they really were. >> did either of you ever expect to be here? >> never. >> no. if you had told me this two years ago, i wouldn't have believed it. >> i think say is on the line, miami, jay, you still there? jay from miami, florida. go ahead. i think -- just a reminder, jay and other callers, make sure you mute your television and listen over the phone so you can get the answer. you still there?

we'll get back to his call in a moment. let me ask you, in the days after appomattox, general lee, what did you do? >> i was here at my headquarters. at first i had decided i would follow my troops out to surrender their weapons. i would be with them. general gordon and general longstreet convinced me that would not be a wise move. they said they would take care of it. i stayed here at my headquarters at my tent until the last surrender, the last day. i was taking care of correspondence, making sure the men did get rations, finding paroles. i was waiting on colonel marshall to finish writing my general order number nine. >> he was your aide? >> he was assistant adjutant general. he's the one who usually wrote my orders. so colonel marshall from baltimore wrote general order

number nine. >> general grant, how quickly did you notify washington of the surrender and how long were you on the battlefield or in appomattox rather after the -- >> i took care after the surrender, and general lee left me a myriad of minutia with all of the details i had to handle. it was some time late that day that one of my staff reminded me, perhaps you should telegraph secretary of war stanton. and tell him of the surrender. and i said yes, indeed. and i telegraphed him. i stayed here the next morning on april the 10th. i wanted to speak with general lee again, and i rode my horse out to meet him. he did not know i was coming. when he saw me, he got quickly mounted and rode out to meet me and we had about a 30-minute conversation. and in that conversation i asked him to order all confederate armies to lay their weapons down. and he demurred and said i

really cannot do that without speaking to the president. he did not know, nor did i, that that at the moment we were speaking president davis was fleeing to georgia. i told him there's not a southerner under arms who will not obey your order. and he said -- and what i disagreed with him, i respect him for it -- he said this is a political matter that i cannot deal with. i can only deal with my army to surrender. >> let's get one more call from illinois. this is mike in metropolitan, illinois. mike, go ahead. >> caller: yes, this is mike in metropolis, illinois. what kind of documents, were there any particular documents or records that were the most helpful to you in preparing what obviously you have an almost comprehensive knowledge of the can background of general grant. were there any particular documents that were especially helpful? >> no, there weren't. i had been giving the document quite a bit of thought. that's a good question. it gets to the root of the matter.

i did not have any templates or pattern to follow. i had to write my own terms. president lincoln did not dictate to me what he wanted me to say. so it was up to me. i refer you to the surrender document, or the terms that i wrote for general lee. and it's simple, it is straightforward. and as i said earlier, i didn't want a jot, tittle, period or comment in that document that you could argue about. >> before we went on the air you and i talked a little bit about traveler, the horse portraying traveler. he has an interesting background. >> he's from liberty, north carolina. he's owned by copper top farms. it's a farm for therapy animals, wounded veterans, elderly people and children. traveler is a therapy horse and they found that wounded veterans in particular bond with horses.

there's something about the horse and the man that help a lot. besides looking exactly like traveler -- and the horse's name is actually zeus, when they told me that i wasn't sure i wanted to get on him. but he's a great horse and he helps injured people, which i think is fantastic. yesterday and the day before we were up at the mclean house, i was mounted on zeus, traveler, and he stood there for three hours without moving while people took photographs. he's a remarkable animal. >> looks like we're going to have a couple more callers. you both are wilting in the sun a little bit. we appreciate you staying with us on american history tv. let's go to david who is in pittsburgh. good afternoon. hello, pittsburgh. are you there?

we will wait to get the caller on the line. back into character here for a minute. there were many surrenders to come. what sort of role -- several, anyway, what sort of role did general grant have in those surrenders? >> i went back to washington city after the surrender here to stop all of the military contracts that were costing the government millions of dollars per day. i'm an old quarter master, 4th infantry regiment, and i knew what it was costing. general sherman took the surrender of general joseph eggleston johnson in north carolina and gave him essentially the same terms that i had given general lee. unfortunately, by that time president lincoln had been assassinated, radical republicans had taken control of the congress, and they castigated general sherman greatly for too generous terms. >> even though they were the same terms? >> essentially the same.

they wanted to court-martial him, some of the senators. and i was dispatched to north carolina in a special train. i never got off the train because i did not want anyone to know i was there because i felt it would cast aspersions on general sherman. i had sherman come to me. i told him, this is not going to work. you're going to have to write another surrender, a stiffer one. and he didn't like it, but that's sherman. he went back and offered general johnston another surrender document that he had no choice but to accept. >> general lee, now that your role was over with the army of northern virginia, how much did you stay in touch -- how much did you know of the subsequent surrenders in north carolina, in texas? >> not very much. i was trying to follow the information, but basically i was in seclusion in richmond with my family. so what information i did receive was various letters or

people that came to pay respects and they would tell me what was happening. you have to understand, in virginia, particularly the lines of communication were destroyed. so information about general johnston was slow in reaching me. and by the time it got to me, general grant had already taken care of that. and i didn't -- i was not even aware of that. >> step out of character for a second. thomas, kurt, as we look back 150 years, what's the lesson today for people here at appomattox? what's the lesson to be learned from 150 years ago? general? >> i think the lesson that we should take away from this is that no matter what the issue or the topic, cooler heads must ultimately prevail. we must find compromise, we must resolve issues, as difficult as it may be. cooler heads were allowed to

prevail and plunged us into a war that really didn't have to happen. >> would you agree with general grant? >> i would agree with him on that. i would also like them to take away from this place the sacrifice on both armies. >> indeed. >> for four years and what it took to come here. but, in particular, how general grant handled the surrender and how much that made a difference in the healing of the country. >> let's get another call. we have jane in albertson, new york. jane, are you there? >> caller: yes, i am. hi. i wanted to extend my gratitude to these gentlemen portraying lee and grant. i think it's just an awesome portrayal and they're performing a great service to our nation. i'm aware that this has got to be a lot of effort, lot of study, lot of financial cost on their part. i just wanted to extend gratitude to these gentlemen. it's a wonderful service.

they are doing an awesome job. thank you, gentlemen, very, very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> how far in advance did you know you'd be here for these events on the 150th? >> i knew three years ago coming up here with the group, lincoln's generals, i was portraying general grant with the group lincoln's generals. my first trip up here three years ago, the park service indicated to me they wanted me to be the grant for the 150th. >> i positively knew i would be here last august. i had a pretty good idea i'd be here last april, when i came up to meet everyone, and plus the park service meet me. what would you say, i had a year to prepare? >> about. >> if you'd ask me a year and a half ago if i'd be here, i would never imagine such an honor. >> it's -- this is sort of a highlight for events beyond this. what do you have on tap?

>> i will probably do reenacting still. >> yes. >> i will do living history where i can. and i have been requested at various places as i know general grant has to talk about the war, to present myself as lee, and that's what i plan on doing. >> i plan on continuing to portray general grant, because i have no political ambitions at this time. ultimately, actually, very soon, i'll portray general grant -- president grant as well as general grant. >> what sort of events will those be like? >> living history events like this, reenactments, a lot of educational, professional leadership organizations, such as that, people want to know how grant did what he did, how president grant did what he did. >> grant's memoirs became a

bestseller as he died, after his presidency. >> yes. i never read them, i finished them and died three days later. i understand they are good. >> general lee, did you write your own stuff? >> i did not write memoirs. i asked various officers for paperwork but understand i only live five years after the war. >> let's see if we have one more caller on the air. on american history tv. is somebody there? go ahead. hello. go ahead, you're on american history tv. you're on the air. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i would like to know is, i read that for you, general lee, that you took it very, very bad when you lost the war. how did you cope, and what did you do after the war? what did you do to, like, cope from the loss of the war? >> the first thing i did was get with my family in richmond and

took some time of seclusion with the family. we left richmond to a friend's farm, which was further away from a lot of people, the press of people who wanted to come to the house and pay their respects to me. and i basically put my hands in the arms of god and said, show me what to do next. >> general grant, you were in washington. >> i was in washington, and in august of 1866, i was appointed general, they created the rank general of the army, and i got my fourth star, i was the first general of the army, and i was general in chief until the republican party approached me after andrew johnson's term was nearing an end and requested that i run. i did not want to run, but i felt that the party that elected president lincoln had come to me and asked me, and i should answer the call, so i ran for the presidency.

>> general grant portrayed by curt fields, general robert e. lee portrayed by thomas jesse. here on american history tv. thank you for joining us and being with the viewers as well. >> tonight on american history tv, programs about world war ii. at 8:00 p.m., tom brokaw on the war's impact on america and the world. at 9:00 p.m., the world war ii victory in europe 70th anniversary ceremony. at 10:25, the victory in europe 70th anniversary flyover. later county 11:15 p.m., the victory over japan, 70th anniversary ceremony. world war ii on american history tv, 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. >> abigail filmore taught tea

private school and successfully lobbied congress for funds to create the first white house library. mamie eisenhower's hair style and love of pink created fashion sensations. mamie pink was marketed as a color and stores sold clip-on bangs to women eager to replicate her style. jacqueline kennedy was responsible for the creation of the white house historical association. and nancy reagan as a young actress saw her name mistakenly on the black list of mistaken communist sympathizers in the late 1940s. she appealed to screen actors guild head ronald reagan for help. she later became his wife. these stories and more are featured in c-span's book "first ladies, presidential historians on the lives of 45 iconic american women." the book makes a great gift for the holidays. giving readers a look into the personal lives of every first lady in american history. stories of fascinating women and how their legacies resonate today. share the stories of america's first ladies for the holidays.

c-span's book "first ladies" is available as a hard cover or ebook from your favorite bookstore or online book seller. be sure to order your copy today. next from the camp sumter civil war military prison in andersonville, georgia, we talk to professor leslie gordon. this is 45 minutes.