Let us have peace.

Ulysses S. Grant’s “Let us have peace” is most closely associated with the end of the American Civil War. After Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, Grant issued a brief congratulatory order to his troops. In it he urged restraint and reconciliation rather than triumphalism, emphasizing that the war’s decisive military conclusion should be followed by a return to civil order. The phrase later became a widely repeated summary of Grant’s public posture as the Union’s leading general and, soon after, as a national political figure identified with restoring unity.

The sentence is a compact rhetorical pivot from conflict to consolidation. Spoken by a general-turned-president, it signals that military victory is not an end in itself; the harder task is building a durable peace—political, social, and legal—after civil war. The inclusive “us” frames peace as a shared national project rather than a concession by one side to another. In Reconstruction context, the line can be read both as a call for reconciliation and as a promise of stability through federal authority: peace is not merely the absence of fighting, but the establishment of conditions in which the Union can function and citizens’ rights can be secured. Its brevity helped it endure as a motto-like summary of Grant’s public posture.