The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Volume II Part 57

"JEFFERSON DAVIS.

"Official: F. R. LUBBOCK, _Colonel and A. D. C._"

From the above it will be seen that, while I exercised authority to a.s.sign officers to their posts or places of duty, I a.s.sumed no control over the public Treasury; but in that connection referred the subordinate to his chief, the Secretary of the Treasury, by whom alone could warrants be drawn against the public funds. How very improbable, then, it is, that I wrote to have the money in the hands of a treasurer sent to me personally! Yet this is what General Johnston claims to have resisted, when without any lawful authority he distributed the money himself. The second statement is:

"As there was reason to suppose that the Confederate Executive had a large sum in specie in its possession, I urged it earnestly, in writing, to apply a part of it to the payment of the army. This letter was intrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Mason, who was instructed to wait for an answer. Its receipt was acknowledged by telegraph, and an answer promised. After waiting several days to no purpose. Colonel Mason returned without one."

Not recollecting to have met Colonel Mason at Charlotte, I wrote to him, calling his attention to the statement, and asking what was the fact. Not receiving a reply, I renewed the inquiry, but, though considerable time has elapsed, he has not answered. It is quite possible that I might have met the gentleman without recollecting it, but not at all probable that I should have received such a letter and have forgotten it. Such intrusion of advice as to what should be done with the money in the Treasury, and the speculative opinion as to the amount there, I must suppose would have been very promptly rejected if it had been presented to me. For years there had been irregularity and delay in the payment of the troops, and surely no one regretted it more than myself, or had for years tried more sedulously to correct it; but, expecting the army to continue in the field, it was indispensable to have the means of obtaining the necessary supplies for it.

The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Trenholm, was ill before we reached Charlotte, and quite so during our stay there, but he knew there was not a large sum of specie in the Treasury, and with patriotic desire had been using it to supply the troops after Confederate money became unavailable for purchases. He did not contemplate the abandonment of our cause, and it would not have taken him a minute to answer that more than all the money he had would be needed in future military operations.

On the 26th, the day on which the armistice terminated, General Johnston again met General Sherman, who offered the same terms which had been made with General Lee, and he says, "General Johnston, without hesitation, agreed to, and we executed the following," which was the surrender of General Johnston's troops, with the condition of their being paroled and the officers being permitted to retain their side-arms, private horses, and baggage.

It is true that these were the terms accepted by Lee, but the condition of the two armies was very different. Lee's supplies had been cut off, his men were exhausted by fatigue and hunger; he had no reenforcements in view; notwithstanding the immense superiority in numbers and equipments of the enemy pursuing, he had from point to point fought them in rear and on both flanks, and had, the day before his line of retreat was closed, rejected the demand for surrender, and only yielded to it after his starving little army had been surrounded by ma.s.ses through which he tried to, but could not, cut his way.

Johnston's line of retreat was open, and supplies had been placed upon it. His cavalry was superior to that of the enemy, as had been proved in every conflict between them. Maury and Forrest and Taylor still had armies in the field--not large, but strong enough to have collected around them the men who had left Johnston's army and gone to their homes to escape a surrender, as well as those who under similar circ.u.mstances had left Lee. The show of continued resistance, I then believed, as I still do, would have overcome the depression which was spreading like a starless night over the country, and that the exhibition of a determination not to leave our political future at the mercy of an enemy which had for four years been striving to subjugate the States would have led the United States authorities to do, as Mr. Lincoln had indicated--give any terms which might be found necessary speedily to terminate the existing war.

Those who look back upon the period when the States were treated as subject provinces, and the Congress left to legislate at its will-- when a war professedly waged to bring the seceding States back to the Union, with all the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Const.i.tution, was followed by the utter disregard of those rights, and the miscalled peace was a state of vindictive hostility--will probably think continued war was not the greatest of evils.

I quote again from the "Memoirs" of Sherman, vol. ii, p. 349.

Referring to the first interview, he writes:

"I then told Johnston that he must be convinced that he could not oppose my army, and that, since Lee had surrendered, he could do the same with honor and propriety. He plainly and repeatedly admitted this, and added that any further fighting would be '_murder_'; but he thought that, instead of surrendering piecemeal, we might arrange terms that would embrace _all_ the Confederate armies."

Sherman further writes that he told Johnston that the terms given to General Lee's army were most generous and liberal, which he states Johnston "admitted, but always recurred to the idea of a universal surrender, embracing his own army, that of d.i.c.k Taylor, in Louisiana and Texas, and of Maury, Forrest, and others, in Alabama and Georgia." Considering the character of the authority cited, and the extraordinary proposition to provide for a universal surrender by a district commander, it may be well supposed to require confirmation.

I therefore quote from General Richard Taylor, "Destruction and Reconstruction," page 224:

"Intelligence of the Johnston-Sherman convention reached us, and Canby and I were requested by the officers making it to conform to its terms until the civil authorities acted."

The advice may have been well enough, but, as there was an established channel of communication, and an order of responsibility necessary for effective cooperation in the public service, something more than courtesy required that the Executive should have been advised if not consulted. I had left Charlotte with no other sure reliance against any cavalry movement of the enemy than the force which was with me; that, however, I believed to be sufficient for any probable exigency, if the reenforcements hoped for should not join us on the way. We proceeded at easy stages; some of the command thought we went too slow. After making two halts of about half a day each, we reached the Savannah River. I crossed early in the morning of the 4th of May, with a company, which had been detailed as my escort, and rode some miles to a farmhouse, where I halted to get breakfast and have our horses fed. Here I learned that a regiment of the enemy were moving upon Washington, Georgia, which was one of our depots of supplies, and I sent back a courier with a pencil-note addressed to General Vaughn, or the officer commanding the advance, requesting him to come on and join me immediately. After waiting a considerable time, I determined to move on with my escort, trusting that the others would overtake us, and that, if not, we should arrive in Washington in time to rally the citizens to its defense. When I reached there, scouts were sent out on the different roads, and my conclusion was that we had had a false alarm. The Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin, being unaccustomed to traveling on horseback, parted from me, at the house where we stopped to breakfast, to take another mode of conveyance and a different route from that which I was pursuing, with intent to rejoin me in the trans-Mississippi Department. At Washington, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, left me temporarily to attend to the needs of his family. The Secretary of War, Mr. Breckinridge, had remained with the cavalry at the crossing of the Savannah River. During the night after my arrival in Washington, he sent in an application for authority to draw from the treasure, under the protection of the troops, enough to make to them a partial payment. I authorized the acting Secretary of the Treasury to meet the requisition by the use of the silver coin in the train. When the next day pa.s.sed without the troops coming forward, I sent a note to the Secretary of War, showing the impolicy of my longer delay, having there heard that General Upton had pa.s.sed within a few miles of the town on his way to Augusta to receive the surrender of the garrison and military material at that place, in conformity with orders issued by General Johnston. This was my first positive information of his surrender. Not receiving an immediate reply to the note addressed to the Secretary of War, General Breckinridge, I spoke to Captain Campbell, of Kentucky, commanding my escort, explained to him the condition of affairs, and telling him that his company was not strong enough to fight, and too large to pa.s.s without observation, asked him to inquire if there were ten men who would volunteer to go with me without question wherever I should choose. He brought back for answer that the whole company volunteered on the terms proposed. Gratifying as this manifestation was, I felt it would expose them to unnecessary hazard to accept the offer, and told him, in any manner he might think best, to form a party of ten men. With these. Captain Campbell, Lieutenant Barnwell, of South Carolina, Colonels F. E. Lubbock, John Taylor Wood, and William Preston Johnston, of my personal staff, I left Washington. Secretary Reagan remained for a short time to transfer the treasure in his hands, except a few thousand dollars, and then rejoined me on the road. This transfer of the treasure was made to Mr. Semple, a bonded officer of the navy, and his a.s.sistant, Mr. Tidball, with instructions, as soon as it could be safely done, to transport it abroad and deliver it to the commercial house which had acted as the financial agent of the Confederate Government, and was reported to have incurred liabilities on its account.

Mr. Reagan overtook me in a few hours, but I saw no more of General Breckinridge, and learned subsequently that he was following our route, with a view to overtake me, when he heard of my capture, and, turning to the east, reached the Florida coast unmolested. On the way he met J. Taylor Wood, and, in an open boat, they crossed the straits to the West Indies. No report reached me at that time, or until long afterward, in regard to the cavalry command left at the Savannah River; then it was to the effect that paroled men from Johnston's army brought news of its surrender, and that the condition of returning home and remaining unmolested embraced all the men of the department who would give their parole, and that this had exercised a great influence over the troops, inclining them to accept those terms. Had General Johnston obeyed the order sent to him from Charlotte, and moved on the route selected by himself, with all his cavalry, so much of the infantry as could be mounted, and the light artillery, he could not have been successfully pursued by General Sherman. His force, united to that I had a.s.sembled at Charlotte, would, it was believed, have been sufficient to vanquish any troops which the enemy had between us and the Mississippi River.

Had the cavalry with which I left Charlotte been a.s.sociated with a force large enough to inspire hope for the future, instead of being discouraged by the surrender in their rear, it would probably have gone on, and, when united with the forces of Maury, Forrest, and Taylor, in Alabama and Mississippi, have const.i.tuted an army large enough to attract stragglers, and revive the drooping spirits of the country. In the worst view of the case it should have been able to cross the trans-Mississippi Department, and there uniting with the armies of E. K. Smith and Magruder to form an army, which in the portion of that country abounding in supplies, and deficient in rivers and railroads, could have continued the war until our enemy, foiled in the purpose of subjugation, should, in accordance with his repeated declaration, have agreed, on the basis of a return to the Union, to acknowledge the Const.i.tutional rights of the States, and by a convention, or _quasi_-treaty, to guarantee security of person and property. To this hope I persistently clung, and, if our independence could not be achieved, so much, at least, I trusted might be gained.

Those who have endured the horrors of "reconstruction," who have, under "carpet-bag rule," borne insult, robbery, and imprisonment without legal warrant, can appreciate the value which would have attached to such limited measure of success.

When I left Washington, Georgia, with the small party which has been enumerated, my object was to go to the south far enough to pa.s.s below the points reported to be occupied by Federal troops, and then turn to the west, cross the Chattahoochee, and then go on to meet the forces still supposed to be in the field in Alabama. If, as now seemed probable, there should be no prospect of a successful resistance east of the Mississippi, I intended then to cross to the trans-Mississippi Department, where I believed Generals E. K. Smith and Magruder would continue to uphold our cause. That I was not mistaken in the character of these men, I extract from the order issued by General E. K. Smith to the soldiers of the trans-Mississippi Army on the 21st of April, 1865:

"Great disasters have overtaken us. The Army of Northern Virginia and our General-in-Chief are prisoners of war. With you rest the hopes of our nation, and upon you depends the fate of our people... . Prove to the world that your hearts have not failed in the hour of disaster... . Stand by your colors--maintain your discipline. The great resources of this department, its vast extent, the numbers, the discipline, and the efficiency of the army, will secure to our country terms that a proud people can with honor accept."

General Magruder, with like heroic determination, invoked the troops and people of Texas not to despond, and pointed out their ability in the interior of that vast State to carry on the war indefinitely.

General D. H. Maury, after his memorable defense of Mobile, withdrew his forces on the 12th of April, at the last moment, and moved toward Meridian. Commodore Farrand, commanding our navy at Mobile Bay, withdrew his armed vessels and steamers up the Tombigbee River, and planted torpedoes in the Alabama below. Forrest and Maury had about eight thousand men, but these were veterans, tried in many hard engagements, and trained to the highest state of efficiency. Before Maury withdrew from Mobile, news had been received of Lee's surrender. Taylor says the news was soon disseminated through his army, but that the men remained steadfast, and manifested a determination to maintain the honor of our aims to the last. On pages 224 and 225 of his book, he gives an account of the intelligence received of the Johnston-Sherman convention of the 18th of April, and of the meeting between Canby and himself to arrange terms for his army, and an agreement that there should be an armistice; but he says, two days after that meeting, news was received of Johnston's surrender, and the capture of President Davis. The latter was untrue, and he does not say who communicated it, but that he was at the same time notified that the Johnston-Sherman convention had been disavowed by the United States Government, and notice given for the termination of the armistice. Under these circ.u.mstances he asked General Canby to meet him again, and on the 8th of May, two days before I was actually captured, but which he supposed had already occurred, he agreed with Canby on terms for the surrender of the land and naval forces in Mississippi and Alabama. These terms were similar to those made between Johnston and Sherman; the mounted men were to retain their horses, being their private property.

On the 26th of May, the chief of staff of General E. Kirby Smith, and the chief of staff of General Canby, at Baton Rouge, arranged similar terms for the surrender of the troops in the trans-Mississippi Department. On May 11th, after the last army east of the Mississippi had surrendered, but before Kirby Smith had entered into terms, the enemy sent an expedition from the Brazos Santiago against a little Confederate encampment some fifteen miles above. The camp was captured and burned, but, in the zeal to secure the fruits of victory, they remained so long collecting the plunder, that General J. E. Slaughter heard of the expedition, moved against it, and drove it back with considerable loss, sustaining very little injury to his command. This was, I believe, the last armed conflict of the war, and, though very small in comparison to its great battles, it deserves notice as having closed the long struggle--as it opened-- with a Confederate victory.

The total number of prisoners paroled at Greensboro, North Carolina, as reported by General Schofield, was 36,817; in Georgia and Florida, as reported by General Wilson, 52,543; aggregate surrender under the capitulation of General J. E. Johnston, 89,270.[125] How many of this last number were men who left General Johnston's army to avoid the surrender, or were on detached service from the armies of Virginia and North Carolina, I have no means of ascertaining.

The total number in the Department of Alabama and Mississippi paroled by General Canby, under agreement with General Richard Taylor, of the 8th of May, 1865, as reported, was 42,293,[126] to which may be added of the navy a small force--less than 150. The number surrendered by General E. Kirby Smith, commanding the trans-Mississippi Department, as reported, was 17,686.[127] To this small dimension had General Smith's army been reduced when he accepted the terms to which a reference has already been made. This reduction resulted from various causes, but it is believed was mainly due to the reluctance of a large part of his army to accept a parole, preferring to take whatever hazard belonged to absenting themselves without leave and continuing their character of belligerents. A few, but so far as I know very few, even went to the extent of expatriating themselves, and joined Maximilian in Mexico. Against no one as much as myself did the hostility of our victorious enemy manifest itself, but I was never willing to seek the remedy of exile, and always advised those who consulted me against that resort. The ma.s.s of our people could not go; the few who were able to do so were most needed to sustain the others in the hour of a common adversity. The example of Ireland after the Treaty of Limerick, and of Canada after its conquest by Great Britain, were instructive as to the duty of the influential men to remain and share the burden of a common disaster.

With General E. K. Smith's surrender the Confederate flag no longer floated on the land; but one gallant sailor still unfurled it on the Pacific. Captain Waddell, commanding the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah, swept the ocean from Australia nearly to Behring's Straits, making many captures in the Okhobak Sea and Arctic Ocean. In August, 1865, he learned from the captain of a British ship that the Confederacy, as an independent Government, had ceased to exist. With the fall of his Government his right to cruise was of course terminated; he therefore sailed for the coast of England, entered the Mersey, and on November 6, 1865, and in due form, surrendered his vessel to the British Government. She was accepted and subsequently transferred to the United States.

After leaving Washington in the manner and for the purpose heretofore described, I overtook a commissary and quartermaster's train, having public papers of value in charge, and, finding that they had no experienced woodsman with it, I gave them four of the men of my small party, and went on with the rest. On the second or third day after leaving Washington, I heard that a band of marauders, supposed to be stragglers and deserters from both armies, were in pursuit of my family, whom I had not seen since they left Richmond, but of whom I heard, at Washington, that they had gone with my private secretary and seven paroled men, who generously offered their services as an escort, to the Florida coast. Their route was to the east of that I was pursuing, but I immediately changed direction and rode rapidly across the country to overtake them. About nightfall the horses of my escort gave out, but I pressed on with Secretary Reagan and my personal staff. It was a bright moonlight night, and just before day, as the moon was sinking below the tree-tops, I met a party of men in the road, who answered my questions by saying they belonged to an Alabama regiment; that they were coming from a village not far off, on their way homeward. Upon inquiry being made, they told me they had pa.s.sed an encampment of wagons, with women and children, and asked me if we belonged to that party. Upon being answered in the affirmative, they took their leave.

After a short time I was hailed by a voice which I recognized as that of my private secretary, who informed me that the marauders had been hanging around the camp, and that he and others were on post around it, and were expecting an a.s.sault as soon as the moon went down. A silly story had got abroad that it was a treasure-train, and the _auri sacra fames_ had probably instigated these marauders, as it subsequently stimulated General J. H. Wilson, to send out a large cavalry force to capture the same train. For the protection of my family I traveled with them two or three days, when, believing that they had pa.s.sed out of the region of marauders, I determined to leave their encampment at nightfall, to execute my original purpose. My horse and those of my party proper were saddled preparatory to a start, when one of my staff, who had ridden into the neighboring village, returned and told me that he had heard that a marauding party intended to attack the camp that night. This decided me to wait long enough to see whether there was any truth in the rumor, which I supposed would be ascertained in a few hours. My horse remained saddled and my pistols in the holsters, and I lay down, fully dressed, to rest. Nothing occurred to rouse me until just before dawn, when my coachman, a free colored man, who faithfully clung to our fortunes, came and told me there was firing over the branch, just behind our encampment. I stepped out of my wife's tent and saw some hors.e.m.e.n, whom I immediately recognized as cavalry, deploying around the encampment. I turned back and told my wife these were not the expected marauders, but regular troopers. She implored me to leave her at once. I hesitated, from unwillingness to do so, and lost a few precious moments before yielding to her importunity. My horse and arms were near the road on which I expected to leave, and down which the cavalry approached; it was therefore impracticable to reach them.

I was compelled to start in the opposite direction. As it was quite dark in the tent, I picked up what was supposed to be my "raglan," a water-proof, light overcoat, without sleeves; it was subsequently found to be my wife's, so very like my own as to be mistaken for it; as I started, my wife thoughtfully threw over my head and shoulders a shawl. I had gone perhaps fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer, and, dropping the shawl and raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward him; he leveled his carbine at me, but I expected, if he fired, he would miss me, and my intention was in that event to put my hand under his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into his saddle, and attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching, when she saw the soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around me. Success depended on instantaneous action, and, recognizing that the opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp and chilly, pa.s.sed on to a fire beyond the tent. Our pursuers had taken different roads, and approached our camp from opposite directions; they encountered each other and commenced firing, both supposing they had met our armed escort, and some casualties resulted from their conflict with an imaginary body of Confederate troops. During the confusion, while attention was concentrated upon myself, except by those who were engaged in pillage, one of my aides, Colonel J. Taylor Wood, with Lieutenant Barnwell, walked off un.o.bserved. His daring exploits on the sea had made him, on the part of the Federal Government, an object of special hostility, and rendered it quite proper that he should avail himself of every possible means of escape. Colonel Pritchard went over to their battle-field, and I did not see him for a long time, surely more than an hour after my capture. He subsequently claimed credit, in a conversation with me, for the forbearance shown by his men in not shooting me when I refused to surrender.

Wilson and others have uttered many falsehoods in regard to my capture, which have been exposed in publications by persons there present--by Secretary Reagan, by the members of my personal staff, and by the colored coachman, Jim Jones, which must have been convincing to all who were not given over to believe a lie. For this reason I will postpone, to some other time and more appropriate place, any further notice of the story and its variations, all the sp.a.w.n of a malignity that shames the civilization of the age. We were, when prisoners, subjected to petty pillage, as described in the publications referred to, and in others; and to annoyances such as military _gentlemen_ never commit or permit.

On our way to Macon we received the proclamation of President Andrew Johnson offering a reward for my apprehension as an accomplice in the a.s.sa.s.sination of the late President A. Lincoln. Some troops by the wayside had the proclamation, which was displayed with vociferous demonstrations of exultation over my capture. When we arrived at Macon I was conducted to the hotel where General Wilson had his quarters. A strong guard was in front of the entrance, and, when I got down to pa.s.s in, it opened ranks, facing inward, and presented arms.

A commodious room was a.s.signed to myself and family. After a while the steward of the hotel called and inquired whether I would dine with General Wilson or have dinner served with myself and family in my room. I chose the latter. After dinner I received a message from General Wilson, asking whether he should wait upon me, or whether I would call upon him. I rose and accompanied the messenger to General Wilson's presence. We had met at West Point when he was a cadet, and I a commissioner sent by the Congress to inquire into the affairs of the Academy. After some conversation in regard to former times and our common acquaintance, he referred to the proclamation offering a reward for my capture. Taking it for granted that any significant remark of mine would be reported to his Government, and fearing that I might never have another opportunity to give my opinion to A.

Johnson, I told him there was one man in the United States who knew that proclamation to be false. He remarked that my expression indicated a particular person. I answered that I did, and the person was the one who signed it, for he at least knew that I preferred Lincoln to himself. Some other conversation then occurred in regard to the route on which we were to be carried. Having several small children, one of them an infant, I expressed a preference for the easier route by water, supposing then, as he seemed to do, that I was to go to Washington City. He manifested a courteous, obliging temper, and, either by the authority with which he was invested or by obtaining it from a higher power, my preference as to the route was accorded. I told him that some of the men with me were on parole, and that they all were riding their own horses--private property--that I would be glad they should be permitted to retain them, and I have a distinct recollection that he promised me it should be done; but I have since learned that they were all deprived of their horses, and some who were on parole, viz., Major Moran, Captain Moody, Lieutenant Hathaway, Midshipman Howell, and Private Messec, who had not violated their obligations of parole, but had been captured because they were found voluntarily traveling with my family to protect them from marauders, were sent with me as prisoners of war, and all incarcerated, in disregard of the protection promised when they surrendered. At Augusta we were put on a steamer, and there met Vice-President Stephens; Hon. C. C. Clay, who had voluntarily surrendered himself upon learning that he was included in the proclamation for the arrest of certain persons charged with complicity in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Mr. Lincoln; General Wheeler, the distinguished cavalry officer, and his adjutant, General Ralls. My private secretary, Burton N. Harrison, had refused to be left behind, and, though they would not allow him to go in the carriage with me, he was resolved to follow my fortunes, as well from sentiment as the hope of being useful. His fidelity was rewarded by a long and rigorous imprisonment. At Port Royal we were transferred to a sea-going vessel, which, instead of being sent to Washington City, was brought to anchor at Hampton Roads. One by one all my companions in misfortune were sent away, we knew not whither, leaving on the vessel only Mr. Clay and his wife and myself and family. After some days' detention, Clay and myself were removed to Fortress Monroe, and there incarcerated in separate cells. Not knowing that the Government was at war with women and children, I asked that my family might be permitted to leave the ship and go to Richmond or Washington City, or to some place where they had acquaintances, but this was refused. I then requested that they might be permitted to go abroad on one of the vessels lying at the Roads. This was also denied; finally, I was informed that they must return to Savannah on the vessel by which we came. This was an old transport-ship, hardly seaworthy. My last attempt was to get for them the privilege of stopping at Charleston, where they had many personal friends. This also was refused--why, I did not then know, have not learned since, and am unwilling to make a supposition, as none could satisfactorily account for such an act of inhumanity. My daily experience as a prisoner shed no softer light on the transaction, but only served to intensify my extreme solicitude.

Bitter tears have been shed by the gentle, and stern reproaches have been made by the magnanimous, on account of the needless torture to which I was subjected, and the heavy fetters riveted upon me, while in a stone casemate and surrounded by a strong guard; but all these were less excruciating than the mental agony my captors were able to inflict. It was long before I was permitted to hear from my wife and children, and this, and things like this, was the power which education added to savage cruelty; but I do not propose now and here to enter upon the story of my imprisonment, or more than merely to refer to other matters which concerns me personally, as distinct from my connection with the Confederacy.

[Footnote 124: "Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, pp. 346, 347.]

[Footnote 125: "Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, p. 370.]

[Footnote 126: "Annual Cyclopaedia," 1865, p. 11.]

[Footnote 127: Ibid.]

CHAPTER LV.

Number of the Enemy's Forces in the War.--Number of the Enemy's Troops from Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee.--Cruel Conduct of the War.--Statements in 1862.--Statements in 1863.-- Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation.--Statements in 1864.--General Hunter's Proceedings near Lynchburg.--Cruelties in Sherman's March through South Carolina.

On April 25th, at Raleigh, North Carolina, General J. E. Johnston capitulated to General Sherman, as has been stated, and his army was disbanded. On May 4th General B. Taylor capitulated with the last of our forces east.

The number of men brought into the field by the Government of the United States during the war, according to the official returns in the Adjutant-General's office, Washington, was 2,678,967. In addition to these, 86,724 paid a commutation.

The rapidity with which calls for men were made by that Government during the last eighteen mouths of the war, and the number brought into the field, were as follows:

Men furnished Calls of October 17, 1863, and February 1, 1864, for 500,000 men for three years ... ... ... ... ... 317,092 Call of March 14, 1864, for 200,000 men for three years 259,515 Militia for one hundred days, April to July, 1864 ... . 83,612 Call of July 18, 1864, for 500,000 men ... ... ... 385,163[128]

Call of December 19, 1864, for 300,000 men ... ... . 211,752 --------- Total men furnished in eighteen months ... ... . . 1,257,134

The number of men furnished on call of the United States Government, previous to October 17, 1863, was as follows:

Men furnished Call of April 15, 1861, for 75,000 men for three months 91,816 Call of May 3, 1861, for 500,000 men ... ... ... . 700,680 Men furnished in May and June, 1862, for three months . . 15,007 Call of July 2, 1862, for 300,000 men for three years . . 421,465 Call of August 4, 1862, for 300,000 militia for nine months ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... 87,588 Proclamation of June 15, 1863, for militia for six months 16,361 Volunteers and militia at various times, of sixty days to one year ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... 13,760 Volunteers and militia at various times for three years 75,156 --------- Total ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . 1,421,833