ten o’clock
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 .