The Last Encampment

During the closing weeks of the Civil War in April 1865, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee camped southeast of here on the Alexander Dickson farm while Johnston conferred in the Dickson House with Confederate civil and military leaders, including Gen. Wade Hampton, Postmaster General John H. Reagan, Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, and North Carolina Gov. Zebulon B. Vance, as he negotiated surrender terms with Union Gen. William T. Sherman at the Bennett farm near Durham. At an April 17 meeting, Johnston announced the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and both he and Sherman feared the news would provoke Union retaliation against Confederates; that night a mob of Federals threatened to burn Raleigh and dispersed only after Union Gen. John A. Logan blocked the road with a cannon and threatened to open fire. Such incidents encouraged Sherman and Johnston to come to terms and send Southern soldiers home. On April 26, Johnston surrendered the approximately 32,000 men camped nearby and most Confederate forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, about 89,000 men in all, the largest surrender of the war. For many soldiers on the Dickson farm, their last memory of the area was the chiming of the Hillsborough town clock as they withdrew to Greensboro to lay down their arms.

Hillsborough, North Carolina · United States