Sunday, May 17, 2015

May 26, 1865---A Cease-Fire



MAY 26, 1865:           

Having taken the measure of Confederate will in Texas, General Edmund Kirby Smith travels to Galveston, where he meets with Union officials to announce a cease-fire in the Department of The Trans-Mississippi.



Following the announcement of the cease-fire, Smith engages Union representatives in nearly a week of byzantine negotiations before surrendering his Department.



Smith is later castigated by most Americans, North and South, for entering into the negotiations in bad faith, for Edmund Kirby Smith and his followers have no intention of surrendering to the Union. The cease-fire turns out to be a delaying tactic while Smith awaits a response from Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, whom he has contacted with an offer to bring his troops south of the Rio Grande in order to fight the insurgent Juarezistas in exchange for political asylum. Even as Smith haggles over minutiae in the surrender terms (ultimately he accepts the Appomattox terms with slight local changes) he is readying his forces to move south into Mexico.





After 41 days in the saddle riding south from Washington, Georgia, where he parted from Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge reaches the head of the Indian River in Florida.

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