ate army. He moved to Raleigh and completely
cut Lee's communications with South Carolina and Georgia, April, 1865.

[Sidenote: Condition of Lee's army.]

[Sidenote: _Higginson_, 317.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of the Southern armies, April 1865. _Source-book_,
329-333].

435. Appomattox, April, 1865.--The end of the Confederacy was now
plainly in sight. Lee's men were starving. They were constantly
deserting either to go to the aid of their perishing families or to
obtain food from the Union army. As soon as the roads were fit for
marching, Grant set his one hundred and twenty thousand men once more in
motion. His object was to gain the rear of Lee's army and to force him
to abandon Petersburg. A last despairing attack on the Union center only
increased Grant's vigor. On April 1 Sheridan with his cavalry and an
infantry corps seized Five Forks in the rear of Petersburg and could not
be driven away. Petersburg and Richmond were abandoned. Lee tried to
escape to the mountains. But now the Union soldiers marched faster than
the starving Southerners. Sheridan, outstripping them, placed his men
across their path at Appomattox Court House. There was nothing left save
surrender. The soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, now only
thirty-seven thousand strong, laid down their arms, April 9, 1865. Soon
Johnston surrendered, and the remaining small isolated bands of
Confederates were run down and captured.

[Sidenote: Murder of Lincoln, April 14, 1865. _Higginson_, 322-323;
_Source-book_, 333-335.]

436. Lincoln murdered, April 14, 1865.--The national armies were
victorious. President Lincoln, never grander or wiser than in the moment
of victory, alone stood between the Southern people and the Northern
extremists clamoring for vengeance. On the night of April 14 he was
murdered by a sympathizer with slavery and secession. No one old enough
to remember the morning of April 15, 1865, will ever forget the horror
aroused in the North by this unholy murder. In the beginning Lincoln
had been a party leader. In the end the simple grandeur of his nature
had won for him a place in the hearts of the American people that no
other man has ever gained. He was indeed the greatest because the most
typical of Americans. Vice-President Andrew Johnson, a war Democrat from
Tennessee, became President. The vanquished secessionists were soon to
taste the bitter dregs of the cup of defeat.

[Illustration: MAYOR'S OFFICE, APRIL 15th, 1865, Dea