last Address to the People of the
Confederate States. His mind was crystallized. He was no longer capable
of judging facts. In as confident tones as ever he promised his people
that they should yet prevail; he assured Virginians that even if the
Confederate army should withdraw further south the withdrawal would
be but temporary, and that "again and again will we return until the
baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and
impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free."

The surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, compelled another
migration of the dwindling executive company. General Johnston had not
yet surrendered. A conference which he had with the President and the
Cabinet at Greensboro ended in giving him permission to negotiate with
Sherman. Even then Davis was still bent on keeping up the fight; yet,
though he believed that Sherman would reject Johnston's overtures, he
was overtaken at Charlotte on his way South by the crushing news of
Johnston's surrender. There the executive history of the Confederacy
came to an end in a final Cabinet meeting. Davis, still blindly resolute
to continue the struggle, was deeply distressed by the determination
of his advisers to abandon it. In imminent danger of capture, the
President's party made its way to Abbeville, where it broke up, and each
member sought safety as best he could. Davis with a few faithful men
rode to Irwinsville, Georgia, where, in the early morning of the 10th of
May, he was surprised and captured. But the history of the Confederacy
was not quite at an end. The last gunshots were still to be fired far
away in Texas on the 13th of May. The surrender of the forces of
the Trans-Mississippi on May 26, 1865, brought the war to a definite
conclusion.

There remains one incident of these closing days, the significance of
which was not perceived until long afterward, when it immediately took
its rightful place among the determining events of American history.
The unconquerable spirit of the Army of Northern Virginia found its last
expression in a proposal which was made to Lee by his officers. If he
would give the word, they would make the war a duel to the death; it
should drag out in relentless guerrilla struggles; and there should
be no pacification of the South until the fighting classes had been
exterminated. Considering what those classes were, considering the
qualities that could be handed on to their posterity