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Surrender of General Johnson to General Sherman Mouse Mats by libertybell

Joseph Eggleston Johnston (February 3, 1807 – March 21, 1891) was a career U.S. Army officer and one of the most senior generals in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. His effectiveness was undercut by tensions with President Jefferson Davis, but he also suffered from a lack of aggressiveness and victory eluded him in every campaign he personally commanded.When his native state seceded from the Union in 1861, Johnston resigned his commission as a brigadier general in the regular army, the highest-ranking U.S. Army officer to do so. Initially commissioned as a major general in the Virginia militia, he relieved Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in command at Harpers Ferry and organized the Army of the Shenandoah.------------------Faced with Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta in the spring of 1864, Johnston reverted to his strategy of withdrawal. He conducted a series of actions in which he prepared strong defensive positions, only to see Sherman maneuver around them, causing him to fall back in the general direction of Atlanta. Johnston saw the preservation of his army as the most important consideration, and hence conducted a very cautious campaign. He handled his army well, slowing the Union advance and inflicting heavier losses than he sustained. On June 27, Johnston defeated Sherman at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, but the purely defensive victory did not prevent Sherman from continuing his offensive. Critics have claimed that Johnston's strategy was entirely defensive and that his unwillingness to risk an offensive made the chance of a Confederate victory impossible. Jefferson Davis became increasingly irritated by this strategy and removed Johnston from command on July 17, 1864, shortly before the Battle of Peachtree Creek, just outside of Atlanta. (His replacement, Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, was overly aggressive, but ineffective, losing Atlanta in September and a large portion of his army in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign that winter.) Davis's decision to remove Johnston was one of the most controversial of the war.----------------As the Confederacy became increasingly concerned about Sherman's March to the Sea across Georgia and then north through the Carolinas, the public clamored for Johnston's return. Davis appointed him to a command called collectively the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and also the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. These commands theoretically included three Confederate armies, but they were paper tigers and Johnston could do little to blunt Sherman's advance. On March 19, 1865, Johnston was able to catch a portion of Sherman's army by surprise at the Battle of Bentonville and briefly gained some tactical successes before superior numbers forced him to retreat. After learning of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina, two weeks later on April 26, 1865, despite orders to the contrary from Jefferson Davis.-----------------------------Bennett Place, the popular name for the farmhouse in Durham, North Carolina, owned by James and Nancy Bennett (alternatively Bennitt), was the site of the largest surrender of troops during the American Civil War, on April 26, 1865.---------After General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea, he turned north through the Carolinas for the Carolinas Campaign. Confederate President Jefferson Davis met General Joseph E. Johnston (who had spent the winter in Hillsborough, North Carolina) in Greensboro, North Carolina, while Sherman had stopped in Raleigh. Sherman offered an armistice on April 17 and Johnston, whose army was vastly overmatched and recently defeated at the Battle of Bentonville, agreed to meet to discuss terms of surrender. Johnston traveling east from Hillsborough and Sherman traveling west from Raleigh along the Hillsborough Road, met half-way in Durham three times (April 17th, 18th and 26th) in the farmhouse located seven miles from Durham Station before they agreed upon surrender terms.------------The difficulty in reaching an agreement lay in part in Johnston's desire for more than the purely military surrender that Sherman offered. His original terms matched those offered by Ulysses S. Grant to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, while Johnston insisted on resolutions of political issues such as the reestablishment of state governments after the war. General Sherman, in keeping with Lincoln's stated wishes for a compassionate and forgiving end to the war, agreed on terms of surrender that included the political issues. However, Union officials in Washington, angered over the recent assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, turned them down in favor of purely military terms. In response, Jefferson Davis ordered Johnston to disband his infantry and escape with his mounted troops, but Johnston disobeyed his orders and agreed to meet General Sherman again at the Bennett Farmhouse on April 26. There they signed the new surrender terms, which ended the war for 90,000 men in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.