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In the early morning hours 150 years ago today, a detachment of Federal cavalry under Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty, reacted to a tip and arrived at the farm of Richard H. Garrett, just across the Rappahannock River. John Wilkes Booth and David Herold had arrived there the night before seeking shelter. Garrett refused to allow them in his home, but agreed that the two men could shelter in his barn.
The cavalry unit arrived quietly, questioned Garrett, learned that the fugitives were at hand, and surrounded the barn. Herold responded to their calls to give up, but Booth remained defiant and prepared to fight it out to the end. The soldiers set fire to the barn to force Booth out, but while Booth was staggering about inside, Sergeant Boston Corbett stuck his pistol between the slats of the barn's side and shot the actor through the neck. Booth was then pulled from the blazing barn, paralyzed from the neck down by the wound. He was dragged to Garrett's porch and laid out there. He asked if someone would lift his hands so that he could see them. A soldier complied, Booth muttered "Useless, useless", and died.
General Sherman, accompanied by his Corps commanders, met with General Johnston again 150 years ago this morning. Invited to join the meeting, General Grant declined, not wishing to be seen as depriving Sherman of his just due in bringing Johnston's army to bay.
A difficult man to the last, Johnston at first took the position that he could not accept the Appomattox terms because that would mean loosing his hungry men on the countryside to exist as predators. Sherman refused to alter the terms of the surrender as offered, but the generals did reach a verbal understanding that the Union army would take the responsibility of policing the countryside to prevent marauding rebels from terrorizing the region. To alleviate the hunger problem, Sherman would provide Johnston's men with 250,000 rations to help see them home.
Those matters settled, the generals signed the surrender agreement and the Confederate States of America no longer had an army east of the Appalachians.
The Confederacy also no longer had a central government capable of influencing affairs beyond wherever it was at the moment, and at this moment it was on the run. For all intents and purposes, the war was over, what remained was mopping up operations, but the possibility of an independent Confederacy died at Appomattox and Raleigh.
The next few months would see the completion of the South's capitulation, but first there would be a large scale tragedy. The day before Johnston's surrender the Mississippi steamboat the Sultana, departed Vicksburg with 2100 paroled Union prisoners of war aboard in addition to the 327 passengers and crew members. The ship was designed to hold 375 passengers. At 2 am on the 27th, the Sutana's boilers exploded. Portions of the ship and its passengers were blown away, others hurled into the water, and others trapped aboard the sinking ship which was now burning.
Ultimately about 700 survivors were plucked from the water or located ashore, many horribly burned or scalded. Of those, 200 were to die within the next week or so. It was and remains the worst US maritime disaster in history.
May 4th...General Taylor surrenders his army to General Canby at Citronelle, Alabama.
May 5th...the final meeting ever of the Confederate cabinet in Washington, Georgia. After this gathering, the members would scatter in an every man for himself dynamic. Breckinridge and Benjamin would make successful escapes to Cuba, the former eventually returning two years later when blanket amnesty was issued, the latter making his way to England where he became a highly successful and wealthy attorney.
May 9th...General Forrest, called by Sherman "The most remarkable man produced by this war from either side", scorned the idea of guerrilla war, and surrendered his command at Gainesville, Alabama. For a man so deeply committed to the cause, he issued an admirably conciliatory farewell address to his troops:
Quote:
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 as far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings towards those with whom we have so long contended, 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 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. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness. Without, in any way, referring to the merits of the Cause in which we have been engaged, your courage and determination, as exhibited on many hard-fought fields, has elicited the respect and admiration of friend and foe. And I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command whose zeal, fidelity and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms.
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.
May 10th... Jefferson Davis, no longer the president of anything, is captured by Federal cavalry at Irwinville, Georgia. He will be incarcerated for two years at Fort Monroe before being released without a trial or pardon. He was placed in leg irons, but only for five days. When President Johnson learned of the shackles, he ordered them removed. Davis would refuse to apply for a pardon, maintaining to his death that he had done nothing wrong and was in no need of a forgiveness.
May 12th...the final skirmish of the war takes place at Palmito Ranch, Texas, resulting in a minor and meaningless Confederate victory. Four northern soldiers were killed, the final battle deaths of the war.
May 26th...General Kirby Smith surrenders his trans Mississippi army.
June 23rd...General Stand Watie surrenders Confederate forces in the Indian Territory, the last of the rebel ground forces.
Beyond that, the only ongoing hostilities were produced by the rebel raider the CSS Shenandoah which had sailed around the world to the Pacific NW where it destroyed the American whaling industry with more than two dozen captures. Finally in August it learned of the Confederate surrenders. It then sailed back around the world to England where the captain and crew gave themselves up.
The major consequences of the war were to settle the question of the power of the South to secede, if not the legal right, and the liberation of all slaves in the nation. The Constitution had been silent on the right of secession before the war, and it has remained so since. The Republicans, when they dominated Congress in the post war years, could have easily crafted an amendment stating that the Union was and always had been permanent. They did not bother because to outlaw secession would have been an admission that it needed to be outlawed, suggesting that it previously had been legal.
Bringing these results about cost the nation 620,000 lives, about two percent of the population. The story from here is one of reconstruction, the power clash between President Johnson and Congress as to which branch of the government would control it, the long and slow economic recovery of the South, the eventual readmission of the rebel states, and the institution of the Black Codes in those states to insure that the former slaves remained segregated, second class citizens at best. It would require another 100 years before full legal equality for blacks was finally established.
It was the most civil of civil wars in many ways. There was no bloodbath at the conclusion, no treason trials for the defeated. The only war related trial was that of Henry Wirz, the commander of the Andersonville prison. Charged with conspiracy to kill prisoners of war via neglect of their health, and with 13 specific counts of murder by his own hand, Wirz was convicted and executed in November.
Thank you for a great read. While I was familiar with the major events of the war, and the level of death and destruction, you made the details and progression of events come to life. I learned a lot about the characters, as real characters, and what it took to keep the war going. The changes of attitudes as the war dragged on, the progression of technology, the drama between the major and minor players and how their personalities influenced their decisions, as well as the details of both planned and happenstance events, were all part of an enjoyable read and my learning a lot. Some of the stories and events would have been cartoonish, were they not to have been true, and gave me more than a few good laughs. I liked the day to day format. It made is easier to see the situation from their point of view.
Thanks for all the time you took to share your expertise with us and to weave the settings, events and characters together into a great story.
My thanks to the posters above, and to others over the last four years, who were gracious enough to offer kind remarks about the thread. I'm happy that you got something from the presentation.
Wanted to add my thanks to Grandstander for this outstanding thread which also was my favorite in all of CD. Couldn't wait for each and every update he posted and it spun of more detailed readings on particular topics or battles he presented. Being from Germany originally I had no detailed understanding of the Civil War and how important it was / is for this nation. I gained a lot of understanding and will visit some sites once my son is old enough. You can see how to this day there is a certain difference between the former belligerents in this country even 150 years after the war's conclusion and I now better understand how this came about.
Bellowhead and English folk band. Roll Alabama roll. About CSS Alabama, built at Birkenhead, Liverpool and manned by a Liverpool crew. The song is 150 years old. Liverpool built 42 ships for the south.
My thanks to the posters above, and to others over the last four years, who were gracious enough to offer kind remarks about the thread. I'm happy that you got something from the presentation.
cant wait for the 200th adversary so you can do it again ..
Bellowhead and English folk band. Roll Alabama roll. About CSS Alabama, built at Birkenhead, Liverpool and manned by a Liverpool crew. The song is 150 years old. Liverpool built 42 ships for the south.
The final verse is off by a year, the battle with the Kearsarge was in 1864.
I tried to avoid coloring the narrative with my personal opinions while writing the thread, but now that it is finished, I feel unfettered.
And your post provides the opportunity for me to state that I see Captain Rafael Semmes as one of, if not the, most overrated of the Civil War heroes. The vast majority of his actions consisted of capturing unarmed merchant ships using the false flag trick. He ambushed those who could not fight back. Only twice did he ever engage a war vessel. The first time was off Galveston where he lured a Union gunboat away from the US fleet, once more using the false flag trick, and then after the ship had come alongside peacefully and had lowered a boat to send an officer over to talk with the stranger, Semmes opened fire, compelling the ship to strike.
The second time was when Semmes finally met an opponent of equal strength, the USS Kearsarge, and he was outfought and lost his ship. So, in terms of actual fair combat, Semmes was 0-1 for the war.
Further, Semmes was less effective with his raiding than it might appear. Because he was only one ship, overcrowding on the Alabama from prisoners taken from earlier captures, would cause Semmes to have to often "bond" his capture. That meant he let the ship go in return for the promise of the captain that the ship's owner would pay the Confederate government an amount equal to the value of the ship....after the war ended. Of course such an arrangement would only benefit the Confederacy if they won, which they didn't, and more importantly, that wasn't helping them win the war while it was going on.
So I tend to place Semmes more in the category of a Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson, people who spent the war as bullies rather than soldiers.
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