CONCLUDING SCENES OF THE WAR.
A. D. 1865.
When General Johnston became aware of General Lee's retreat,
he was informed that his next duty would be to effect a junction
of his forces with those withdrawn from Petersburg. In
accordance with this object a movement was begun at Raleigh,
April 10th. The army, Governor Vance accompanying it, having
passed the capital, ex-Governors Graham and Swain, accompanied by
Surgeon-General Warren, met General Sherman at the head of his
vast army a few miles from Raleigh and asked him to protect the
city.
2. General Sherman and his accumulated army of more than a
hundred thousand men entered the capital city on April 13th, and
encamped near it. As the advance, under General Kilpatrick,
moved up Fayetteville street, a Confederate cavalryman,
Lieutenant Walsh, of Texas, before his flight, halted near the
State House and fired several times at Kilpatrick and his staff.
His horse falling in his effort to escape, he was captured and
taken before Kilpatrick, who ordered him to be immediately
hanged. This outrageous order for the murder of a Confederate
prisoner of war was speedily obeyed.
3. General Johnston was soon apprised of General Lee's
capitulation, and, after conference with President Davis at
Greensboro, he resolved to end the war by surrender of his army.
To this end, having communicated with General Sherman, they met
on April 18th, at the house of a Mr. Bennett, near Durham, and
agreed upon conditions of surrender, subject to the approval of
President Lincoln. Most unhappily for the Southern people, Mr.
Lincoln never had an opportunity to express his opinion
concerning this military convention; for he having just been
assassinated at Washington by John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson,
the Vice-President, had become President in his place.
4. Mr. Johnson was a North Carolinian by birth. He had lived in
Raleigh until be reached manhood and then emigrated to Tennessee,
where he became a very prominent citizen. When the war came on
he adhered to the Federal side, and was very bitter and harsh, in
his hostility to the South. He was rewarded for his course by
election to the Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1864. In
the violent excitement which followed upon the killing of
President Lincoln, Mr. Johnson would not sanction the liberal
terms of surrender which General Sherman had granted to General
Johnston, although General Sherman had been in conference with
the deceased statesman just previous to his death, and was
following his directions as to the treatment of the conquered
South.
5. Notwithstanding this refusal of the President of the United
States to carry out the agreement of the military commissioners,
the army of General Johnston was surrendered at Greensboro on
April 26th, 1865, and sent home on parole on like terms with the
Confederate troops at Appomattox.
6. General Schofield was made military Governor of North
Carolina, and his first official act was a proclamation declaring
freedom to the slaves in the State. After two centuries of
servitude, these people were at last delivered from their
bondage. It is difficult at this day to say who were the more
blessed in this deliverance--the slaves or their masters.
7. It was a hard thing for men who had been reared in the South
to realize that their principal property, guaranteed to them as
it was, in the fundamental law of the land, was founded in
injustice; and still harder was it to accept poverty on the
strength of a sentiment. Human nature is selfish in all regions,
and, that Southern men should have clung to their property is no
more than what their opponents would have done had the
circumstances been exchanged. It will be difficult for posterity
to understand what a mighty revolution in the domestic life of
the people was involved in this single act of an army officer.
[NOTE--In the State election of 1860 the total vote polled was
112,586--the largest that had ever been polled. North Carolina
furnished to the Confederacy over 150,000 men, or quite as many
soldiers as she had voters, during the four years of the war.
The total number of troops furnished by all the States of the
Confederacy was about 600,000, and it will be seen that North
Carolina furnished one-fourth of the entire force raised by the
Confederate government during the war. At Appomattox North
Carolina surrendered twice as many muskets as did any other
State, and at Greensboro more of her soldiers were among the
paroled than from any of her sister States. North Carolina's
losses by the casualties of the war were largely over 30,000 men
--Our Living and Our Dead.]
8. The slaves had been looking forward with hope, since the
beginning of the war, that freedom might be in store for them,
yet almost all of them had remained in quiet subjection at their
homes while the war was progressing. It seemed hard for them to
realize, for some time, that they were at last the masters of
their own movements. As a general thing, they continued quietly
at labor on the farms of their former owners until the crops that
were growing were complete in their tillage, or, as they
expressed it, "laid by."
9. Governor Vance was soon arrested and imprisoned in the "old
capitol" at Washington. President Davis was also captured and
imprisoned. Mr. Johnson appointed Vance's late political
antagonist, W. W. Holden, Provisional Governor, and, at the same
time, removed from office every State and county official in
North Carolina. For some weeks no officer with civil powers was
to be seen, and to the commanders of the many Federal posts alone
could the peaceful have looked for protection against violence
and fraud.
10. No man ever had so great an opportunity for fixing himself in
the esteem and affection of the people as Governor Holden had
during his administration as Provisional Governor, and no man
ever so completely threw golden opportunities away. Had he risen
to the full height of a patriot, his name would today be a loving
household word in every section of the State. But he did not,
and such opportunities rarely occur twice to any man.
11. His career had not been an uneventful one. Of humble origin,
he had, by dint of his own work and his own brains, carried
himself to the control of the Democratic party in the State. He
was not satisfied with the position of the editor of the chief
organ of the dominant party, and the pecuniary profits that then
resulted from such a position, but desired to be made Governor of
the State. He was defeated for the nomination by Judge Ellis
before the Democratic State Convention at Charlotte, and from
that period dates his downward career. He advocated the Douglas
movement, and then supported Breckinridge and Lane. He voted for
and signed the Ordinance of Secession, declaring he intended to
preserve as an heirloom in his family the pen with which he
attached his name to the ordinance; and then he became the head
and front of the Union element in the State during the war. At
the close of the war, as we have seen, he was made Provisional
Governor by President Johnson.
12. No man knew better than Governor Holden that on our side the
war was entirely at an end when the troops laid down their arms,
and that when the people of North Carolina renewed their
allegiance to the Federal government, they intended to stand to
it honestly and faithfully. None better than he knew that they
desired nothing so much as to set themselves to the task of
rebuilding their fallen fortunes. He knew, too, that they were
well aware that before this could be done, civil government, with
all its varied machinery, must be re-established, and that in all
that was right and proper for a people so situated, they were
ready to aid him in doing this. The returned soldiers, too,
especially felt that of them some recognition was due for the
honorable terms and respectful treatment accorded to them at
Appomattox and Greensboro.
13. In such mood it would have been an easy task for a ruler who
was both patriot and statesman to re-establish Federal authority
in North Carolina. It was simply impossible to punish all who
had fought against the Federal government. It was quite as
impossible to expect the many who had fought against it to take
part in punishing the few. Amnesty and oblivion on one side,
renewed allegiance and strict observer of the laws on the other,
plainly constituted the true solution of the problem.
Unfortunately, the partisan prevailed over the patriot. Instead
of granting amnesty and oblivion, treason was to be made odious
and traitors to be punished. Instead of making the path easy
back to the Union, it was constantly blocked up in every possible
way by both State and Federal authority. Of course an era of
bitterness began, which the long imprisonment of Mr. Davis, the
judicial murders of Mrs Surratt and Henry Wirz, the
protracted exclusion of the Southern States from all
participation in the general government, and the harsh policy of
reconstruction, daily served to intensify.
QUESTIONS.
1. What movement did General Johnston attempt after the surrender
of General Lee? What men met General Sherman's army in behalf of
the city of Raleigh?
2. When did Sherman's army reach Raleigh? What event is
mentioned?
3. What was done by Johnston after learning of Lee's surrender?
What occurred at Washington City?
4. What is said of President Andrew Johnson? How did he act
concerning Johnston's surrender?
5. When and where did General Johnston surrender?
6. Who became military Governor of North Carolina? What was his
first official act? What is said of the freedom of the slaves?
7. How is the question of slavery further considered?
8. How had the slaves acted during the war? How did they receive
the news of freedom?
9. What befell Governor Vance? To what office was W. W. Holden
appointed? What was the condition of civil affairs in North
Carolina?
10. What is said of Governor Holden?
11. Can you tell something of his life?
12. How should Governor Holden have viewed the situation?
13. What would have been the proper course to pursue towards
North Carolina?