in moving detail by Chamberlain: In his book Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War, S. C. Gwynne states that this account is “one of the most cherished of the bogus Appomattox stories ... [but] ... there is no convincing evidence that it ever happened ... [N]one of the thirty thousand other people who saw the surrender noted any such event”. According to Gwynne, Chamberlain was, in his later years, "one of the great embellishers of the war". ]Chamberlain's] memoirs ... often reflect[ed] the world as he wanted it to be instead of the way it was. For one thing, he did not command the troops at the ceremony, as he claimed, and thus couldn’t order the men to salute. His story, moreover, changed significantly over the years. ... Its staying power was mostly rooted in the fact that Gordon never refuted it. The rebel general apparently liked it, and it reflected well on him, as the time went by Gordon added his own liberal embellishments, including the suggestion that Lee himself had led the Army through town. The two generals would clearly have preferred this distinctly Walter Scott-like sequence, described in countless books and memoirs, to the decidedly less romantic one that actually took place. Though Gordon himself often claimed he was promoted to lieutenant general, there is no official record of this occurring. Postbellum career As the government of the State of Georgia was being reconstituted for readmission to the Union, Gordon ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1868, but was defeated by Republican Rufus Bullock in a vote of 83,527 to 76,356. He was a presidential elector in 1868. Gordon was elected to the US Senate in 1873, and in 1879, he became the first ex-Confederate to preside over the Senate. He was a strong supporter of the "New South" and industrialization and he was a part of the Bourbon Triumvirate. Gordon resigned as senator on May 19, 1880. After his unexpected resignation, Governor Alfred H. Colquitt quickly appointed Joseph E. Brown to succeed Gordon. There were allegations of corruption when it was discovered Gordon resigned to promote a venture for the Georgia Pacific Railway. He was elected Governor of Georgia in 1886 and returned to the U.S. Senate from 1891 to 1897. In 1903, Gordon published an account of his Civil War service entitled Reminiscences of