School History of North Carolina Part 41

8. What occurred on December 25th, 1864?

9. Describe the attack on Fort Fisher.

10. What was the conclusion of the attack?

11 How did the state receive the news of this Federal failure?

What forces were removed from Fort Fisher?

12. Describe the preparations for renewal of attack on January 12th.

13. Give an account of the engagement. What was the sad result?

CHAPTER LXII.

THE WAR DRAWS TO A CLOSE.

A. D. 1865.

1. With the fall of Fort Fisher the fate of Wilmington was sealed. With the Federal troops in such a position the port was most effectually closed. The last connection of the beleaguered Confederacy with the outer world was thus broken, and North Carolina, with beating heart, listened to the approaching footsteps of countless invaders. General Lee, who had been made General-in-Chief of all the Southern armies, selected General Joseph E. Johnston to command in North Carolina.

2. General Bragg's forces having retired from Wilmington, met the corps of Major-General Schofield in an ineffectual engagement at Kinston on March 8th, and retired upon Goldsboro. This command, with the troops lately in Charleston and Savannah, the remnant of the Army of Tennessee and Hampton's Division from Virginia, soon made an army of twenty-five thousand men, under the command of General Johnston.

3. Against him were coming, from South Carolina, the great army under General W. T. Sherman; from Wilmington, the corps of General Terry, and from Kinston, the army of General Schofield.

In addition to these overwhelming forces, another column was approaching from the west, under General Stoneman.

4. As this great array gathered toward Raleigh as a common focus, the first conflict was between the division commanded by General Hardee and the army of General Sherman at the hamlet of Averasboro. After a stubborn fight, Hardee withdrew, and, having joined General Johnston, the latter collected fifteen thousand men at Bentonsville, in Johnston county, on March 19th, and awaited Sherman's approach.

5. General Sherman, on that day, made six successive attacks upon Johnston's left, composed of Hoke's and Cheatham's divisions and the late garrisons on the Cape Fear. The Federal a.s.saults were all repelled, and, at the order for our troops to advance, three lines of the enemy's field works were carried and several batteries captured. This success, however, was not bloodlessly effected.

6. General Sherman withdrew to Goldsboro to meet Schofield and Terry, and Johnston halted near Smithfield to await developments.

With such a force it seemed impossible that he would be able to meet the combined strength of the three, armies a.s.sembling at Goldsboro, but the result at Bentonsville had greatly elated his troops, and they resolutely awaited General Sherman's return to the shock of arms.

7. After so much bloodshed the end of hostilities, however, was near at hand. General Sheridan, with heavy cavalry reinforcements, having a.s.sailed the right flank of General Lee's defences at Petersburg, after hard fighting, succeeded in winning a decisive battle at Five Forks on the 28th of March. The loss, of the six thousand Confederates made prisoners on that day was fatal to longer hold on the thinly-manned lines around the city that had been so long and n.o.bly defended.

8. On the morning of the 2nd of April, in the general a.s.sault, General Lee's lines were pierced in three places, General A. P.

Hill was slain, and, at nightfall the doomed Army of Northern Virginia began its famous retreat. After incredible hardships, having fought their way to Appomattox Court House, the small remnant of the heroes who had for four years so dauntlessly held their ground against all comers, were enveloped in the ma.s.ses of pursuing hosts, and, on April 9th, at the command of their beloved leader, they there laid down their arms.

9. General Lee was never greater or more loved or more reverenced thanin the hour of his fall. He had not taken part in the struggle to gratify ambition or for love of war; but in the conscientious discharge of sacred duty. Into that struggle North Carolina had sent more than a hundred and fifty thousand of her sons, and to them all he was ever the ideal of the soldier, the gentleman and the Christian. At his command they laid down their arms, returned to their homes and in time renewed their allegiance to the United States.

QUESTIONS.

1. What was the effect of the fall of Fort Fisher?

2. What occurred at Kinston? What was the size of General Johnston's army?

3. What great forces were marching against Johnston?

4. Where was the first conflict between these armies? When was the battle of Bentonsville fought? Point out Averasboro on the map. Bentonsville.

5. Can you tell something of the fight at Bentonsville? What was done by the Federal and Confederate commanders after this battle?

6. What occurred at Petersburg?

7. How did the battle result?

8. What took place at Appomattox?

9. What is said of the great General Lee?

CHAPTER LXIII.

CONCLUDING SCENES OF THE WAR.

A. D. 1865.

When General Johnston became aware of General Lee's retreat, he was informed that his next duty would be to effect a junction of his forces with those withdrawn from Petersburg. In accordance with this object a movement was begun at Raleigh, April 10th. The army, Governor Vance accompanying it, having pa.s.sed the capital, ex-Governors Graham and Swain, accompanied by Surgeon-General Warren, met General Sherman at the head of his vast army a few miles from Raleigh and asked him to protect the city.

2. General Sherman and his acc.u.mulated army of more than a hundred thousand men entered the capital city on April 13th, and encamped near it. As the advance, under General Kilpatrick, moved up Fayetteville street, a Confederate cavalryman, Lieutenant Walsh, of Texas, before his flight, halted near the State House and fired several times at Kilpatrick and his staff.

His horse falling in his effort to escape, he was captured and taken before Kilpatrick, who ordered him to be immediately hanged. This outrageous order for the murder of a Confederate prisoner of war was speedily obeyed.

3. General Johnston was soon apprised of General Lee's capitulation, and, after conference with President Davis at Greensboro, he resolved to end the war by surrender of his army.

To this end, having communicated with General Sherman, they met on April 18th, at the house of a Mr. Bennett, near Durham, and agreed upon conditions of surrender, subject to the approval of President Lincoln. Most unhappily for the Southern people, Mr.

Lincoln never had an opportunity to express his opinion concerning this military convention; for he having just been a.s.sa.s.sinated at Washington by John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President, had become President in his place.

4. Mr. Johnson was a North Carolinian by birth. He had lived in Raleigh until be reached manhood and then emigrated to Tennessee, where he became a very prominent citizen. When the war came on he adhered to the Federal side, and was very bitter and harsh, in his hostility to the South. He was rewarded for his course by election to the Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1864. In the violent excitement which followed upon the killing of President Lincoln, Mr. Johnson would not sanction the liberal terms of surrender which General Sherman had granted to General Johnston, although General Sherman had been in conference with the deceased statesman just previous to his death, and was following his directions as to the treatment of the conquered South.

5. Notwithstanding this refusal of the President of the United States to carry out the agreement of the military commissioners, the army of General Johnston was surrendered at Greensboro on April 26th, 1865, and sent home on parole on like terms with the Confederate troops at Appomattox.

6. General Schofield was made military Governor of North Carolina, and his first official act was a proclamation declaring freedom to the slaves in the State. After two centuries of servitude, these people were at last delivered from their bondage. It is difficult at this day to say who were the more blessed in this deliverance--the slaves or their masters.

7. It was a hard thing for men who had been reared in the South to realize that their princ.i.p.al property, guaranteed to them as it was, in the fundamental law of the land, was founded in injustice; and still harder was it to accept poverty on the strength of a sentiment. Human nature is selfish in all regions, and, that Southern men should have clung to their property is no more than what their opponents would have done had the circ.u.mstances been exchanged. It will be difficult for posterity to understand what a mighty revolution in the domestic life of the people was involved in this single act of an army officer.

[NOTE--In the State election of 1860 the total vote polled was 112,586--the largest that had ever been polled. North Carolina furnished to the Confederacy over 150,000 men, or quite as many soldiers as she had voters, during the four years of the war.

The total number of troops furnished by all the States of the Confederacy was about 600,000, and it will be seen that North Carolina furnished one-fourth of the entire force raised by the Confederate government during the war. At Appomattox North Carolina surrendered twice as many muskets as did any other State, and at Greensboro more of her soldiers were among the paroled than from any of her sister States. North Carolina's losses by the casualties of the war were largely over 30,000 men --Our Living and Our Dead.]

8. The slaves had been looking forward with hope, since the beginning of the war, that freedom might be in store for them, yet almost all of them had remained in quiet subjection at their homes while the war was progressing. It seemed hard for them to realize, for some time, that they were at last the masters of their own movements. As a general thing, they continued quietly at labor on the farms of their former owners until the crops that were growing were complete in their tillage, or, as they expressed it, "laid by."

9. Governor Vance was soon arrested and imprisoned in the "old capitol" at Washington. President Davis was also captured and imprisoned. Mr. Johnson appointed Vance's late political antagonist, W. W. Holden, Provisional Governor, and, at the same time, removed from office every State and county official in North Carolina. For some weeks no officer with civil powers was to be seen, and to the commanders of the many Federal posts alone could the peaceful have looked for protection against violence and fraud.

10. No man ever had so great an opportunity for fixing himself in the esteem and affection of the people as Governor Holden had during his administration as Provisional Governor, and no man ever so completely threw golden opportunities away. Had he risen to the full height of a patriot, his name would today be a loving household word in every section of the State. But he did not, and such opportunities rarely occur twice to any man.

11. His career had not been an uneventful one. Of humble origin, he had, by dint of his own work and his own brains, carried himself to the control of the Democratic party in the State. He was not satisfied with the position of the editor of the chief organ of the dominant party, and the pecuniary profits that then resulted from such a position, but desired to be made Governor of the State. He was defeated for the nomination by Judge Ellis before the Democratic State Convention at Charlotte, and from that period dates his downward career. He advocated the Douglas movement, and then supported Breckinridge and Lane. He voted for and signed the Ordinance of Secession, declaring he intended to preserve as an heirloom in his family the pen with which he attached his name to the ordinance; and then he became the head and front of the Union element in the State during the war. At the close of the war, as we have seen, he was made Provisional Governor by President Johnson.