North Carolina State Capitol

The Carolinas Campaign began on February 1, 1865, when Union Gen. William T. Sherman led his army north from Savannah, Georgia, after the March to the Sea, aiming to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia against Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Scattered Confederate forces consolidated in North Carolina, the Confederacy’s logistical lifeline, where Sherman defeated Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s last-ditch attack at Bentonville; after Sherman was reinforced at Goldsboro late in March, Johnston surrendered on April 26, essentially ending the Civil War. North Carolina’s official Civil War experience began and ended at the State Capitol in Raleigh: in April 1861, Governor John W. Ellis rejected President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers, and on May 20 a special convention in the capitol’s Commons Hall adopted a secession ordinance celebrated with a 100-round artillery salute. After Ellis died on July 7, Zebulon B. Vance was elected governor and led the state from his office there until April 12, 1865. For a time, the capitol also served as a supply depot, the only Southern capitol to do so, and captured U.S. regimental flags hung from the legislature’s balconies. On April 12, 1865, Vance’s emissaries, former governors David L. Swain and William A. Graham, surrendered the capitol and Raleigh to Union Gen. William T. Sherman, and his 75,000-man Federal army entered the city the next day. Union soldiers found coastal lighthouse lenses stored in the capitol, and one soldier stole the state’s 1789 copy of the Bill of Rights. U.S. Army Signal Corps Lt. George C. Round established a signal station atop the capitol dome on April 14 after nearly falling through the rotunda skylight the previous night, and on the evening of April 26, after Johnston’s surrender, he sent from the dome an “extraordinary message” with colorful rockets, “Peace on Earth Good Will to Men,” believed to be the last signal message of the war. Sherman’s army departed early in May, and under military occupation North Carolina’s legislature repealed the secession ordinance in October 1865.

Raleigh, North Carolina · United States