ar material. They were fortified or
intrenched, and there was considerable fighting before they were
captured. Macon surrendered on the 21st of April. Here news was
received of the negotiations for the surrender of Johnston's army.
Wilson belonged to the military division commanded by Sherman, and of
course was bound by his terms. This stopped all fighting.

General Richard Taylor had now become the senior Confederate officer
still at liberty east of the Mississippi River, and on the 4th of May he
surrendered everything within the limits of this extensive command.
General E. Kirby Smith surrendered the trans-Mississippi department on
the 26th of May, leaving no other Confederate army at liberty to
continue the war.

Wilson's raid resulted in the capture of the fugitive president of the
defunct confederacy before he got out of the country. This occurred at
Irwinsville, Georgia, on the 11th of May. For myself, and I believe Mr.
Lincoln shared the feeling, I would have been very glad to have seen Mr.
Davis succeed in escaping, but for one reason: I feared that if not
captured, he might get into the trans-Mississippi region and there set
up a more contracted confederacy. The young men now out of homes and
out of employment might have rallied under his standard and protracted
the war yet another year. The Northern people were tired of the war,
they were tired of piling up a debt which would be a further mortgage
upon their homes.

Mr. Lincoln, I believe, wanted Mr. Davis to escape, because he did not
wish to deal with the matter of his punishment. He knew there would be
people clamoring for the punishment of the ex-Confederate president, for
high treason. He thought blood enough had already been spilled to atone
for our wickedness as a nation. At all events he did not wish to be the
judge to decide whether more should be shed or not. But his own life
was sacrificed at the hands of an assassin before the ex-president of
the Confederacy was a prisoner in the hands of the government which he
had lent all his talent and all his energies to destroy.

All things are said to be wisely directed, and for the best interest of
all concerned. This reflection does not, however, abate in the
slightest our sense of bereavement in the untimely loss of so good and
great a man as Abraham Lincoln.

He would have proven the best friend the South could have had, and saved
much of the wrangling and bitterness of feeling brought