The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox

  So tight a grip had been kept on official news of the assassination — particularly southward, where Stanton believed the plot had been hatched and where such information might be of use to the conspirators in their flight from justice — most citizens did not know of the murder, except as one more piece of gossip among many that were false, until the murderer himself had been dispatched. Down in rural Georgia, for example, a full week after Lincoln’s death and four days before Booth’s, a young woman wrote in her diary: “None of our people believe any of the rumors, thinking them as mythical as the surrender of General Lee’s army.” Presently though, when the truth came out, there were those who reacted with a bitterness nurtured by four long years of a war that now was lost. Another Georgian, an Augusta housewife, writing to her mother-in-law on the last day of April, saw the northern leader’s violent fall as a “righteous retribution,” a minor comfort in a time of shock. “One sweet drop among so much that is painful is that he at least cannot raise his howl of diabolical triumph over us,” she declared. Some in Johnston’s army, waiting around Greensboro for the details of their surrender to be worked out, reacted initially in much the same fashion; that is, until Beauregard heard them whooping outside his tent. An aide later testified that this was the only time he saw Old Bory lose his temper all the way. “Shut those men up,” he said angrily. “If they won’t shut up, have them arrested. Those are my orders.”

  For the most part, however, even those celebrations that went unchecked lasted only about as long as it took the celebrants to turn their thoughts to Andrew Johnson, who was now in a position to exact the vengeance he had been swearing all along. Jefferson Davis perceived this from the outset. In Charlotte on April 19, when he learned from Breckinridge of his war-long adversary’s sudden removal from the scene, he saw in the Tennessean’s elevation a portent of much woe. “Certainly I have no special regard for Mr Lincoln,” he remarked, “but there are a great many men of whose end I would rather hear than his. I fear it will be disastrous to our people, and I regret it deeply.”

  That was his first reaction, and he held to it down the years. Though, like Beauregard, he was quick to silence those in his escort who cheered the news, he never engaged in pious homilies over the corpse of his chief foe, but rather stressed his preference for him over the “renegade” who replaced him. “For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn,” he wrote afterwards; “yet, in view of its political consequences, [Lincoln’s assassination] could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South. He had power over the Northern people, and was without personal malignity toward the people of the South; [whereas] his successor was without power in the North, and [was] the embodiment of malignity toward the Southern people, perhaps the more so because he had betrayed and deserted them in the hour of their need.”

  * * *

  As long ago as late September, before Hood set out on the northward march that turned his fine-honed army into a skeow — “s-k-e-o-w, bubble, bubble, s-k-e-o-w, bust” — Richard Taylor had told Davis that “the best we could hope for was to protract the struggle until spring.” Now spring had come, and all he had left for the defense of his Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana were some 10,000 troops under Forrest and Maury, recently flung out of Selma and Mobile, plus something under half that number in garrisons scattered about the three-state region west of the Chattahoochee. Clearly enough, the time was at hand “for statesmen, not soldiers, to deal with the future.” Accordingly, when he learned of the week-old “Basis of Agreement” worked out by Sherman, Johnston, and Breckinridge near Durham Station on April 18, he got in touch at once with Canby to arrange a similar armistice here in the western theater, pending approval by the civil authorities of terms that would, in Sherman’s words, “produce peace from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.” Canby — who knew no more than Taylor did of Washington’s quick rejection of those terms — was altogether willing, and a meeting was scheduled for the last day in April, twelve miles up the railroad from Mobile.

  Magee’s Farm, the place was called. Canby, waiting at the appointed hour beside the tracks, had a full brigade drawn up as a guard of honor, along with a band and a brassy array of staffers, all turned out in their best. The effect, when Taylor at last pulled in, was anticlimactic to say the least. Arriving from Meridian on a handcar — practically the only piece of rolling stock left unwrecked by Wilson’s raiders — he had been “pumped” down the line by two Negroes and was accompanied by a single aide whose uniform was as weathered as his own. Nothing daunted, for all his awareness that “the appearance of the two parties contrasted the fortunes of our respective causes,” he then retired with the Federal commander to a room prepared in a nearby house, where they promptly agreed to observe a truce while awaiting ratification by their two governments of the terms given Johnston twelve days ago by Sherman, copies of which had been forwarded to them both. This done, they came out into the yard to share an al fresco luncheon that included a number of bottles of champagne, the drawing of whose corks provided what the Louisianian said were “the first agreeable explosive sounds I had heard for years.” Presently, when the musicians struck up “Hail, Columbia,” Canby ordered a quick switch to “Dixie,” but Taylor, not to be outdone, suggested that the original tune continue, the time having come when they could “hail Columbia” together, as in the old days.

  Back in Meridian next day he heard from Canby that the Sherman-Johnston agreement had been disavowed; that fighting would resume within forty-eight hours unless he surrendered — as Johnston had done, five days ago — on the terms accorded Lee at Appomattox, three weeks back. Taylor had neither the means nor the inclination to continue the struggle on his own; his task as he saw it, now that the Confederacy had crumbled, was “to administer on the ruins as residuary legatee,” and he said as much in his reply, May 2, accepting Canby’s scaled-down offer. Two days later they met again, this time at Citronelle, also on the Mobile & Ohio, twenty miles north of Magee’s Farm, where, as Taylor later put it, “I delivered the epilogue of the great drama in which I had played a humble part.” In Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, as had already been done in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, all butternut survivors were to lay down their arms in exchange for assurance by the victors that they were not to be “disturbed” by the U.S. government “so long as they continue to observe the conditions of their parole and the laws in force where they reside.” Although Sherman’s proposal for restoring peace “from the Potomac to the Rio Grande” had been rejected, more or less out of hand, the arrangement that replaced it — commander to individual army commander, blue and gray, after the pattern set by Grant and Lee — achieved as much, in any case, for all of that region east of the Mississippi.

  Or did it? Would it? Some, indeed many, believed it would not: including Sherman. “I now apprehend that the rebel armies will disperse,” he had written Grant the week before, “and instead of dealing with six or seven states, we will have to deal with numberless bands of desperadoes, headed by such men as Mosby, Forrest, Red Jackson, and others who know not and care not for danger and its consequences.”

  One at least of these, despite the Ohioan’s assertion that “nothing is left for them but death or highway robbery,” had already proved him wrong. On April 21, soon after learning of Lee’s capitulation, John Mosby formally disbanded his Rangers and presently — remarking, as if in specific response to Sherman: “We are soldiers, not highwaymen” — made official application for parole in order to hang up his shingle and resume the life he had led before the war. So much then for baleful predictions as to the postsurrender activities of Virginia’s leading partisan, who soon was practicing law in the region where he and his men had given the blue authorities so much trouble for the past two years. As for Forrest and his red-haired subordinate, W. H. Jackson, there was considerable doubt, even in their own minds, as to what course they would follow. Between Taylor
’s final meeting with Canby, May 4 at Citronelle, and the issuance of paroles four days later, a staff colonel would recall, “all was gloom, broken only by wild rumors.” This was especially the case in Forrest’s camps around Gainesville, Alabama, fifty miles northeast of Meridian. There was much talk of “going to Mexico” as an alternative to surrender, and the general himself was said to be turning the notion over in his mind.

  He was in fact in a highly disgruntled state, one arm in a sling from his fourth combat wound, suffered during a horseback fight with a young Indiana captain at Ebenezer Church, just north of Selma on the day before Wilson overran him there. The Federal hacked away at the general’s upraised arm until Forrest managed to draw his revolver and kill him. “If that boy had known enough to give me the point of his saber instead of the edge,” he later said, “I should not have been here to tell about it.” Instead the Hoosier captain became his thirtieth hand-to-hand victim within a four-year span of war that also saw twenty-nine horses shot from under him, thereby validating his claim that he was “a horse ahead at the close.” What rankled worse, despite the mitigating odds, was the druboing Wilson had given him in what turned out to be his last campaign. Unaccustomed to defeat, this only soldier on either side who rose from private to lieutenant general had no more fondness for surrender now than he had had when he rode out of Donelson, nearly forty months ago. Mexico seemed preferable — at any rate up to the day before the one on which he and his troopers were scheduled to lay down their arms. That evening he and his adjutant set out on a quiet, thoughtful ride. Neither spoke until they drew rein just short of a fork in the road. “Which way, General?” his companion asked, and Forrest replied glumly: “Either. If one road led to hell and the other to Mexico, I would be indifferent which to take.” They sat their horses in the moonlight for a time, the adjutant doing most of the talking, which had to do with the duty they owed their native land, whether in victory or defeat: particularly Forrest, who could lead into the ways of peace the young men who had followed him in war. “That settles it,” the general said, and turned back toward camp.

  As usual, once he made up his mind to a course of action, he followed it all-out: as did his men, who dropped all talk of Mexico when they learned that he had done so before them. Whatever doubt they had of this was dispelled by the farewell he addressed to them at Gainesville on May 9, soon after they furled their star-crossed flags and gave their parole to fight no more against the Union he and they rejoined that day.

  SOLDIERS:

  By an agreement made between Lieutenant General Taylor, commanding the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, and Major General Canby, commanding US. forces, the troops of this department have been surrendered. I do not think it proper or necessary at this time to refer to the causes which have reduced us to this extremity, nor is it now a matter of material consequence as to how such results were brought about. That we are beaten is a self-evident fact, and any further resistance on our part would be justly regarded as the height of folly and rashness.… Reason dictates and humanity demands that no more blood be shed. Fully realizing and feeling that such is the case, it is your duty and mine to lay down our arms, submit to the “powers that be,” and aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land. The terms upon which you were surrendered are favorable, and should be satisfactory and acceptable to all. They manifest a spirit of magnanimity and liberality on the part of the Federal authorities which should be met on our part by a faithful compliance with all the stipulations and conditions therein expressed.…

  Civil war, such as you have just passed through, naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings, and, so far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate feelings toward those with whom we have so long contested and heretofore so widely but honestly differed. Neighborhood feuds, personal animosities, and private differences should be blotted out, and when you return home a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect even of your enemies. Whatever your responsibilities may be to government, to society, or to individuals, meet them like men. The attempt made to establish a separate and independent confederation has failed, but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully and to the end will in some measure repay for the hardships you have undergone.… I have never on the field of battle sent you where I was unwilling to go myself, nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will be magnanimous.

  N. B. FORREST,

  Lieutenant General

  * * *

  On April 26, the day of Booth’s death and Johnston’s renegotiated surrender, Davis met for the last time with his full cabinet and decided to end his week-long stay in Charlotte by pressing on at once to the southwest. He had not been surprised at Washington’s rejection of the Sherman-Johnston “Basis of Agreement,” which he himself had approved two days before, since his opinion of the new northern leader and “his venomous Secretary of War,” as he said afterwards, did not permit him to expect “that they would be less vindictive after a surrender of the army had been proposed than when it was regarded as a formidable body defiantly holding its position in the field.” What did surprise and anger him, some time later, was the news that Johnston, ignoring the suggestion that he fall back with the mobile elements of his army to draw Sherman after him, had laid down his arms without so much as a warning note to superiors he knew were in flight for their lives. Davis’s indignation was heightened all the more when he learned that the Virginian, in his last general order, had blamed “recent events in Virginia for breaking every hope of success by war.” Lee had fought until he was virtually surrounded and a breakout attempt had failed; whereas Johnston not only had not tried for the getaway suggested and expected, but had also, by a stroke of the pen, ended all formal resistance in three of the states through which his fugitive superiors would be traveling in their attempt to reach Dick Taylor or Kirby Smith, on this or the far side of the Mississippi River.

  Hope for escape by that route had been encouraged by a series of dispatches from Wade Hampton, who did not consider himself or his troopers bound by the surrender negotiations then in progress. “The military situation is very gloomy, I admit,” he wrote Davis on the day after the Sherman-Johnston-Breckinridge meeting near Durham Station, “but it is by no means desperate, and endurance and determination will produce a change.” His notion was that the struggle should continue wherever there was ground to stand on, in or out of the country, whatever the odds. “Give me a good force of cavalry and I will take them safely across the Mississippi, and if you desire to go in that direction it will give me great pleasure to escort you.… I can bring to your support many strong arms and brave hearts — men who will fight to Texas, and who, if forced from that state, will seek refuge in Mexico rather than in the Union.” Hoping to confer with the President in Salisbury, he reached Greensboro three days later, April 22, and found that the government had been transferred to Charlotte. “My only object in seeing you,” he declared in a follow-up message, “was to assure you that many of my officers and men agree with me in thinking that nothing can be as disastrous to us as a peace founded on the restoration of the Union. A return to the Union will bring all the horrors of war, coupled with all the degradation that can be inflicted on a conquered people.… If I can serve you or my country by any further fighting you have only to tell me so. My plan is to collect all the men who will stick to their colors, and to get to Texas. I can carry with me quite a number, and I can get there.”

  Heartened by this stalwart reassurance from the South Carolina grandee, whose views — delusions, some would say — were in accordance with his own, Davis took time out next day for the first real letter he had had a chance to write his wife since he left Richmond, three weeks back. I
n it were mingled the hopes expressed by Hampton and the private doubts that surfaced when he shifted his attention from his duty to his country, as the symbol of its survival, to his concern for the welfare of his four children and their mother. Threatened by Stone-man’s descent on Salisbury, they had left Charlotte ten days ago, six days before he got there, and were now in Abbeville, South Carolina, down near the Georgia line. He spoke first of the difficulty of his position in deciding whether to urge his people to continue their resistance to what he saw as subjugation. “The issue is one which it is very painful for me to meet,” he told Varina. “On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the ‘Union’; on the other, the suffering of the women and children, and carnage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader, and who, unless the people would rise en masse to sustain them, would struggle but to die in vain. I think my judgment is undisturbed by any pride of opinion, [for] I have prayed to our Heavenly Father to give me wisdom and fortitude equal to the demands of the position in which Providence has placed me. I have sacrificed so much for the cause of the Confederacy that I can measure my ability to make any further sacrifice required, and am assured there is but one to which I am not equal — my wife and my children.… For myself,” he added, “it may be that a devoted band of cavalry will cling to me and that I can force my way across the Mississippi, and if nothing can be done there which it will be proper to do, then I can go to Mexico, and have the world from which to choose a location.” That such a choice would come hard for him was shown by the emotion that swept over him when, having faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in exile, he closed his letter. “Dear Wife, this is not the fate to which I invited [you] when the future was rose-colored to us both; but I know you will bear it even better than myself, and that, of us two, I alone will ever look back reproachfully on my past career.… Farewell, my dear. There may be better things in store for us than are now in view, but my love is all I have to offer, and that has the value of a thing long possessed, and sure not to be lost.”