paroling of the Confederate force occupied about a CHAP. XII. week. Thirty-seven thousand, officers and men, were paroled in North Carolina - and these were exclusive of the thousands who deserted their camps during the suspension of hostilities; some sixty thousand surrendered as reported by Wilson in Georgia and Florida. General Johnston closes his account of this transaction with these generous words, as creditable to him as to those of whom he writes: "The United States troops that remained in the Southern States on military duty conducted themselves as if they thought that the object of the war had been the restoration of the Union. They treated the people around them as they would have done those of Ohio or New York, if stationed among them, as their fellow-citizens." i

Sherman,

Vol. II.,

p. 362.

Sherman did not pretend to relish or approve the decision of the Government in regard to his diplomacy. He submitted like a soldier, carried out his orders punctually; but he said to Stanton plainly that the Government had made a mis- "Memoirs." take. He wrote on the 25th to Grant, then present with him at headquarters, "I now apprehend that the rebel armies will disperse; and instead of deal- April, 1865. ing with six or seven States, we will have to deal with numberless bands of desperados, headed by such men as Mosby, Forrest, Red Jackson, and others, who know not, and care not for danger and its consequences." He did not know that Forrest had at last got all the fighting he wanted at Wilson's hands, and that Mosby was soon to be a Federal office-holder. Sherman was preparing to

1 He adds in a footnote: "This language excludes those of the Freedmen's Bureau."

Ibid.

CHAP. XII. go to Savannah to direct the further operations April, 1865. of Wilson's cavalry, when on the 28th he received

a New York paper containing Stanton's bulletin in regard to his convention with Johnston. This naturally roused him to great wrath; he wrote an eloquent and fiery defense of his conduct to Grant, but hastened on his journey to Savannah nevertheless, made all needful provision for Wilson, and then returned to find still further cause of indignation. General Grant had transferred his headquarters to Washington, and Halleck had been made commander of the Armies of the Potomac and the James. In this capacity, filled with new zeal on the occasion of the Johnston convention, Halleck had ordered Meade's army, disregarding the truce, to push forward against Johnston and to attack him, regardless of Sherman's orders. These orders, though they were nullified by the surrender, Bowers to had injudiciously been published. This new insult completed the measure of Sherman's anger. May 25 and He broke out into open defiance of the authorities who he thought were persecuting him with deliberon Conduct ate malice, and declared in a report to Grant that he would have maintained his truce at any cost of life. When Grant suggested that this was uncalled for, and offered him an opportunity to correct the report, Sherman refused to do so, avowing his readiness to obey all future orders of the President and the General, but insisting that his record should stand as written. He declined to meet Halleck in Richmond and warned him to keep out of his way, and on arriving in Washington publicly refused the proffered hand of Stanton at the grand review of the armies.

Sherman,

and Sherman to

Bowers,

26, 1865. Report Committee

of the War,

1865. Vol. III., p. 20.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS

W

1865.

HEN Jefferson Davis and the remnant of the CH. XIII. Confederate Cabinet, with the more important of their department archives, left Richmond on the night of April 2, in consequence of Lee's retreat, they proceeded to Danville, southwest of Richmond, arriving there the following morning. In a conference between Davis and Lee, in which the probability of abandoning Richmond was discussed, they had agreed upon this point at which to endeavor to unite the armies of Lee and Johnston, first to attack and beat Sherman and then return and defeat Grant. But Grant, so far from permitting Lee to execute the proposed junction, did not even allow him to reach Danville. Lee had been pressed so hard that he had not found opportunity to inform Davis where he was going, and this absence of news probably served to give Davis an intimation that their preconcerted plans were not likely to reach fulfillment. Nevertheless, the rebel President made a show of confidence; rooms were obtained, and, he says, the "different departments resumed their routine labors," though it may be doubted whether in these labors they earned the compensation which the Confederate States promised them.

CH. XIII.

Two days after his arrival at Danville, Jefferson Davis added one more to his many rhetorical efforts April, 1865. to "fire the Southern heart." On the 5th he issued a proclamation, in which, after reciting the late disasters in as hopeful a strain as possible, he broke again into his never-failing grandiloquence:

Davis,

Fall of the Confederate

Govern

ment.' Vol. II., p. 677.

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.

Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude which never yet failed me, I announce to you, fellowcountrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul; that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy; that Virginia — noble State, whose ancient renown has been eclipsed by her still more glorious recent history; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock of this war; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come - that Virginia, with the help of the people and by the blessing of Providence, shall be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous invaders of her territory.

If, by the stress of numbers, we should be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from her limits or those of any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.

In his book, Davis is frank enough to admit that this language, in the light of subsequent events, may fairly be said to have been oversanguine. He probably very soon reached this conviction, for almost before the ink was dry on the document a son of General Henry A. Wise, escaping through the Federal lines on a swift horse, brought him infor