After President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to put down the Confederate rebellion in April 1861, North Carolina seceded from the Union and Raleigh became a hub of Confederate activity, with recruiting and training camps, a bayonet factory, a powder mill, warehouses for military supplies and equipment, and later a hospital at the old fairgrounds. After the Battle of Bentonville in March 1865, Union troops approached the city, and Gov. Zebulon Vance sent representatives to meet Union Gen. William T. Sherman, who promised no harm would come if his troops met no resistance. Union soldiers occupied Raleigh on April 13, 1865, Sherman established his headquarters in the governor's mansion, and more than 100,000 Union soldiers camped in and near the city and buried their dead there. The State of North Caroline donated land to the federal government for a Union cemetery, which was designated Raleigh National Cemetery in 1865. The rectangular tract was divided into twenty-two sections with a central flagstaff and gun monument, and the remains of 1,173 soldiers were reinterred there from other locations in Raleigh, the Averasboro, Bentonville, and Goldsboro battlefields, and elsewhere in the state. Volunteer regiments from thirteen states are represented and were buried together, while other sections were set aside for US Army Regulars and US Colored Troops. Four sections contain 547 unknown soldiers. An 1867 law directed the secretary of war to appoint a “meritorious and trustworthy” superintendent for each national cemetery, first requiring that he be an army enlisted man disabled in service and later allowing any honorably mustered out or discharged commissioned officer or enlisted man to serve. George A. Dichtl, formerly a second lieutenant in the 1st Oregon Cavalry, was appointed superintendent at Raleigh in June 1868. A Second Empire-style lodge was built for the superintendent and his family, and the current Colonial Revival building replaced that lodge in 1938.