Chapter 15

It was slow slogging trying to make it north to the Virginia border leading us to set up an extended camp well short of the main railway and the North Carolina-Virginia line. The men were griping worse than a bunch of old maids when we got a special messenger from General Grant himself telling our General Sherman to “cool his heels” and head back to the Raleigh area to throw a net around General Johnson and the Confederate front-line troops that were concentrated in that region soaking up the Carolina sun and sitting on a mother lode of supplies and enough food to see out the remainder of the war. I knew from my history books that the time was getting close for General Robert E. Lee to get himself corralled up in the Richmond area and I racked my brain to remember what General Sherman had up his sleeve away from the main action around Richmond.

Our forces were well in excess of one hundred thousand uniformed fighters and a lot of support troops in the form of volunteers and conscripts mostly emancipated former slaves from the Confederate States. We were able to sustain ourselves with daily foraging parties that raided in ever widening circles to give us the food we needed to remain strong and vital for battlefield duty.

I liberated a string of fresh mounts for our mounted Infantry and we leap-frogged back the way we came until we managed to establish a blocking line cutting off the Confederate Cavalry from Goldsboro and the roads that would allow them to withdraw to the north to join forces with General Robert E. Lee. I knew from my studies in military science that the lack of reinforcements and the loss of logistical support spelled defeat for the Commanding General of the Confederate forces. Of course, General Johnson didn’t comprehend the fatal situation that General Lee was in and he felt no pressure to make his way north regardless of the losses.

I didn’t have a firm grasp on the exact dates, but I generally knew that the period between the first week of April 1865 and the middle of the month were heavily laden with key crisis points and that the surrender of the forces under General Johnson in Raleigh/Durham area was even more important than General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on the ninth day of April.

My mother’s birthday was March nineteenth, the feast day of Saint Joseph, only two short days after the more popular March seventeenth celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day. It was hard to keep track of the days since we were in constant contact with the enemy forces, but I knew we were already at the end of the month of March when we started engaging General Johnson’s forces coming down the Raleigh to Goldsboro road on daily patrols to feel out the strength of their encirclement.

I knew that any day now we would be getting the news of Lee’s surrender and I was hard-pressed not to blurt out the fact to my superiors because I knew they were fearful of the famous Confederate General coming down to assist General Johnson in the Carolinas. The ninth of April came and passed and there was no word of the surrender. It was not until two full days later that a messenger rode into camp like the hounds of hell were in pursuit and plunked down the official notice that General Lee had surrendered almost thirty thousand Confederate troops up in Virginia.

It was a godsend, because our two armies facing each other in the Raleigh Durham area numbered close to a quarter of a million anxious souls hoping against hope that the war was coming to a close. The chance of surviving was a distinct possibility now and only the die-hard cavalry units continued to skirmish with deadly intent. For some reason, the cavalrymen acted like they were in some magnificent chess game with human life as some pawn to be taken with total disregard to common humanity. They reminded me of the armored units clanking hither and yon making lots of noise and refusing to be dragged down into the mud of common Infantry survival. These southern states would make compatible terrain for tank warfare, but they were fortunately preserved for future employment in the vicious world wars of the future. I knew for a fact, that General Sherman tended to look the other way, when his cavalry disobeyed orders and took their own initiative harassing the flanks of the enemy. It was this sort of high command laxity that gave General Sheridan the leeway he needed to cut off General Lee’s retreat up in Virginia and force the unavoidable surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse.

General Sherman made certain that his opposing counterpart in Raleigh was informed of the debacle in Virginia. He felt, and quite correctly, that General Johnson would see the futility of resisting the inevitable any longer and risk the loss of thousands of lives on both sides.

The commanders discussed the terms of surrender up in the Durham area. It was only a short ride down to the main Confederate positions defending the capitol city of Raleigh but General Sherman wisely kept his forces in check hoping that the surrender would solve his immediate problems. The thing he wanted above all was to eliminate the heavily armed one hundred thousand uniformed Confederate soldiers from the battlefield and send them home for the spring planting and out of mischief. Fortunately, General Johnson was in full agreement and equally determined to end the business as quickly as possible. They had already signed the pact that was even more generous than the terms given to General Lee when the rumors started to circulate about the commander-in-chief, President Abraham Lincoln being assassinated by some fool actor in Washington, D.C.