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Civil War Historian

This Week in Civil War History
April 29-May 5, 1865

 

BY MICHAEL K. SHAFFER
www.civilwarhistorian.net
For the Washington County News


Opening negotiations on the potential surrender of the Confederate forces under his command, on April 29, Lieutenant General Richard Taylor met with Federal Major General Edward Canby at the Magee house north of Mobile, Alabama. Canby offered the same terms Major General William T. Sherman had extended to General Joe Johnston in North Carolina; Taylor accepted, and the two men agreed to begin preparations to stack arms.

Learning of the rejection of Sherman’s terms two days after their first meeting, Canby sent a message to Taylor telling him the terms he offered could not remain binding, and thus he prepared to resume fighting. Within hours of receiving this news, Taylor learned Johnston had indeed surrendered his forces to Sherman, although under adjusted terms. Taylor sought another meeting with Canby.

Traveling north of Mobile, Canby made his way to Citronelle, Alabama, where, on May 4, he and Taylor met outside the Borden home. Agreeing to the terms, which Lieutenant General U.S. Grant offered to General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox – the same Johnston eventually accepted – Taylor surrendered more than 42,000 soldiers in his area of control, which consisted of Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana.

Preparing a military tribunal for the conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Northern officials continued in their efforts to seize President Jefferson Davis. On May 2, President Andrew Johnson formally charged Davis with involvement in the death of Lincoln, and posted a reward of $100,000 for his capture. Davis, in Abbeville, South Carolina, at the time, continued to make his way westward, as his accompanying cabinet members began resigning their positions to make their own separate journeys out of the country.

A nation, still stunned over the death of the president, remained determined to deliver swift punishment for all people who collaborated with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination plot. Awaiting sentencing, Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O’Laughlin, Lewis Payne, Edward Spangler, and Mary Surratt knew their hopes remained dim. Eventually, on July 7, 1865, Atzerodt, Herold, Payne, and Surratt hanged in Washington City. Spangler received a six-year prison sentence, while Arnold, Mudd, and O’Laughlin faced life behind bars.