The Confederates were in flight. Tired and hungry, they overran the farmland of the Appomattox River Valley as the tattered Union army, sure now of victory, pursued them. How much longer would this tragic war between the North and the South go on?

Only three miles apart, the commanding generals of the opposing armies—Grant and Lee—waited and hoped for the end. Professional soldiers though they were, they both hated war with the suffering and loss of life that it must bring.

MacKinlay Kantor gives us vivid pictures of the two generals and leads us, step by step, to the McLean house at Appomattox where Lee surrendered to Grant. They were no ordinary men, these two, yet they had habits of mind and action that make them seem very much like the people around us.

Though this is an account of defeat and victory, animals play an important part in it, too. In the days when jeeps were unknown a good horse was a necessary part of a general's equipment. But who could love a jeep as General Lee loved his Traveller, a horse as proud and gray as the man who rode him? No less valiant was General Grant's Cincinnati—a stout-hearted animal, worthy of a great master.

Readers everywhere will be stirred by this brilliant portrayal of two American heroes who loved the causes for which they fought, but who loved peace and the welfare of their people still more.

From the dust jacket