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The last Confederate surrender.
To write an impartial and unprejudiced account of exciting contemporary events has always been a difficult peculiar flavor of bitterness.
But slight sketches of minor incidents, by actors and eye-witnesses, may prove of service to the future writer, who undertakes the more ambitious and severe duty of historian.
The following memoir pour server has this object.
In the summer of 1864, after the close of the
Red river campaign, I was ordered to cross the
Mississippi, and report my arrival on the east bank by telegraph to
Richmond.
All the fortified posts on the river were held by the
Federals, and the intermediate portions possible, prevent, passage.
This delayed the transmission of the order above-mentioned until August, when I crossed at a point just above the mouth of the
Red river.
On a dark night, in a small canoe, with horses swimming alongside, I got over without attracting the attention of a gunboat, anchored a short distance below.
Woodville, Wilkinson county, Mississippi, was the nearest place in telegraphic communication with
Richmond.
Here, in reply to a dispatch to
Richmond, I was directed to assume command of the Department of
Alabama,
Mississippi, etc., with headquarters at
Meridian, Mississippi, and informed that
President Davis would, at an early day, meet me at
Montgomery, Alabama.
The military situation was as follows:
Sherman occupied
Atlanta,
Hood lying some distance to the southwest;
Farragut had forced the defenses of
