April 17, 1865---"It was a revolution of the politicians, not the people"

APRIL 17, 1865:        

“It was a revolution of the politicians, not the people.” --- Zebulon B. Vance

I

After his defeat at Columbus, General Howell Cobb C.S.A. withdraws his forces to Macon, planning on making a last stand.

Stoneman’s Raid reaches Morganton, N.C.. While wrecking the town, they discover trunks belonging to Mrs. Zebulon B. Vance, the wife of the Confederate Governor of North Carolina. Knowing that Vance must be nearby they occupy the town for several days sending out reconnaissance parties.

Vance is close by, and he is in company with Jefferson Davis. Vance is fed up with the war. He is fed up with Jefferson Davis too, whom he has never held in high regard. When he asks his President for orders, Davis responds by giving Vance a precis of the current state of the Confederacy. Vance’s irritation is so plain to see that John C. Breckinridge interrupts Davis. “What he means,” Breckinridge says with weariness, “is that you should go home and do the best for your people as you may.”

II

While on his way to meet Joseph E. Johnston, C.S.A., William Tecumseh Sherman was handed a ciphered telegram. When decoded, it held the news Sherman most feared to receive --- that Abraham Lincoln was indeed dead.

 

Wisely or not so, Sherman determined then and there not to contact Washington before meeting with Johnston. Sherman decided on his own that he would follow his late Commander-in-Chief’s directives as laid down when they met aboard the River Queen in --- was it only March?  Johnston’s Army of Tennessee will be offered the same terms that Grant offered Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

What Sherman could not know as the two men traveled from their separate starting points toward their agreed meeting place between the lines --- the Bennett farm just outside Durham Station --- was that Johnston, for his part, was facing a more complicated situation than had Lee. Lee had had a free hand, but at the moment that Johnston and Sherman met, Jefferson Davis was in the midst of Johnston’s Command Zone with 2,000 troops under his direct command, insistent that every detail of the negotiation between Sherman and Johnston had to be cleared through him before any agreement could be reached.

President Davis and General Johnston, never allies anyway, had already bickered more than once about the handling of the upcoming negotiations. Davis wanted good terms --- in fact, Davis really wanted no terms. What he wanted was for Johnston to move his army southwest to Texas. Thus, he was prepared, just as at Hampton Roads, to insist on terms the Union could never accept.

Johnston was more the realist. He understood that the time when the Confederacy could move large armies from place to place was irrevocably in the past. He also understood that his men did not have the logistical support, nor more importantly, the popular support to undertake a Great Trek across the heart of North America. His manpower was melting away by the moment, and Confederate civilians were leaving their failing Cause behind them in the past and hoping, most of them, for a very different future. Then too, Grant and Sherman were bound not to simply let an entire Confederate army march 1,500 miles across a continent at will.

Johnston had been blunt with Davis when they’d spoken:

“My views are sir that our people are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped, and will not fight.”

Davis disregarded him. Like Lee, in his first surrender letter to Grant, Davis was playing for time and jockeying for position with Sherman.  Johnston was only his tool.

When Sherman and Johnston finally both reached the Bennett Place, Sherman made short shrift of the niceties. Instead, he wordlessly handed Johnston the telegram he had just received from Stanton.

Many witnesses were present. Besides Johnston and Sherman themselves, Sherman had a force of 200 men and Johnston had a force of 60 men. All agreed that as Johnston scanned the telegram his face grew wan; “great drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead”; and finally he cried out, “Oh, Great God! This cannot be so! Tell me that this is not true!  For if it is, then this is the greatest of calamities that could befall the South!”

Sherman glumly assured him it was so.

“My God! My God! Then this is the greatest of calamities that could befall the South!” Johnston repeated. He seemed not to know what to do.

Sherman led him inside the Bennett Place and the two men took their seats. Sherman was quick and direct --- Johnston could expect the same terms as were given to General Lee.

“Are you certain?” Johnston asked. With the change of Administrations would the new President accept such liberal terms?

Sherman confirmed to Johnston that Johnson would.

After a few more minutes, and Johnston’s heartfelt condolences, the two men parted, agreeing to meet the next day.

 

Although Sherman was certain that Johnston would accept the terms offered (and on his own he would have), Johnston was not at all certain that Jefferson Davis would accept them. The natty General with the piercing glance and the ramrod back was badly shaken by the news of Lincoln’s death, and harshly ordered his men to be silent when some loudly cheered at the news. Johnston rode for Charlotte, the newest temporary capital of the Confederacy, to confer with Davis and Breckinridge about Sherman’s news and Sherman’s peace offer. 

III

John Wilkes Booth and David Herold remain hidden in the pine woods not far from Samuel Cox’s house.

  

It is a miserable hiding place. They build a lean-to to keep themselves somewhat out of the weather, but they can’t light a fire or cook any food for fear that the light or the smoke will attract unwanted attention. Booth is increasingly cranky as his broken leg torments him. 

In Surrattsville, Union troops return to the Surratt Tavern. They ransack it for evidence, and arrest everyone on the premises.

In Washington, Union investigators, working on a tip, return to the Surratt Boarding House. They ransack it, and find, hidden in the walls, evidence of the Surratts’ association with John Wilkes Booth. A protesting Mary Surratt is arrested along with all her boarders. As they are being taken into custody, Lewis Powell happens to walk in the door. He is immediately arrested as well, and though he gives a false name, is soon identified as the man who attacked the Sewards.   

IV

The slain President of the United States remains lying in state in the White House.

In the wake of Lincoln’s murder, retaliatory beatings and killings continue to occur throughout the North and the South. Anybody who does not evince sorrow --- or enough sorrow --- at the death of President Lincoln is harassed or harmed.

A “she-devil” Confederate widow is forced to nail the mourning veil she wore for her husband and son to her front door, with the exhortation to “do it . . . or  your life won’t be worth a candle.”  After this humiliation, the widow takes her own life.

The perpetrators of such violence are primarily hunting down Confederates and Copperheads, but no one is immune to reprisals. Southerners are stabbed, shot, stoned, or burned alive for their perceived “indifference” to the President’s fate. Even Union soldiers who do not look sad “enough” are attacked and killed.

Here and there throughout the country, anti-Lincoln men (and women) are tortured or strung up for uttering remarks critical of the slain President. Former President Millard Fillmore’s house is defaced with India Ink for not displaying black bunting.  

Southern Unionists, who have been subject to degradations and death for the last four years, rise up in fury. Many kill their Confederate tormenters. What has up until now been a fratricidal war of armies becomes a fratricidal war of neighbors. For a brief and terrifying time, the still-disunified nation teeters on the brink of becoming a continent-sized Missouri --- a massive personalized killing field stretching from sea to bloody sea.  

Ironically, the retributive killings hasten the end of the battlefield war, as even the most hard-core last-ditch Confederates give up the fight, abandon their weapons, and find safe places to hunker down as the frenzied tornado of violence tears a swath across the land. Isolated Confederate units and irregular groups of soldiers in the hills and the backcountry disband when local pro-Confederates withdraw their support either by choice or under duress.   

A wave of Confederate suicides begins. Eventually, it will reach the upper echelons of Southern society.