For an hour on the evening of Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, a pine grove outside Lexington became the de facto seat of government for the Confederate States of America and the state of North Carolina. President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, together with a cavalry escort from Gen. George G. Dibrell’s division, entered Davidson County by carriage and on horseback after disembarking from a train at Greensboro. The party traveled on the Greensboro Road on the afternoon of Easter Sunday and camped near Abbott’s Creek, where some of the cavalrymen bivouacked along the creek and set up guard posts. Unknown to Davis, Abraham Lincoln lay dead in Washington, assassinated the previous Friday. Davis met with his cabinet, including the postmaster general and attorney general as well as the secretaries of state, treasury, and war. At 10 p.m., North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance joined the group for an hour-long discussion of the war and whether to continue the fight, which Davis hoped to do. Afterward, Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge and Postmaster General John H. Reagan left Lexington for Durham to supervise the surrender discussions between Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and Union Gen. William T. Sherman, negotiations Davis had approved while in Greensboro. The next morning, April 17, Davis, the remaining cabinet members, and the cavalry escort broke camp, crossed the Yadkin River about noon, left Davidson County, and headed for Salisbury and then Charlotte, where Davis would learn of Lincoln’s death.