Lincoln's Interviews with Campbell--Withdraws Authority for Meeting of
Virginia Legislature--Conference of Davis and Johnston at
Greensboro--Johnston Asks for an Armistice--Meeting of Sherman and
Johnston--Their Agreement--Rejected at Washington--Surrender of
Johnston--Surrender of other Confederate Forces--End of the Rebel
Navy--Capture of Jefferson Davis--Surrender of E. Kirby Smith--Number of
Confederates Surrendered and Exchanged--Reduction of Federal Army to a
Peace Footing--Grand Review of the Army
While in Richmond, Mr. Lincoln had two interviews with John A. Campbell,
rebel Secretary of War, who had not accompanied the other fleeing
officials, preferring instead to submit to Federal authority. Mr.
Campbell had been one of the commissioners at the Hampton Roads
conference, and Mr. Lincoln now gave him a written memorandum repeating
in substance the terms he had then offered the Confederates. On
Campbell's suggestion that the Virginia legislature, if allowed to come
together, would at once repeal its ordinance of secession and withdraw
all Virginia troops from the field, he also gave permission for its
members to assemble for that purpose. But this, being distorted into
authority to sit in judgment on the political consequences of the war,
was soon withdrawn.
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet proceeded to Danville, where, two days
after his arrival, the rebel President made still another effort to fire
the Southern heart, announcing, "We have now entered upon a new phase
of the struggle. Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular
points, our army will be free to move from point to point to strike the
enemy in detail far from his base. Let us but will it and we are free";
and declaring in sonorous periods his purpose never to abandon one foot
of ground to the invader.
The ink was hardly dry on the document when news came of the surrender
of Lee's army, and that the Federal cavalry was pushing southward west
of Danville. So the Confederate government again hastily packed its
archives and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where its headquarters
were prudently kept on the train at the depot. Here Mr. Davis sent for
Generals Johnston and Beauregard, and a conference took place between
them and the members of the fleeing government--a conference not unmixed
with embarrassment, since Mr. Davis still "willed" the success of the
Confederacy too strongly to see the true hopelessness of the situation,
while the generals and most of his cabinet were agreed that their cause
was lost. The council of war over, General Johnston returned to his army
to begin negotiations with Sherman; and on the following day, April 14,
Davis and his party left Greensboro to continue their journey southward.
Sherman had returned to Goldsboro from his visit to City Point, and set
himself at once to the reorganization of his army and the replenishment
of his stores. He still thought there was a hard campaign with desperate
fighting ahead of him. Even on April 6, when he received news of the
fall of Richmond and the flight of Lee and the Confederate government,
he was unable to understand the full extent of the national triumph. He
admired Grant so far as a man might, short of idolatry, yet the long
habit of respect for Lee led him to think he would somehow get away and
join Johnston in his front with at least a portion of the Army of
Northern Virginia. He had already begun his march upon Johnston when he
learned of Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
Definitely relieved from apprehension of a junction of the two
Confederate armies, he now had no fear except of a flight and dispersal
of Johnston's forces into guerrilla bands. If they ran away, he felt he
could not catch them; the country was too open. They could scatter and
meet again, and so continue a partizan warfare indefinitely. He could
not be expected to know that this resolute enemy was sick to the heart
of war, and that the desire for more fighting survived only in a group
of fugitive politicians flying through the pine forests of the Carolinas
from a danger which did not exist.
Entering Raleigh on the morning of the thirteenth, he turned his heads
of column southwest, hoping to cut off Johnston's southward march, but
made no great haste, thinking Johnston's cavalry superior to his own,
and desiring Sheridan to join him before he pushed the Confederates to
extremities. While here, however, he received a communication from
General Johnston, dated the thirteenth, proposing an armistice to enable
the National and Confederate governments to negotiate on equal terms. It
had been dictated by Jefferson Davis during the conference at
Greensboro, written down by S.R. Mallory, and merely signed by Johnston,
and was inadmissible and even offensive in its terms; but Sherman,
anxious for peace, and himself incapable of discourtesy to a brave
enemy, took no notice of its language, and answered so cordially that
the Confederates were probably encouraged to ask for better conditions
of surrender than they had expected to receive.
The two great antagonists met on April 17, when Sherman offered
Johnston the same terms that had been accorded Lee, and also
communicated the news he had that morning received of the murder of Mr.
Lincoln. The Confederate general expressed his unfeigned sorrow at this
calamity, which smote the South, he said, as deeply as the North; and in
this mood of sympathy the discussion began. Johnston asserted that he
would not be justified in such a capitulation as Sherman proposed, but
suggested that together they might arrange the terms of a permanent
peace. This idea pleased Sherman, to whom the prospect of ending the war
without shedding another drop of blood was so tempting that he did not
sufficiently consider the limits of his authority in the matter. It can
be said, moreover, in extenuation of his course, that President
Lincoln's despatch to Grant of March 3, which expressly forbade Grant to
"decide, discuss, or to confer upon any political question," had never
been communicated to Sherman; while the very liberality of Grant's terms
led him to believe that he was acting in accordance with the views of
the administration.
But the wisdom of Lincoln's peremptory order was completely vindicated.
With the best intentions in the world, Sherman, beginning very properly
by offering his antagonist the same terms accorded Lee, ended, after two
days' negotiation, by making a treaty of peace with the Confederate
States, including a preliminary armistice, the disbandment of the
Confederate armies, recognition by the United States Executive of the
several State governments, reëstablishment of the Federal courts, and a
general amnesty. "Not being fully empowered by our respective principals
to fulfil these terms," the agreement truthfully concluded, "we
individually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly obtain the
necessary authority."
The rebel President, with unnecessary formality, required a report from
General Breckinridge, his Secretary of War, on the desirability of
ratifying this most favorable convention. Scarcely had he given it his
indorsement when news came that it had been disapproved at Washington,
and that Sherman had been directed to continue his military operations;
and the peripatetic government once more took up its southward flight.
The moment General Grant read the agreement he saw it was entirely
inadmissible. The new President called his cabinet together, and Mr.
Lincoln's instructions of March 3 to Grant were repeated to
Sherman--somewhat tardily, it must be confessed--as his rule of action.
All this was a matter of course, and General Sherman could not properly,
and perhaps would not, have objected to it. But the calm spirit of
Lincoln was now absent from the councils of the government; and it was
not in Andrew Johnson and Mr. Stanton to pass over a mistake like this,
even in the case of one of the most illustrious captains of the age.
They ordered Grant to proceed at once to Sherman's headquarters, and to
direct operations against the enemy; and, what was worse, Mr. Stanton
printed in the newspapers the reasons of the government for disapproving
the agreement in terms of sharpest censure of General Sherman. This,
when it came to his notice some weeks later, filled him with hot
indignation, and, coupled with some orders Halleck, who had been made
commander of the armies of the Potomac and the James, issued to Meade,
to disregard Sherman's truce and push forward against Johnston, roused
him to open defiance of the authorities he thought were persecuting him,
and made him declare in a report to Grant, that he would have maintained
his truce at any cost of life. Halleck's order, however, had been
nullified by Johnston's surrender, and Grant, suggesting that this
outburst was uncalled for, offered Sherman the opportunity to correct
the statement. This he refused, insisting that his record stand as
written, although avowing his readiness to obey all future orders of
Grant and the President.
So far as Johnston was concerned, the war was indeed over. He was unable
longer to hold his men together. Eight thousand of them left their camps
and went home in the week of the truce, many riding away on the
artillery horses and train mules. On notice of Federal disapproval of
his negotiations with Sherman, he disregarded Jefferson Davis's
instructions to disband the infantry and try to escape with the cavalry
and light guns, and answered Sherman's summons by inviting another
conference, at which, on April 26, he surrendered all the forces in his
command on the same terms granted Lee at Appomattox; Sherman supplying,
as did Grant, rations for the beaten army. Thirty-seven thousand men and
officers were paroled in North Carolina--exclusive, of course, of the
thousands who had slipped away to their homes during the suspension of
hostilities.
After Appomattox the rebellion fell to pieces all at once. Lee
surrendered less than one sixth of the Confederates in arms on April 9.
The armies that still remained, though inconsiderable when compared with
the mighty host under the national colors, were yet infinitely larger
than any Washington ever commanded, and capable of strenuous resistance
and of incalculable mischief. But the march of Sherman from Atlanta to
the sea, and his northward progress through the Carolinas, had
predisposed the great interior region to make an end of strife: a
tendency which was greatly promoted by the masterly raid of General J.H.
Wilson's cavalry through Alabama, and his defeat of Forrest at Selma.
An officer of Taylor's staff came to Canby's headquarters on April 19 to
make arrangements for the surrender of all the Confederate forces east
of the Mississippi not already paroled by Sherman and Wilson, embracing
some forty-two thousand men. The terms were agreed upon and signed on
May 4, at the village of Citronelle in Alabama. At the same time and
place the Confederate Commodore Farrand surrendered to Rear-Admiral
Thatcher all the naval forces Of the Confederacy in the neighborhood of
Mobile--a dozen vessels and some hundreds of officers.
The rebel navy had practically ceased to exist some months before. The
splendid fight in Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, between Farragut's fleet
and the rebel ram _Tennessee_, with her three attendant gunboats, and
Cushing's daring destruction of the powerful _Albemarle_ in Albemarle
Sound on October 27, marked its end in Confederate waters. The duel
between the _Kearsarge_ and the _Alabama_ off Cherbourg had already
taken place; a few more encounters, at or near foreign ports, furnished
occasion for personal bravery and subsequent lively diplomatic
correspondence; and rebel vessels, fitted out under the unduly lenient
"neutrality" of France and England, continued for a time to work havoc
with American shipping in various parts of the world. But these two
Union successes, and the final capture of Fort Fisher and of Wilmington
early in 1865, which closed the last haven for daring blockade-runners,
practically silenced the Confederate navy.
General E. Kirby Smith commanded all the insurgent forces west of the
Mississippi. On him the desperate hopes of Mr. Davis and his flying
cabinet were fixed, after the successive surrenders of Lee and Johnston
had left them no prospect in the east. They imagined they could move
westward, gathering up stragglers as they fled, and, crossing the river,
join Smith's forces, and there continue the war. But after a time even
this hope failed them. Their escort melted away; members of the cabinet
dropped off on various pretexts, and Mr. Davis, abandoning the attempt
to reach the Mississippi River, turned again toward the east in an
effort to gain the Florida coast and escape by means of a sailing vessel
to Texas.
The two expeditions sent in pursuit of him by General Wilson did not
allow this consummation, which the government at Washington might
possibly have viewed with equanimity. His camp near Irwinville, Georgia,
was surrounded by Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard's command at dawn on May
10, and he was captured as he was about to mount horse with a few
companions and ride for the coast, leaving his family to follow more
slowly. The tradition that he was captured in disguise, having donned
female dress in a last desperate attempt to escape, has only this
foundation, that Mrs. Davis threw a cloak over her husband's shoulders,
and a shawl over his head, on the approach of the Federal soldiers. He
was taken to Fortress Monroe, and there kept in confinement for about
two years; was arraigned before the United States Circuit Court for the
District of Virginia for the crime of treason, and released on bail; and
was finally restored to all the duties and privileges of citizenship,
except the right to hold office, by President Johnson's proclamation of
amnesty of December 25, 1868.
General E. Kirby Smith, on whom Davis's last hopes of success had
centered, kept up so threatening an attitude that Sherman was sent from
Washington to bring him to reason. But he did not long hold his position
of solitary defiance. One more needless skirmish took place near
Brazos, Texas, and then Smith followed the example of Taylor and
surrendered his entire force, some eighteen thousand, to General Canby,
on May 26. One hundred and seventy-five thousand men in all were
surrendered by the different Confederate commanders, and there were, in
addition to these, about ninety-nine thousand prisoners in national
custody during the year. One third of these were exchanged, and two
thirds released. This was done as rapidly as possible by successive
orders of the War Department, beginning on May 9 and continuing through
the summer.
The first object of the government was to stop the waste of war.
Recruiting ceased immediately after Lee's surrender, and measures were
taken to reduce as promptly as possible the vast military establishment.
Every chief of bureau was ordered, on April 28, to proceed at once to
the reduction of expenses in his department to a peace footing; and this
before Taylor or Smith had surrendered, and while Jefferson Davis was
still at large. The army of a million men was brought down, with
incredible ease and celerity, to one of twenty-five thousand.
Before the great army melted away into the greater body of citizens, the
soldiers enjoyed one final triumph, a march through the capital,
undisturbed by death or danger, under the eyes of their highest
commanders, military and civilian, and the representatives of the people
whose nationality they had saved. Those who witnessed this solemn yet
joyous pageant will never forget it, and will pray that their children
may never witness anything like it. For two days this formidable host
marched the long stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue, starting from the
shadow of the dome of the Capitol, and filling that wide thoroughfare to
Georgetown with a serried mass, moving with the easy yet rapid pace of
veterans in cadence step. As a mere spectacle this march of the
mightiest host the continent has ever seen gathered together was grand
and imposing; but it was not as a spectacle alone that it affected the
beholder most deeply. It was not a mere holiday parade; it was an army
of citizens on their way home after a long and terrible war. Their
clothes were worn and pierced with bullets; their banners had been torn
with shot and shell, and lashed in the winds of a thousand battles; the
very drums and fifes had called out the troops to numberless night
alarms, and sounded the onset on historic fields. The whole country
claimed these heroes as a part of themselves. And now, done with
fighting, they were going joyously and peaceably to their homes, to take
up again the tasks they had willingly laid down in the hour of their
country's peril.
The world had many lessons to learn from this great conflict, which
liberated a subject people and changed the tactics of modern warfare;
but the greatest lesson it taught the nations of waiting Europe was the
conservative power of democracy--that a million men, flushed with
victory, and with arms in their hands, could be trusted to disband the
moment the need for their services was over, and take up again the
soberer labors of peace.
Friends loaded these veterans with flowers as they swung down the
Avenue, both men and officers, until some were fairly hidden under their
fragrant burden. There was laughter and applause; grotesque figures were
not absent as Sherman's legions passed, with their "bummers" and their
regimental pets; but with all the shouting and the laughter and the joy
of this unprecedented ceremony, there was one sad and dominant thought
which could not be driven from the minds of those who saw it--that of
the men who were absent, and who had, nevertheless, richly earned the
right to be there. The soldiers in their shrunken companies were
conscious of the ever-present memories of the brave comrades who had
fallen by the way; and in the whole army there was the passionate and
unavailing regret for their wise, gentle, and powerful friend, Abraham
Lincoln, gone forever from the house by the Avenue, who had called the
great host into being, directed the course of the nation during the four
years they had been fighting for its preservation, and for whom, more
than for any other, this crowning peaceful pageant would have been
fraught with deep and happy meaning.