After General Robert E Lee’s surrender seventeen days earlier at Appomattox Court House, Confederate General Joseph E Johnson knew it was time. Johnson with a detachment of the 5th South Carolina cavalry traveling east along the Hillsborough road toward Durham Station met Union General William Tecumseh Sherman who was riding west with an escort of the 9th and 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry at the farm of James and Nancy Bennett. The first day’s negotiations were interrupted by a telegram informing them of President Abraham Lincoln’s death. The first surrender agreement made on April 18th was rejected by the politicians in Washington, DC as being to generous. The two Generals met again on April 26th 1865 and signed papers that disbanded the largest Confederate force of the war, 98,270 soldiers.
Confederate General Richard A Taylor’s force in Alabama would surrender a week latter, and Kirby Smith would do the same with his Trans-Mississippi Army in New Orleans a month latter.
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