But the wisdom of Lincoln's peremptory order was completely vindicated. With the best intentions in the world, Sherman, beginning very properly by offering his antagonist the same terms accorded Lee, ended, after two days' negotiation, by making a treaty of peace with the Confederate States, including a preliminary armistice, the disbandment of the Confederate armies, recognition by the United States Executive of the several State governments, reëstablishment of the Federal courts, and a general amnesty. "Not being fully empowered by our respective principals to fulfil these terms," the agreement truthfully concluded, "we individually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly obtain the necessary authority."
The rebel President, with unnecessary formality, required a report from General Breckinridge, his Secretary of War, on the desirability of ratifying this most favorable convention. Scarcely had he given it his indorsement when news came that it had been disapproved at Washington, and that Sherman had been directed to continue his military operations; and the peripatetic government once more took up its southward flight.
The moment General Grant read the agreement he saw it was entirely inadmissible. The new President called his cabinet together, and Mr. Lincoln's instructions of March 3 to Grant were repeated to Sherman—somewhat tardily, it must be confessed—as his rule of action. All this was a matter of course, and General Sherman could not properly, and perhaps would not, have objected to it. But the calm spirit of Lincoln was now absent from the councils of the government; and it was not in Andrew Johnson and Mr. Stanton to pass over a mistake like this, even in the case of one of the most illustrious captains of the age. They ordered Grant to proceed at once to Sherman's headquarters, and to direct operations against the enemy; and, what was worse, Mr. Stanton printed in the newspapers the reasons of the government for disapproving the agreement in terms of sharpest censure of General Sherman. This, when it came to his notice some weeks later, filled him with hot indignation, and, coupled with some orders Halleck, who had been made commander of the armies of the Potomac and the James, issued to Meade, to disregard Sherman's truce and push forward against Johnston, roused him to open defiance of the authorities he thought were persecuting him, and made him declare in a report to Grant, that he would have maintained his truce at any cost of life. Halleck's order, however, had been nullified by Johnston's surrender, and Grant, suggesting that this outburst was uncalled for, offered Sherman the opportunity to correct the statement. This he refused, insisting that his record stand as written, although avowing his readiness to obey all future orders of Grant and the President.
So far as Johnston was concerned, the war was indeed over. He was unable longer to hold his men together. Eight thousand of them left their camps and went home in the week of the truce, many riding away on the artillery horses and train mules. On notice of Federal disapproval of his negotiations with Sherman, he disregarded Jefferson Davis's instructions to disband the infantry and try to escape with the cavalry and light guns, and answered Sherman's summons by inviting another conference, at which, on April 26, he surrendered all the forces in his command on the same terms granted Lee at Appomattox; Sherman supplying, as did Grant, rations for the beaten army. Thirty-seven thousand men and officers were paroled in North Carolina—exclusive, of course, of the thousands who had slipped away to their homes during the suspension of hostilities.
After Appomattox the rebellion fell to pieces all at once. Lee surrendered less than one sixth of the Confederates in arms on April 9. The armies that still remained, though inconsiderable when compared with the mighty host under the national colors, were yet infinitely larger than any Washington ever commanded, and capable of strenuous resistance and of incalculable mischief. But the march of Sherman from Atlanta to the sea, and his northward progress through the Carolinas, had predisposed the great interior region to make an end of strife: a tendency which was greatly promoted by the masterly raid of General J.H. Wilson's cavalry through Alabama, and his defeat of Forrest at Selma. An officer of Taylor's staff came to Canby's headquarters on April 19 to make arrangements for the surrender of all the Confederate forces east of the Mississippi not already paroled by Sherman and Wilson, embracing some forty-two thousand men. The terms were agreed upon and signed on May 4, at the village of Citronelle in Alabama. At the same time and place the Confederate Commodore Farrand surrendered to Rear-Admiral Thatcher all the naval forces Of the Confederacy in the neighborhood of Mobile—a dozen vessels and some hundreds of officers.
The rebel navy had practically ceased to exist some months before. The splendid fight in Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, between Farragut's fleet and the rebel ram Tennessee, with her three attendant gunboats, and Cushing's daring destruction of the powerful Albemarle in Albemarle Sound on October 27, marked its end in Confederate waters. The duel between the Kearsarge and the Alabama off Cherbourg had already taken place; a few more encounters, at or near foreign ports, furnished occasion for personal bravery and subsequent lively diplomatic correspondence; and rebel vessels, fitted out under the unduly lenient "neutrality" of France and England, continued for a time to work havoc with American shipping in various parts of the world. But these two Union successes, and the final capture of Fort Fisher and of Wilmington early in 1865, which closed the last haven for daring blockade-runners, practically silenced the Confederate navy.
General E. Kirby Smith commanded all the insurgent forces west of the Mississippi. On him the desperate hopes of Mr. Davis and his flying cabinet were fixed, after the successive surrenders of Lee and Johnston had left them no prospect in the east. They imagined they could move westward, gathering up stragglers as they fled, and, crossing the river, join Smith's forces, and there continue the war. But after a time even this hope failed them. Their escort melted away; members of the cabinet dropped off on various pretexts, and Mr. Davis, abandoning the attempt to reach the Mississippi River, turned again toward the east in an effort to gain the Florida coast and escape by means of a sailing vessel to Texas.
The two expeditions sent in pursuit of him by General Wilson did not allow this consummation, which the government at Washington might possibly have viewed with equanimity. His camp near Irwinville, Georgia, was surrounded by Lieutenant-Colonel Pritchard's command at dawn on May 10, and he was captured as he was about to mount horse with a few companions and ride for the coast, leaving his family to follow more slowly. The tradition that he was captured in disguise, having donned female dress in a last desperate attempt to escape, has only this foundation, that Mrs. Davis threw a cloak over her husband's shoulders, and a shawl over his head, on the approach of the Federal soldiers. He was taken to Fortress Monroe, and there kept in confinement for about two years; was arraigned before the United States Circuit Court for the District of Virginia for the crime of treason, and released on bail; and was finally restored to all the duties and privileges of citizenship, except the right to hold office, by President Johnson's proclamation of amnesty of December 25, 1868.
General E. Kirby Smith, on whom Davis's last hopes of success had centered, kept up so threatening an attitude that Sherman was sent from Washington to bring him to reason. But he did not long hold his position of solitary defiance. One more needless skirmish took place near Brazos, Texas, and then Smith followed the example of Taylor and surrendered his entire force, some eighteen thousand, to General Canby, on May 26. One hundred and seventy-five thousand men in all were surrendered by the different Confederate commanders, and there were, in addition to these, about ninety-nine thousand prisoners in national custody during the year. One third of these were exchanged, and two thirds released. This was done as rapidly as possible by successive orders of the War Department, beginning on May 9 and continuing through the summer.
The first object of the government was to stop the waste of war. Recruiting ceased immediately after Lee's surrender, and measures were taken to reduce as promptly as possible the vast military establishment. Every chief of bureau was ordered, on April 28, to proceed at once to the reduction of expenses in his department to a peace footing; and this before Taylor or Smith had surrendered, and while Jefferson Davis was still at large. The army of a million men was brought down, with incredible ease and celerity, to one of twenty-five thousand.