Edward Porter Alexander

A native of Georgia and a West Point graduate, Brigadier General Edward Porter Alexander was an artillerist and engineer who witnessed all the great battles of the Eastern theater as well as the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. After Appomattox, Alexander found himself in dire need of money, friends, and some notion of a future, which he imagined might take place somewhere in South America, fighting new civil wars on a different continent. This excerpt from General Porter's private memoir, Fighting for the Confederacy, begins on April 9, 1865, as Ulysses S. Grant lays down the terms of surrender to General Lee at Appomattox.

The terms of the surrender were drawn up by Gen. Grant himself in a brief note rapidly written, & all the details as afterward carried out...