n of the resumption
of hostilities. As General Wilson was eight or ten miles in the rear with
his main command, the note was sent to him, and the officer in the advance
pushed to and into Macon, taking possession of the city. When General
Wilson arrived in the city he went at once to the city hall, where
Generals Howell Cobb, Gustavus W. Smith, and others had been confined.
General Cobb demanded that he and his command should be released, and that
General Wilson should retire to where the flag of truce had met his
advance. General Wilson declared that after receiving the note he had lost
no time in pushing on to the head of his column, and found it in full
possession of the city. He could not accept notification of a truce
through the Confederate authorities, as they were not his channel of
communication with General Sherman, and ended the conference by a positive
refusal to acknowledge the armistice, to retire from the town, or to
release his prisoners. When he announced this decision he said to General
Cobb that he could conceive of but one adequate reason for the truce, and
that was that Lee's army had surrendered. Cobb, however, declined to give
any information, but General Smith, to whom Wilson addressed the same
remark, answered that Lee had surrendered, and that peace would soon
follow. Thereupon General Wilson announced his decision to remain at Macon
and conduct his future operations upon the principle that every man killed
thereafter was a man murdered.

This interview was held on the 20th of April just before midnight, and was
the first definite knowledge which Wilson's column had obtained of the
events which had occurred in Virginia.

The surrender at Macon included a large number of small guns and a great
quantity of military stores and supplies. The next day the Confederate
authorities opened communication over their own telegraph lines between
Wilson and Sherman, and the former received orders from the latter to
desist from hostilities pending an armistice. Soon after he received
orders from the Secretary of War, through Thomas, to disregard this
armistice and resume operations, but before this order reached him he
learned that Johnston had surrendered all the Confederate forces east of
the Mississippi, and that peace was assured.

The closing act of General Wilson's campaign was the capture of Jefferson
Davis by regiments from his command. Thus ended the most noted cavalry
movement of the war.

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