Diary of Orrin Brown, New Bern, North Carolina
Sunday–Apr. 16th
We had a very pleasant night but the wind rose and blowed quite cool from the west all day. There was a salute of 100 guns fired about noon but we did not hear what it was for. And toward night there was considerable shelling done out west of this camp two or three miles which caused considerable excitement in camp, but it was afterwards reported that the shelling was done by a squad of drunken officers and men. I have been quite unwell today and one of my mess mates told me that I was coming down with the yellow jaunders I looked in the glass and found that I was getting quite yellow and my lungs are very sore so that I raise considerable blood.
Easter Sunday
On the 14th, Gen. Johnston had reached out to Gen. Sherman, by way of Gen. Kilpatrick, suggesting he was prepared to arrange a temporary suspension of hostilities. Sherman replied in the affirmative, suggesting they seek the same terms as agreed by Lee and Grant at Appomattox. On the 15th, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet left Greensboro by horse and wagons, on their way toward Charlotte. On Easter Sunday, 16 April 1865, reported to be a beautiful spring day, Kilpatrick’s cavalry moved into Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Johnston and Sherman agreed to meet on Monday along the railroad between Durham and Hillsborough.
Read More:
- Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War by Michael Vorenberg (Knopf, 2025)
- Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney (University of North Carolina Press, 2021)
- Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War by Elizabeth R. Varon (Oxford University Press, 2013)
- The Appomattox Campaign by Chris Calkins (Schoreder Publications, 2008)
- Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee–The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged by William C. Davis (Da Capo Press, 2015)
- Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian by Edward H. Bonekemper III (Prager, 2007)
- Grant and Lee. The Virginia campaigns 1864-1865 by William A. Frassanito (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983)
- Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas by John Gilchrist Barrett (Univ North Carolina Press, 1956)
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns by Joseph T. Glatthaar (New York University Press, 1985)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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