[central_va]

Lee to Texas Lt. Governor:

"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no, sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand."

[lentulusgracchus]

Yes, that is part of the quote I referred to. It was a conversation long kept in memory by that Texan, and then told to an Austin seminary professor, who had it committed to paper before a notary and kept it with his own papers, whence it was retrieved a few years later and published in his own biography.

I retrieved the whole passage from Googlebooks and saved it to memory.

Lee, in that passage, refers to his own continuing impairment and the fact that he was being watched constantly by the federal authorities and politicians in Washington (Stanton, Thad Stevens, and that crowd), who would seize on any "rebellious" (there was no "rebellion") statement to justify further exactions and impositions on the defeated Peoples.

The occasion was a meeting discussing politics in the South, asked for by former Gen. Rosecrans (as the Radicals' inspector-general of the defeated generals) and acceded to by Gen. Lee, and attended by most of the general staff of the CSA. I wish there'd been a fly, or perhaps a small court recorder, on the wall.