When the terms of surrender were agreed upon, the Confederate soldiers were provided with food from the National stores; and on Wednesday, the 12th of April, 1865, they laid down their arms. Transportation and food were provided by the Government to large numbers of the troops on their journey homeward. The number paroled was about twenty-five thousand men, of whom not more than nine thousand men had arms in their hands. With the men were surrendered about sixteen thousand small arms, one hundred and fifty pieces of artillery, seventy-one stand of colors, about eleven hundred wagons and caissons, and four thousand horses and mules. The official announcement of the great victory was sent over the land with the speed of lightning, by the Secretary of War, and an order for a salute of two hundred guns at the headquarters of every army, and at the Military Academy at West Point.

President Lincoln had been at City Point and vicinity, for several days before the fall of Richmond, anxiously watching the current of events. On the day after the Confederate capital was evacuated, he went up to that city on Admiral Porter's flag-ship, the Malvern; and while on his way to Weitzel's headquarters, at the late residence of Jefferson Davis, he was saluted with the loud cheers and grateful ejaculations of a vast concourse of emancipated slaves, who had been told that the "tall man" was their liberator. On the day of Lee's surrender, he returned to Washington; and on the 11th he issued a proclamation, in which he demanded, henceforth, for our vessels in foreign ports, on penalty of retaliation, those privileges and immunities which had hitherto been denied them on the plea of according equal belligerent rights to the Republic and its internal enemies. On the following day an order was issued from the War Department, putting an end to all drafting and recruiting for the National army, and the purchase of munitions of war and supplies. This virtual proclamation of the end of the war went over the land on the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter (April 14), while General Anderson was replacing the old flag over the ruins of that fortress. Preparations were a-making for a National Thanksgiving, and the beams of returning peace illuminated the Republic, so to speak, when suddenly a dark cloud appeared and overspread the firmament with a gloomy pall. Before midnight the telegraph flashed the sad tidings over the land that the President had been assassinated! He was sitting in a theatre at Washington, with his wife and friends, when John Wilkes Booth, an actor by profession, entered his box stealthily and shot Mr. Lincoln in the back of his head with a Derringer pistol. The assassin then rushed to the front of the box with a gleaming dagger in his hand, and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis”—so may it always be with tyrants—the

CHAP. XXIV.

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

1687

motto on the seal of Virginia. Then he leaped upon the stage, booted and spurred for a night ride; and shouting to the audience, "The South is avenged!" he escaped by a back door, mounted a horse that was in readiness for him, dashed across the Anacosta and found temporary shelter among sympathizing Maryland slaveholders. Then he fled into Virginia, where he was overtaken by pursuers in a barn below Fredericksburg, which was set on fire; and as the assassin emerged from the flames he was shot by a sergeant named Boston Corbett.

The President expired early in the morning of the 15th of April. His body was taken, in solemn procession, to his home in Springfield, Illinois, by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany and western cities, everywhere receiving tokens of the people's love and grief. Funeral honors were displayed in many cities in the land. Six hours after the demise of the Chief Magistrate, Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, who was his constitutional successor, took the oath of office as President of the United States, administered by Chief-Justice Chase.

There seems to be a warrant for the belief, that the assassination of the President was only a part of a plan, in which the murder of the cabinet ministers, General Grant, and prominent Republicans, was contemplated; for on the same evening a murderous attack was made upon Secretary Seward, at his own house, by an ex-Confederate soldier. Secretary Stanton was absent from his home, and was not visited. It was a night of horrors at the capital; and President Johnson issued a proclamation early in May, signed by himself and Mr. Hunter, the Assistant Secretary of State, in which he declared that there was "evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice" that there had been a conspiracy formed by "Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, Beverly Tucker, George N. Saunders and William C. Cleary, and other rebels and traitors against the Government of the United States, harbored in Canada," to assassinate the President and Secretary of State; and he offered a reward of $25,000 apiece for their arrest, excepting Cleary, a clerk, for whom $10,000 were offered.

With the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, the war was virtually ended. But only the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered. That of Johnston, in North Carolina, and smaller bodies elsewhere, were yet in When Sherman heard of the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg, he put his whole army in motion and moved on Johnston, who was at Smithfield, on the Neuse River, with full thirty thousand men, starting at daybreak on the 10th of April, for the purpose of striking his rear. Johnston had just heard of the surrender of Lee, and retreated through Raleigh, and along the course of the railway westward, toward Greensboro'. At the

same time Davis and his cabinet, who had made Danville the seat of the Confederate government for a few days, had fled from that place to Greensboro', with anxious solicitude for themselves and their treasures. They had proposed to Johnston that he should disperse his army excepting two or three batteries of artillery, and as many infantry as he could mount, and with these should form a body-guard for the "government," and strike for the Mississippi and beyond, with Mexico as their final objective. Johnston, a man of honor, spurned this base and selfish proposal to desert his companions-in-arms far away from their homes and unprovided for, and subject the people in the region where the army would be disbanded to the sore evils of plunder, which lawless bands of starving men would engage in. Governed by the principles of justice and humanity, he had the moral courage to do his duty according to the dictates of conscience, and refused to fight any more in a hopeless cause. He stated frankly to the people of his military department, that "war could no longer be continued by them, except as robbers," and that he should take immediate steps to save the army and people from further evil and to "avoid the crine of waging a hopeless war." On the 26th of April, Johnston, and the army under his command, excepting a body of cavalry led by Wade Hampton, surrendered to Sherman, near Durham Station, in Orange county, North Carolina, on the same generous terms accorded to Lee and his troops. The number surrendered and paroled was about twenty-five thousand, with one hundred and eight pieces of artillery, and about fifteen thousand small arms. The whole number of his troops present and elsewhere was seventy thousand. On the 4th of May, General Taylor surrendered the Confederate forces in Alabama to General Canby, at Citronville; and the Confederate navy in the Tombigbee River was surrendered to Admiral Farragut at the same time. The last conflict in the terrible Civil War occurred near Brazos Santiago, in Texas, on the 13th of May, when hostilities entirely ceased.

Jefferson Davis, as we have observed, set up his "government" at Danville, after his flight from Richmond. On the 5th of April, he issued a proclamation from that place, in his usual style. "Let us but will it," he said, “and we are free. Animated by that confidence in spirit and fortitude which never yet failed me, I announce to you, my fellow-countrymen, 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 one of the States of the Confederacy." This was followed a few days afterward by his proposition to Johnston to abandon his army and protect the "government" in its flight to Mexico. In his proclamation, Davis declared his purpose to defend Virginia, and that "no peace should ever be

CHAP. XXIV.

FLIGHT AND CAPTURE OF DAVIS.

1689

made with the infamous invaders of her territory;" now he ingloriously abandoned Virginia. When he heard of the surrender of Johnston's army, and the ring of Stoneman's sabres fell upon his ears, he and his cabinet, escorted by two thousand cavalry, fled across rivers and swamps, with their forces, toward the Gulf of Mexico; for the way to the Mississippi and beyond was barred. Rumors of Stoneman, of Wilson, and even of Sheridan being on their track quickened their flight; while their escort so rapidly dwindled that when they reached Washington, in Georgia, the troopers were not more than sufficient to make a respectable raiding party. There all the cabinet ministers but Postmaster-General Reagan, left Davis, whose wife and children, and Mrs. Davis's sister (Miss Howell) had accompanied the fugitive "government" from Danville. Now, for prudential reasons, this family took another but nearly parallel route for the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, traveling in wagons. Information soon reached Davis that some Confederate soldiers, believing that his wife had the treasure taken from Richmond with her, had formed a plot to seize all her trunks and search for it. He instantly hastened to the rescue of his family and property, and to provide for their protection. For this purpose he and a few followers rode rapidly eighteen miles and joined his family near Irwinsville, the capital of Irwin county, Georgia, nearly due south from Macon. They had just pitched tents for the night; and the wearied president of the ruined Confederacy lay down to rest, intending to retrace his steps in the morning.

One hundred thousand dollars had been offered by the Government for Davis's capture. Vigilance was thereby made keen and active. General Wilson was at Macon when he heard of Davis's flight toward the Gulf, and sent out two bodies of cavalry to intercept him. One was composed of Michigan men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard, and the others were from Wisconsin, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Hardin. Discovering Davis's halting place, both parties approached the camp of the sleeping fugitives simul taneously from opposite directions, and, mistaking each other for enemies, in the gray light of early dawn, they exchanged shots. The noise aroused the slumberers. The camp was surrounded; and Davis, while attempting to escape partially disguised in a woman's water-proof cloak, and a shawl thrown over his head by Miss Howell, was captured by Pritchard and his men. The whole fugitive party were taken to Macon. Thence they were sent to Savannah, and conveyed by water to Fortress Monroe, where Davis was confined in comfortable quarters in a casemate. There he remained a long time, when he was admitted to bail. He was never tried, and still lives (1877), an uncompromising enemy of the Republic which he tried to destroy.

PEACE-T ARMIES RETURN HOME-ADDRESS TO THE SOLDIERS BY THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEFDISBANDING OF THE ARMIES A PROBLEM SOLVED-THE NAVY, ITS GROWTH AND WORK— THE BLOCKADE AND BLOCKADE-RUNNERS, AND THE RESULTS-EXCHANGE OF PRISONERSDAVIS'S PROCLAMATIONS-EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS STOPPED-TREATMENT OF UNION PRISONERS- - LEE'S IGNORANCE -THE RESPONSIBILITY PROPERLY PLACED-HOSPITALS- UNITED

STATES SANITARY AND CHRISTIAN COMMISSIONS.

W®

HEN the Civil War, waged by the armies in the field, had ended, the people turned to the pursuits of peace. There was joy and hope in every loyal bosom in the land; and the friends. of the Union everywhere, found expression to their feelings in the following hymn, composed by George H. Boker, and sung by the Loyal League of Philadelphia on the anniversary of the nation's independence, just four years after the National Congress met at the Capitol to provide for the suppression of the great insurrection and the salvation of the Republic:

"Thank God the bloody days are past,
Our patient hopes are crown'd at last;
And sounds of bugle, drum and fife,
But lead our heroes home from strife!

"Thank God there beams o'er land and sea,

Our blazing Star of victory;

And everywhere, from main to main,
The old flag flies and rules again!

"Thank God! oh dark and trodden race,
Your Lord no longer veils his face;
But through the clouds and woes of fight,
Shines on your souls a brighter light!

"Thank God! we see, on every hand,
Breast-high the rip'ning grain-crops stand;
The orchards bend, the herds increase,

But oh, thank God! thank God for PEACE!"

Before this hymn was chanted, the soldiers of the great armies of the Republic who had saved the nation from political death, and, incidentally, had achieved the work of emancipation for an enslaved race, were making