Wednesday, 10 May 1865
Southern Major General Samuel Jones surrenders his Confederate command at Tallahassee, Florida.
Federal irregulars led by Union Captain Edwin Terrell--sometimes referred to as bushwhackers--mortally wound William Clarke Quantrill, the notorious Southern partisan leader, near Taylorsville, in Spencer County, Kentucky.
Terrell, a leader of Federal guerrillas in Spencer County, had a reputation of being a fearsome hunter of Confederate irregulars. Serving the Confederacy early in the War but being an opportunist, Terrell changed sides and began a career of plundering, raiding and killing Southern sympathizers or anyone who crossed him. Union authorities rapidly had grown tired of dealing with such lawless bands, but following the philosophy of "...it takes a guerrilla to catch a guerrilla..." they hired the galvanized bushwhacker to hunt down Quantrill. Terrell would accomplish this task, but, as one of his comrades related: "Terrell was a bad man. Perhaps as bad as the man he was hunting down..."
After being ambushed, while sleeping at a barn owned by James H. Wakefield, Quantrill vaulted onto his steed in a hurried attempt at escape, but the stirrup leather broke, throwing him across the back of his horse. Quantrill's mount, which was borrowed and somewhat gun-shy, immediately panicked and followed the other horses out of the barn. As the frightened beast cleared the barn door, Quantrill was shot in the back. The hot lead entered near his left shoulder blade and cut downward into his spine. Partially paralyzed, the guerrilla fell from his horse. One of Terrell's men, watching Quantrill fall face down in the mud, fired again. That pistol ball blew off Quantrill's right trigger finger.
Terrell loaded Quantrill's paralyzed frame onto a wagon and headed for the military prison in Louisville. Upon reaching Louisville, Quantrill was placed in the prison hospital, where he was nursed by a Catholic priest. He made a full confession, converted to Catholicism and took the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, which gives health and strength to the soul and sometimes to the body to persons who are in danger of death. On 6 June, following an operation, William Clarke Quantrill died at the age of 27.
Federals scout from Fort Sumner, in the New Mexico Territory, toward the direction of Fort Bascom to Rioi de las Conchas and Chaperita, to the Pecos and back.
Jefferson Finis Davis, president of the fallen Confederate government, is captured with his wife and entourage near Irwinville, Georgia, by a detachment of Union General James H. Wilson’s troops from the 4th Michigan Cavalry.
On 2 April 1865, with the Confederate defeat at Petersburg, Virginia, imminent, General Robert E. Lee informed President Davis that he could no longer protect Richmond and advised the Confederate government to evacuate its capital. Davis and his cabinet fled to Danville, Virginia, and with Robert E. Lee’s surrender on 9 April, deep into the South. Lee’s surrender of his once powerful, but by then almost completely diminished, Army of Northern Virginia effectively ended the regular fighting of the War for Southern Independence, and during the next few weeks the remaining Confederate armies slowly surrendered one by one. Davis was devastated by the fall of the Confederacy, but doggedly refusing to admit defeat, he had hoped to flee to a sympathetic foreign nation such as Britain or France, and was weighing the merits of forming a government in exile when he was arrested by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry.
A certain amount of controversy surrounded his capture, as Davis was wearing his wife’s black shawl when the Union troops cornered him. The Northern press ridiculed him as a coward, misleading the public alleging that he had disguised himself as a woman in an ill-fated attempt to escape. Davis, however, and especially his wife, Varina, maintained that he was ill and that Varina had lent him her shawl in an endeavor to keep his health up during their difficult journey.
Imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, Davis was quickly indicted for treason and falsely being accused of setting the Booth conspirators' actions in motion, but was never able to be tried as the Federal Government feared that Davis would be able prove to a jury that the Southern Secession of 1860 to 1861 was--and still likely is today--Constitutionally legal. Varina worked determinedly to secure his freedom, and in May 1867 Confederate President Jefferson Davis was released on bail, with several wealthy Northerners helping him pay for his freedom.
After a number of unsuccessful business ventures, he retired to Beauvoir, his home near Biloxi, Mississippi, and began writing his two-volume memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). He died in 1889 and was buried at New Orleans; four years later, his body was moved to its permanent resting spot of honor in Richmond, Virginia.
President Andrew Johnson proclaimed that "...armed resistance to the authority of this Government in the said insurrectionary States may be regarded as virtually at an end..." Johnson partially lifted the Federal blockade east of the Mississippi River.
Ignoring legalities, the Constitution and military protocol, the hand-picked commission led by Major General David "Black Dave" Hunter and Brigadier General Joseph Holt serving as judge advocate, informs the eight alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination of the charges against them, even though they had not yet been allowed to officially obtain lawyers. Commissioners accused the defendants of "traitorously" conspiring with Jefferson Davis and "others unknown" to "kill and murder" Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, William H. Seward, and Hiram U. Grant. The commissioners conformed to the general northern opinion that the assassination had been the work of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government to prolong the war, neglecting to consider that the seeds of the conspiracy might well have been planted by Stanton's (and possibly Lincoln's) botched Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid of the previous year in an attempt to accomplish almost exactly the same result.
Southern Major General Samuel Jones surrenders his Confederate command at Tallahassee, Florida.
Federal irregulars led by Union Captain Edwin Terrell--sometimes referred to as bushwhackers--mortally wound William Clarke Quantrill, the notorious Southern partisan leader, near Taylorsville, in Spencer County, Kentucky.
Terrell, a leader of Federal guerrillas in Spencer County, had a reputation of being a fearsome hunter of Confederate irregulars. Serving the Confederacy early in the War but being an opportunist, Terrell changed sides and began a career of plundering, raiding and killing Southern sympathizers or anyone who crossed him. Union authorities rapidly had grown tired of dealing with such lawless bands, but following the philosophy of "...it takes a guerrilla to catch a guerrilla..." they hired the galvanized bushwhacker to hunt down Quantrill. Terrell would accomplish this task, but, as one of his comrades related: "Terrell was a bad man. Perhaps as bad as the man he was hunting down..."
After being ambushed, while sleeping at a barn owned by James H. Wakefield, Quantrill vaulted onto his steed in a hurried attempt at escape, but the stirrup leather broke, throwing him across the back of his horse. Quantrill's mount, which was borrowed and somewhat gun-shy, immediately panicked and followed the other horses out of the barn. As the frightened beast cleared the barn door, Quantrill was shot in the back. The hot lead entered near his left shoulder blade and cut downward into his spine. Partially paralyzed, the guerrilla fell from his horse. One of Terrell's men, watching Quantrill fall face down in the mud, fired again. That pistol ball blew off Quantrill's right trigger finger.
Terrell loaded Quantrill's paralyzed frame onto a wagon and headed for the military prison in Louisville. Upon reaching Louisville, Quantrill was placed in the prison hospital, where he was nursed by a Catholic priest. He made a full confession, converted to Catholicism and took the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, which gives health and strength to the soul and sometimes to the body to persons who are in danger of death. On 6 June, following an operation, William Clarke Quantrill died at the age of 27.
Federals scout from Fort Sumner, in the New Mexico Territory, toward the direction of Fort Bascom to Rioi de las Conchas and Chaperita, to the Pecos and back.
Jefferson Finis Davis, president of the fallen Confederate government, is captured with his wife and entourage near Irwinville, Georgia, by a detachment of Union General James H. Wilson’s troops from the 4th Michigan Cavalry.
On 2 April 1865, with the Confederate defeat at Petersburg, Virginia, imminent, General Robert E. Lee informed President Davis that he could no longer protect Richmond and advised the Confederate government to evacuate its capital. Davis and his cabinet fled to Danville, Virginia, and with Robert E. Lee’s surrender on 9 April, deep into the South. Lee’s surrender of his once powerful, but by then almost completely diminished, Army of Northern Virginia effectively ended the regular fighting of the War for Southern Independence, and during the next few weeks the remaining Confederate armies slowly surrendered one by one. Davis was devastated by the fall of the Confederacy, but doggedly refusing to admit defeat, he had hoped to flee to a sympathetic foreign nation such as Britain or France, and was weighing the merits of forming a government in exile when he was arrested by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry.
A certain amount of controversy surrounded his capture, as Davis was wearing his wife’s black shawl when the Union troops cornered him. The Northern press ridiculed him as a coward, misleading the public alleging that he had disguised himself as a woman in an ill-fated attempt to escape. Davis, however, and especially his wife, Varina, maintained that he was ill and that Varina had lent him her shawl in an endeavor to keep his health up during their difficult journey.
Imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, Davis was quickly indicted for treason and falsely being accused of setting the Booth conspirators' actions in motion, but was never able to be tried as the Federal Government feared that Davis would be able prove to a jury that the Southern Secession of 1860 to 1861 was--and still likely is today--Constitutionally legal. Varina worked determinedly to secure his freedom, and in May 1867 Confederate President Jefferson Davis was released on bail, with several wealthy Northerners helping him pay for his freedom.
After a number of unsuccessful business ventures, he retired to Beauvoir, his home near Biloxi, Mississippi, and began writing his two-volume memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). He died in 1889 and was buried at New Orleans; four years later, his body was moved to its permanent resting spot of honor in Richmond, Virginia.
President Andrew Johnson proclaimed that "...armed resistance to the authority of this Government in the said insurrectionary States may be regarded as virtually at an end..." Johnson partially lifted the Federal blockade east of the Mississippi River.
Ignoring legalities, the Constitution and military protocol, the hand-picked commission led by Major General David "Black Dave" Hunter and Brigadier General Joseph Holt serving as judge advocate, informs the eight alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination of the charges against them, even though they had not yet been allowed to officially obtain lawyers. Commissioners accused the defendants of "traitorously" conspiring with Jefferson Davis and "others unknown" to "kill and murder" Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, William H. Seward, and Hiram U. Grant. The commissioners conformed to the general northern opinion that the assassination had been the work of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government to prolong the war, neglecting to consider that the seeds of the conspiracy might well have been planted by Stanton's (and possibly Lincoln's) botched Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid of the previous year in an attempt to accomplish almost exactly the same result.
