army, Grant was never tempted to enter Richmond and play the swaggering conquistador, a piece of symbolism as profound as his upcoming mercy at Appomattox. The historian John Lothrop Motley praised this exemplary restraint: “There is something very sublime to my imagination in the fact that Grant has never yet set his foot in Richmond, and perhaps never will.”41 With poetic justice, black soldiers joined the entrance of Union troops into the ravaged capital on April 3. The message wasn’t lost on the townspeople. “The white citizens felt annoyed that the city should be held mostly by negro
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