On Monday (April 17th), with the burden of the knowledge of Lincoln's assassination on his mind, Sherman went up to Durham by rail, accompanied by a few officers. There he met General Kilpatrick, who furnished a cavalry company as an escort, and led-horses to mount the party. [Footnote: Id., pp. 234, 235.] The bearer of the flag of truce and a trumpeter were in advance, followed by part of the escort, the general and his officers came next, the little cavalcade closing with the rest of the escort in due order. They rode about five miles on the Hillsborough road, when they met General Wade Hampton advancing with a flag from the other side. The house of a Mr. Bennett, near by, was made the place of conference. When Sherman and Johnston were alone, the dispatch announcing Mr. Lincoln's murder was shown the Confederate, and as he read it, Sherman tells us, beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, his face showed the horror and distress he felt, and he denounced the act as a disgrace to the age. [Footnote: Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 349,] Both realized the danger that terrible results would follow if hostilities should be resumed, and both were impelled to yield whatever seemed possible to bring the war to an immediate end. In this praiseworthy spirit their discussion was carried on, Johnston saying that "the greatest possible calamity to the South had happened." [Footnote: Johnston's Narrative, p. 402.]
Johnston's first point was that his proposal of the 14th had been that the civil authorities should negotiate as to the terms of peace, while the armistice should continue. Sherman could not deal with the Confederate civil government or recognize it. It could only dissolve and vanish when the separate states should make their submission, and these were the only governments de facto with whom dealings could be had. Postponing this matter, they proceeded to the practical one,--the terms that could be assured to the armies of the South and to the States.
Here they found themselves not far apart. As to the troops, nothing more liberal could be asked than the terms already given to Lee. Sherman knew of Mr. Lincoln's willingness that the State governments should continue to act, if they began by declaring the Confederacy dissolved by defeat, and the authority of the United States recognized and acknowledged. He had no knowledge of any change in the policy of the government in this respect, and what he had said to Governor Vance's delegation was satisfactory to both negotiators.
But how as to amnesty? Here Sherman was also able to give Lincoln's own words, declaring his desire that the people in general should be assured of all their rights of life, liberty, and property, and the political rights of citizens of a common country on their complete submission. Lincoln wanted no more lives sacrificed, and would use his power to make amnesty complete. He could not control the legislative or the judicial department of the government, but he spoke for himself as executive. An agreement was easy here also.
What, then, as to slavery? Sherman regarded it utterly dead in the regions occupied by the Confederates at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation (Jan. 1, 1863), and Johnston frankly admitted that surrender in view of the whole situation acknowledged the end of the system which had been the great stake in the war. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 243.] The Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery, had then been accepted by twenty States, Arkansas did so three days later, and the six Northern States which had been delayed in action upon it were as certain to ratify as that a little time should roll round. [Footnote: Rickey's Constitution, p. 43.] It was therefore no figure of speech to say that slavery was dead: Sherman, Johnston, and Breckinridge knew it to be true. But Johnston urged that to secure the prompt and peaceful acquiescence of the whole South, it was undesirable to force upon them irritating acknowledgments even of what they tacitly admitted to themselves was true; further, that the subject was not included in the scope of a military convention. If slavery was in fact abolished by Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, it was for Congress and the courts so to declare it, and two soldiers arranging the surrender had no call to assert all the legal consequences which would flow from the act. Sherman yielded to this argument, not from any doubt as to the fact of freedom, but from a certainty of it so complete that he would not prolong dispute to obtain a formal assent to it. He was the more ready to do so as he insisted that he acted simply as the representative of the Executive as Commander-in-Chief, and neither could nor would promise immunity from prosecutions under indictments or confiscation-laws. He said also that whilst he agreed with Mr. Lincoln in hoping no executions or long imprisonments would occur, he advised the leading men in the Confederate Government to get out of the country.
As to the disposal of the arms in the hands of the Confederate soldiers from North Carolina to Texas, both knew that little of practical moment depended on the form of the agreement. So many arms were thrown away, so many were concealed by soldiers who loved the weapons they had carried, that even in our own ranks no satisfactory collection of them could be made. But a real and present apprehension with both officers was the scattering of armed men in guerilla bands. If the law-abiding were disarmed and those who scattered and refused to give up their weapons were at large, how could the States preserve the peace? To this point Sherman said he attached most importance. This was not an afterthought when defending his action; he wrote it to Grant in the letter transmitting the terms when they were made. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 243.] The same thought was forced home on the Confederates by their experience at the time. Before the negotiations were finally concluded, bands of paroled men from Lee's army, and stragglers were able to stop trains on the railroad on which Johnston's army was dependent for supplies, and it would have been intolerable to leave the country at the mercy of that class. [Footnote: Id., pp. 818, 819.] To keep the troops of each State under discipline till they deposited the arms at State capitals, where United States garrisons would be, and where the final disposal of them would be "subject to the future action of Congress," seemed prudent and safe; and this was agreed to. [Footnote: Id., pp. 243, 244.]
In the first day's conference it seemed clear that the generals could easily agree upon all they thought essential, except the exclusion of Mr. Davis and his chief civil officers from any part in the negotiations and making the terms of amnesty general. An adjournment to Tuesday was had to give Johnston time to consult with General Breckinridge, the Secretary of War, and for Sherman to reflect further on the amnesty question. [Footnote: Sherman's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 350; Johnston's Narrative, p. 404.] As soon as the latter reached Raleigh, he dispatched to Grant, through a staff officer at New Berne, a brief report of the "full and frank interchange of opinions" with Johnston. "He evidently seeks to make terms for Jeff. Davis and his cabinet," he said. The adjournment was mentioned with its reason; and to negative any thought that he might neglect military advantages by the delay, he said, "We lose nothing in time, as by agreement both armies stand still, and the roads are drying up, so that if I am forced to pursue, we will be able to make better speed. There is great danger that the Confederate armies will dissolve and fill the whole land with robbers and assassins, and I think this is one of the difficulties that Johnston labors under. The assassination of Mr. Lincoln shows one of the elements in the rebel army which will be almost as difficult to deal with as the main armies." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 237.]
When the two generals met again on Tuesday, General Breckinridge was with Johnston's party, and the latter requested that he might take part in the conference; but Sherman adhered to his position that he would deal only with the military officers and objected to Breckinridge as Secretary of War. Johnston suggested that he might be present simply as a general officer, but adding that his personal relations to Mr. Davis would greatly aid in securing final approval of anything to which he assented. With this understanding he was allowed to be present. Mr. Reagan, Postmaster-General, had also come with Breckinridge to General Hampton's headquarters, but did not proceed further. He was busy there, Johnston tells us, in throwing into form the terms which the general thought were fairly included in the conversational comparison of views on the previous day, with the exception of the amnesty, which was made general without exceptions. [Footnote: Johnston's Narrative, p. 404.] This must, of course, have been from notes written at Johnston's dictation.
Sherman was now informed that the Confederate general had authority to negotiate a military convention for the surrender of all the Confederate armies, and that if the terms could be agreed upon, the Davis government would disband, like the armies, and use the influence of its members to secure the submission of all the several States. Johnston, on his part, would be content with the conclusions informally reached on Monday, except that he wanted the principle inserted of amnesty without exceptions. Mr. Reagan's draft was produced and read. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 806.] It contained a preamble stating motives for the action proposed, and professed to be no more than a basis for further negotiation. A note appended to it referred to several things necessary to a conclusion of the business which might be subsequently added. The preamble, as well as this note, was no proper part of the terms, and Sherman entirely objected to any preamble of the kind, wishing to include only the things necessary to an agreement. He therefore took his pen, and then and there wrote off rapidly his own expression of the points he had intended to agree to, but explicitly as a "memorandum or basis" for submission to their principals.
They were, First, the continuance of the armistice, terminable on short notice; Second, the disbanding of all the Confederate armies under parol and deposit of their arms subject to the control of the National government; Third, recognition by the Executive of existing State governments; Fourth, re-establishment of Federal Courts; Fifth, guaranty for the future of general rights of person, property, and political rights "so far as the Executive can;" Sixth, freedom for the people from disturbance on account of the past, by "the Executive authority of the government;" the seventh item was a general résumé of results aimed at. [Footnote: Id., p 243.] The most striking difference between this statement and that which Mr. Reagan had drawn, besides the omission of the preamble, was the express limitation of the proposed action by the powers of the National executive, with neither promise nor suggestion as to what the courts or Congress might or might not do.