Reference Entry
SURRENDER AT BENNETT PLACE
As the Civil War drew to a close, one of the largest remaining Confederate armies faced hard realities in the Carolinas. Near a small farm called Bennett Place, outside Durham Station in North Carolina, General Joseph E. Johnston met repeatedly with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. After the shock of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination complicated negotiations, the two commanders eventually agreed on new terms.
Dated Historical Context
A RECORDED MOMENT IN HISTORY
Surrender at Bennett Place
As the Civil War drew to a close, one of the largest remaining Confederate armies faced hard realities in the Carolinas. Near a small farm called Bennett Place, outside Durham Station in North Carolina, General Joseph E. Johnston met repeatedly with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. After the shock of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination complicated negotiations, the two commanders eventually agreed on new terms. On April 26th, 1865, Johnston formally surrendered his forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida to Sherman. This surrender involved far more troops than Robert E. Lee had yielded at Appomattox Court House earlier in the month, and it effectively ended organized Confederate resistance in the eastern theater. For exhausted soldiers on both sides, Bennett Place represented not just defeat or victory but the long-awaited chance to return home and begin the difficult transition to peace.
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