Lee When Did Davis Receive Lee's Letter of April 20, 1865?

JeffBrooks

2nd Lieutenant
Joined
Aug 20, 2009
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Hutto, TX
Lee wrote Davis a letter on April 20, 1865, explaining the circumstances of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia and strongly advising Davis against engaging in a partisan war. It seems to be exceedingly unlikely that Davis could have received this letter before he was captured a month later, but I don't recall ever hearing any details about it. I assume that Davis never read the letter until, perhaps, after his release from prison. Does anyone know?
 
Swanson quotes this letter in Bloody Crimes (205-06), and says that Davis never received it. Swanson argues that even if he had received it, Davis would not have changed his plan, which was to escape to the west and marshal his forces there. Davis would have agreed with Lee about not carrying on a partisan guerrilla campaign, that they both viewed as being less than honorable, but Davis was nonetheless convinced he could rally his forces in the Trans-Mississippi and fight on in a conventional war. Swanson makes the point over and over in his book that, between a lack of timely communication with his commanders and his own ideological conviction, Davis at this point could not make a realistic appraisal of the situation. He was one of the last of the Confederacy's major leaders to understand that the war was irrevokably lost.
 
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