Posted on 04/26/2017 3:04:43 PM PDT by fugazi
1865: After three days of negotiations with Union Maj. Gen. William Sherman, Gen. Joseph Johnson surrenders the Army of Tennessee, along with the remaining Confederates in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida – nearly 90,000 troops – to Union Maj. Gen. William Sherman in the largest surrender of the war. Sherman supplies the Confederate soldiers with rations and orders food to be distributed to Southerners, in stark contrast to his “scorched earth” campaign.
That same day, Union cavalry troopers track down John Wilkes Booth – Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s assassin – at a tobacco barn in Virginia. 12 days after shooting the president, the fugitive is...
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
Booth caused more damage to the South than all the Union Armies combined.
Sadly, in killing the man who committed his administration to “binding up the nation’s wounds,” Booth doomed the South to the carpetbaggers and punitive retribution of Reconstruction. He arguably murdered one of the few friends the South had at the time.
Booth was a relatively famous actor before he shot the president. The spirit of the deceased assassin may be haunting the Washington Nationals: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-09-13/news/bs-ed-nationals-curse-20100913_1_national-pastime-stephen-strasburg-baseball-curse
That would be CSA General Joseph Johnston.... not Johnson. Author could at least get the spelling correct. The surrender of all Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida occurred at James Bennett’s farm not far from the railway crossing outside of the future rail stop of Durham’s station, NC. The forces mustered out in Greensboro, stacking their arms per the terms worked out with Sherman. General Johnston was accompanied by General Wade Hampton, and they met on the road near the Bennett farm, went inside and Johnston was handed a telegraph from Sec. Stanton of the Union, telling of the assassination of President Lincoln on Good Friday April 14th and death on the 15th.
Meeting a second time General Breckenridge (former VP. of the USA Breckenridge) joined Johnston and Sherman to work out terms which included amnesty.
The agreement was honored by the CSA troops, however Stanton and the cabinet disavowed it, and sent General Grant to supersede Sherman, and re-start hostilities. Grant however disobeyed these orders and instead had Sherman re-work and sign an agreement with Johnston that paralleled the terms Grant had worked out with Robert E. Lee 14 days prior in VA.
This was not the final forces surrendered by the CSA. General Richard Taylor in AL on May 4th and Gen. Kirby Smith surrendered the Army of the Trans-Mississippi in New Orleans on May 26th.
His brother, Edwin, was well known as a stage actor.
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