History of the 85th Illinois Regiment
Illinois Volunteer Infantry
by
Henry J. Aten


CHAPTER XXIV
page 300-315

April & May, 1865

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

     At this time the military situation was interesting and exciting. General Lee, at Richmond and Petersburgh, less than two hundred miles distant, was besieged by General Grant, who was watching his adversary with sleepless eyes. General Johnston, with the only other respectable Confederate army, was at Smithfield, about midway between Goldsboro and Raleigh. If Lee should remain behind his entrenchments, in the attitude of de­fense which he had maintained for months, his defeat and destruction would be almost certain the moment our army should drive Johnston beyond the Roanoke; and this General Sherman would be abundantly able to do, as soon as supplies arrived in sufficient quantities to warrant an aggressive movement. Lee might call Johnston to his aid by forced marches, while Sherman was refitting and getting ready to move, and with the united armies attempt to raise the siege and overwhelm Grant. But the two Confederate armies united would not be strong enough to beat Grant in his securely entrenched position, and before a siege could be under­taken, Sherman would arrive and close the last avenue of escape. In this situation, the best thing General Lee could do would be to quietly slip away from Grant; unite his army with that of Johnston near Roanoke, and try to destroy Sherman's army before Grant could fol­low. The question was, would Lee make the attempt to escape from Grant, and try to fight a great battle with the combined armies of the Confederacy against Sherman's army?  We now know that is just what he tried to do, and the first move he made in that direction was the signal for Grant to strike. Accordingly on the last day of March, thinking he saw symptoms of such a movement, Grant struck, and, after a series of sanguin­ary battles, the Confederate lines were broken and Lee, with his shattered army, was put to flight. The Confed­erate capital was evacuated, and the officers of the rebel government became individual fugitives, each seeking to expatriate himself.
     With the reinforcements received at Goldsboro, the army numbered eighty-eight thousand men, with ninety-one pieces of artillery. It was, perhaps, as nearly per­fect in instruction, equipment, and general efficiency as volunteer troops can be made while in the field. Then, too, in the coming campaign it was to be led by the bold­est and best fighting generals, as corps commanders, to be found in the field, either east or west. The Army of Georgia, under command of General Slocum, with his two corps commanded by Generals Jeff C. Davis and Joseph A. Mower; the Army of the Ohio, commanded by General Schofield, and his two corps, commanded by Generals J. D. Cox and A. H. Terry, and the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General O. O. Howard, and his two corps, commanded by Generals John A. Logan and Frank P. Blair. Thus equipped and com­manded, the army was prepared to fight a desperate, final battle with the combined armies of the Confederacy, in case Lee and Johnston should effect a junction before General Grant could follow Lee to the Roanoke.
     On April 5th, preparations for an advance had been so far completed that orders were issued for the movement to begin on the 10th, and on the 6th, news was received of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, and the flight of Lee's army, glorious news which was des­tined to get better and better, with one sad exception, to the end.
     At daylight on the morning of the ioth of April, the whole army moved directly against the enemy at Smithfield, the Fourteenth corps in advance, on the main road, and the second division the advance of the corps. With­in three miles the enemy was found behind the usual bar­ricades of fence rails, but his outposts were swept aside without a moment's hesitation. A dispatch received that morning from Virginia stated that Grant, in pur­suit of Lee, had already made large captures of prisoners and artillery, and this animated the eager troops to in­crease their efforts to bring Johnston's army to battle. There was now no delay in attacking the enemy or wait­ing for others to turn a flank, but wherever found, the enemy's position was promptly charged and his troops dispersed. Early on the next morning our corps en­tered Smithfield, to find that Johnston had retreated after destroying the bridges over Neuse river. Here a brief delay was encountered until the pontoons could be brought up and a bridge laid, when the headlong pur­suit of the enemy was resumed.
     On the morning of the I2th while passing through one of the pine forests peculiar to that region, where the taper columns rose a hundred feet before spreading their branches into arches like those of some vast cathedral, the command was halted at the end of the first hour's march for the usual five minutes' rest. The day was bright and warm, the scene restful and beautiful, and while the men were enjoying their brief rest the command was electrified by the announcement that Lee, with his entire army, had surrendered at Appomattox. The announcement came through corps headquarters, and General Davis, with pardonable pride, recalled the fact that just four years before, while a lieutenant in Fort Sumter, he had heard the first gun fired in the War of the Rebellion. This was a happy prelude to the glori­ous newrs and reminded one and all that it was the fourth anniversary of the firing on the devoted band of heroes in Charleston harbor. While the announcement of the surrender of Lee and his army came to us so unexpect­edly by the roadside, its full significance was at once understood. All realized that the war was virtually over. The message meant home, and wife, and children, and happy reunions with friends throughout the land. It carried indescribable joy to brave men, whose patience had been sorely tried, and whose strength had been well-night exhausted by weary marches and indecisive bat­tles. Then after hearty cheers that rang through the piney woods and seemed to fill the blue dome above us, the command fell in, faced to the front, and eagerly re­sumed the march against the only remaining army of the Confederacy.
     Two incidents, said to have occurred upon the announcement of Lee's surrender, illustrate the humor and the pathos of the scene. As the bearer of the glad tid­ings dashed along the line, a soldier, quick as the mes­sage fell upon his ears, answered: "Be dad! You're the man we've been looking for for the last four years." At the roadside a woman and several small children stood at the gate, watching the antics of the shouting soldiers.  As she realized the import of the news, she turned to the children and said, "Now papa can come home."
   The brigade passed through Raleigh on the evening of the next day and camped for the night west of the city limits. The capital city of North Carolina had escaped the ravages of war, and was one of the most beautiful cities we had seen in the South. From Raleigh the Fourteenth corps marched thirty-six miles southwest to Aven's ferry on the Cape Fear river, where it arrived on the evening of the 15th. While in camp at this point, General Johnston set up the white flag, an armistice was proclaimed, and negotiations began for the surrender of his army.
     On the 17th, while the men were almost delirious with joy over the assurance of returning peace, the startling intelligence was received that President Lincoln had been assassinated. At first the men were so stunned and dazed by this wanton and cruel murder that they wandered about the camps aimless and speechless, their sorrow too deep for utterance. The President had endeared himself to the Union soldiers to an extent that it is nearly, if not quite impossible, for those outside the army to wholly understand. In the darkest hours of the terrible struggle his firmness of purpose and his faith in ultimate success had been an unfailing source of inspira­tion. To the rank and file "Father Abraham" was no unmeaning term. It was not a sentiment, it was a fact. It was the precise term that described the love and vene­ration they felt for him, wrhose courage rose in the dark­est hours to the majesty of grandest heroism. They had followed him with the confidence of children, while he led the people with almost more than mortal wisdom.  It was his serene confidence that restored their failing faith - his never relaxing hope that cheered them on to victory. The question of the ages had come to be set­tled on the battlefield, "Can a nation endure the test that is founded upon the declaration that all men are free and equal?" In such a contest a general might fail, many of them did fail, but in the President there must be neither variableness nor shadow of turning. He had com­manded through a four-years' battle. His wisdom had guided the people through four years of tempest and storm with singular tact and matchless skill. Then, too, there was a sense of personal bereavement to many who had followed him as a trusted political leader in Illinois, with the zeal and enthusiasm known only to youth.
     Up to this hour the only desire of the men had been to end the war and go home. To that end they had been willing to undertake any hardship, endure every priva­tion, and brave any danger. But now that one so gentle, so kind and forgiving, should be so causelessly murdered seemed incomprehensible, and they began instinctively to lay this monstrous crime to the brutalizing influence of a system that had debauched the people of the South and to regard it as a legitimate consequence of rebellion against lawful authority. Then a desire for vengeance took possession of them, and they rejoiced in the thought that negotiations for surrender might fail, that hostilities might be resumed in order that they should have an opportunity to avenge the foul crime committed at Washington. But this terrible desire for vengeance passed away; the avenging hand was stayed, and neither shot nor shell was sent on its deadly mission.
     On the 18th an agreement was signed between General Sherman and General Johnston for the surrender of all of the Confederate forces then remaining in the field. But, as this agreement was conditional, it had to be sub­mitted to the President before becoming final, and the existing truce was continued until the agreement could be sent to Washington for approval or rejection by the President. As the agreement contained political ques­tions not properly subject to the decision of a military convention the whole agreement was unceremoniously rejected by the President, and General Grant was ordered to Raleigh to take command of the army in per­son and to resume hositilities at once.
     In the generous terms accorded to General Lee at Appomattox General Grant had gone to the limit of liberality and the authorities were not willing to grant further concessions to those in rebellion against the Fed­eral Union. In the exercise of generous sentiment and sound judgment he had established a precedent which all of his subordinates were expected to follow in their negotiations with the enemy. So when General Sher­man, for the moment, laid aside the character of a soldier and assumed that of a diplomat, he permitted himself to entertain and submit for approval terms of surrender which the government could not sanction.
     General Grant upon his arrival at Raleigh, with graceful tact, turned his presence into an apparent visit of consultation with Sherman, and but very few, even in the army, knew of his visit until he had come and gone. Without a moment's delay, General Sherman advised the Confederate commander of the rejection of the agree­ment, proclaimed an end to the truce, and demanded the surrender of the rebel army upon the same terms given to General Lee. At the same time, orders were issued to the army to be ready to resume hostilities at the end of the forty-eight hours' notice required by the terms of the armistice. But there was to be no more war, the prof­fered terms were promptly accepted, and, on the 26th, General Johnston surrendered all of the Confederate forces east of the Chattahoochee river; and the next day General Grant returned to Washington without having announced his presence to the army, and without his presence being known in the camp of the enemy.
     Now, according to immemorial custom, Sherman's victorious legions should have been drawn up in line with sounding trumpet and waving plume, while the captives should in that imposing presence, furl their flags and ground their arms. But instead of this triumphant pageant, the rebel army was permitted to furl its ill-starred banners and lay down its arms in the seclusion of its own camp, and there was neither blare of band nor peal of cannon heard in the quarters of the Federal army. But as soon as the result became known, the gray and the blue were seen drinking from the same canteen and eating from the same haversack.
     The duty of receiving the arms and munitions of war, and of issuing paroles to the officers and men of the Con­federate army, was assigned to General Schofield, and the Twenty-third army corps, commanded by General Cox, was advanced to the vicinity of Greensboro, then the county-seat of Guilford county, where that duty was performed. It therefore came to pass, that the final scenes of surrender took place in close proximity to the battlefield of Guilford Court House, where, in the War of the Revolution, the American army commanded by General Greene fought a memorable battle with the Brit­ish under Lord Cornwallis. The engagement marked the turning point in the British campaign, as on that hotly contested field the Continental forces checked the advance of the British army of invasion and a few days after the battle, Cornwallis was compelled to retire into Virginia, where he shut himself up in Yorktown.
     At the time of the surrender, the "Old Court House" had almost entirely disappeared, a few dilapidated build­ings being all that remained to mark tne site of that his­toric town. But the topography of a country which dominates military movements does not change mater­ially and hill and valley and stream remain the same through ages. The fact that our line of march led our army to cross the streams where Cornwallis crossed, passing on the way the fields where he fought, and end­ing our campaign at a point where his invasion was checked eighty years before, wTou!d seem to place the art of war among the exact sciences.
     The final agreement for the surrender was signel on the 26th, 2nd on the next morning orders were issued, directing the right and left wings of the army to march by easy stages to Richmond. So Sherman' {Sherman's} army that had fought its way to Atlanta, marched to Savannah and thence to Raleigh, did not see the surrender of John­ston's army, although the men shared the curiosity com­mon to victorious soldiers respecting that event. The divisions composing the two wings were drawn in, the ammunition trains were relieved of their now useless contents, and the wagons were loaded with provisions and forage, and by the evening of the 30th, preparations for a peaceful homeward march had been completed.
     On the morning of May 1st, the Second division moved out of Morrisville; crossed the Neuse river that afternoon, and passed through Oxford, the shire town of Granviile county, the next day. On the 3rd, we crossed Tar river, and later in the day the North Carolina and Virginia state line, camping for the night near Taylor's Ferry, on the Roanoke river. The next day we crossed the Roanoke on a pontoon bridge, eight hundred feet in lenth, passed through Boydton Court House, and camped on the Meherrin river. Thence our route led through Nottoway Court House, and across the famous Appomattox river at Good's bridge, to Manchester, op­posite Richmond, where we arrived on Sunday evening, May 7th.
     It was an odd experience for the first few days to march steadily on without here and there forming a line of battle, and to go to sleep at night undisturbed by the prospect of a midnight call to arms. Then, too, the citi­zens no longer fled or hid at the approach of our army, but one and all, men, women and children, flocked to the road to see it pass. Frequently in the family groups at the roadside, men clad in the faded gray uniform of the Confederate soldier could be seen, good-naturedly jok­ing with their former foes as the column passed by. And "Say, Yank! ain't you 'uns all a long ways from home?" and "Johnny! Why don't you fix up that fence?" are ex­amples of the innocent chaffing that took place between the blue and the gray.
     We never knew whether all the petty annoyances to which Sherman's army was subjected while it camped in the vicinity of Richmond were caused by General Halleck's direct orders or not.  But soon after the fall of the Confederate capital that distinguished non-comba­tant was assigned to command the Department of the James, with headquarters in Richmond. His martial zeal had been restrained to such an extent while serving as chief of staff at Washington, that when he was ap­pointed to the command of the armies in the field, he was bubbling over with right, and ready to display the most bloodthirsty zeal. Among the first orders issued after his arrival at Richmond was one directing his troops to disregard the armistice then pending between Generals Sherman and Johnston while negotiations were in progress for the surrender of all of the Confederate armies remaining in the field. This was a most flagrant violation of the laws of war, and a direct insult to Sher­man and his army. Yet, notwithstanding this base out­rage, Halleck issued orders directing Sherman's army to pass in review before him, as it marched through Rich­mond. Sherman promptly forbade the proposed review and advised Halleck to keep out of sight while the army passed through the city, if he desired to avoid an expres­sion of the just indignation felt alike by the officers and men of his army. Then Halleck, whose capacity for blundering seemed without limit, refused to permit any of Sherman's men to enter the city.
     Among the officers and men in Sherman's army, there were many who had marched from the Mississippi to the James, and never before in all their weary marches had been refused permission to enter a captured town or city. They could see ex-Conederate soldiers and citi­zens ffoinsr to and cominsr from the citv at will, but when they attempted to visit the city, they were met at the pontoon bridge by a provost guard, who informed them that Sherman's men could not pass the bridge. But the men had come too far to see the rebel capital to be de­nied the sight without a protest. So a little time was spent in quiet organization in the seclusion of the camps, and then the men proceeded to resent this new indignity and to show in their own way their contempt for a dunderpated martinet. A large crowd assembled at the south end of the bridge, entirely unarmed and without officers or orders, when upon the agreed signal the men rushed upon the guards, many of whom were jostled into the river, and by sheer weight of numbers seized the bridge. The affair was entirely irregular, but there is little doubt that General Sherman appreciated the grim humor displayed by his unarmed men in wresting the Richmond bridge from Halleck's guards. But so far as we could learn, and strange as it may appear, Halleck never resented the conduct of the men in overthrowing" his guards, nor was any one arrested for defying his or­ders and invading the city against his mandate.
     On the morning of the 11th, the army crossed the James river and passed through Richmond. The troops moved at the usual marching pace, making no parade of ceremony and there was no review. The sidewalks were crowded with citizens and ex-Confederate soldiers, whose curiosity to see Sherman's army insured their presence, while the memory of the recent death of their most cherished hopes, rendered impossible any demon­stration of approval or greeting of welcome. This nat­ural feeling so evident among the spectators, was re­spected by the passing troops and no song of victory was heard while Sherman and his army marched through the graveyard of southern hopes and Confederate ambition.
     It was expected that the earthworks erected for the defense of the rebel capital would be found to be monu­ments of engineering skill, massive in their proportions and impregnable in their strength. But the fortifica­tions proved disappointing, and officers and men agreed that they were in no way so strong, nor were they so elaborate in construction as the works encountered near Atlanta. After taking dinner in the rebel works, at the point where the road to Hanover Court House leaves the city, we crossed the Chickahominy river and camped for the night within a few miles of the battlefields of Mechanicsville, Gaines Mills and Fair Oaks.
     From Richmond to Washington Sherman's army marched on holy ground. Over this narrow field the tide of battle ebbed and flowed throughout the war, and from hill and valley and plain the smoke of sacrifice had risen, and the atoning blood had been poured out. Al­most one continuous battlefield, the familiar scenes along the line of march constantly reminded us "of the night in the trench and the pale faces of the dead." Insignificant towns and hamlets had been immortalized by the valor­ous deeds performed in their thriftless streets, and the crossings of the almost numberless streams had been re­peatedly taken and retaken by cunning stratagem or dashing courage. The two armies operating between the Union and Confederate capitals had been the largest and the best equipped in the service, and the conflicts be­tween them had been very frequent and deadly. But the battles, while bravely fought and bloody enough to satisfy the most sanguinary, had been so indecisive and fruitless that it may well be doubted if the campaigns in Virginia previous to that of 1864-5 contributed in the least degree to the final triumph of the National cause.
     Sherman's army reached the heights overlooking Washington City, on the 19th of May, 1865, and went into camps just below those already in possession of Gen­eral Meade's Army of the Potomac. To the vast major­ity of Sherman's army this was their first sight of the national capital. From our camp we could see the dome of the capitol, as it stood in simple grandeur against the sky, and it was difficult to realize that within less than a year the enemy had looked upon it with covetous eye, while the roar of his guns could be distinctly heard in the White House. Yet in the preceding July, while the Army of the Potomac was engaged in the siege of Petersburg, and Sherman's army was on the Chatttahoochee river, the rebels under the command of General "Early were thundering at the gates of the capital city of the Union. But then, the stupendous operations of the last year of the struggle had been conducted upon a field of such magnitude, that the common mind could scarcely keep pace with the rapid march of events.
The Army of the East and the Army of the West occupied the south bank of the Potomac river from a point opposite Georgetown to Alexandria, and the next few days were spent in preparing for a great military display, which was to take place in the national capital in honor of the final victory for the Union. To the men of the Western army this would be a new experience; they had never witnessed a formal parade of ceremony, and in all their long service they had observed no holi­day.

Chapter 23       Chapter 25

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