[Special Field Orders, No. 56.]

Headquarters military division of the Mississippi
in the field, Raleigh, north Carolina, April 17, 1865.

The general commanding announces, with pain and sorrow, that on the evening of the 14th instant, at the theatre in Washington city, his Excellency the President of the United States, Mr. Lincoln, was assassinated by one who uttered the State motto of Virginia.  At the same time, the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, while suffering from a broken arm, was also stabbed by another murderer in his own house, but still survives, and his son was wounded, supposed fatally.  It is believed, by persons capable of judging, that other high officers were designed to share the same fate.  Thus it seems that our enemy, despairing of meeting us in open, manly warfare, begins to resort to the assassin’s tools.

Your general does not wish you to infer that this is universal, for he knows that the great mass of the Confederate army world scorn to sanction each acts, but he believes it the legitimate consequence of rebellion against rightful authority.

We have met every phase which this war has assumed, and must now be prepared for it in its last and worst shape, that of assassins and guerrillas; but woe onto the people who seek to expend their wild passions in such a manner, for there is but one dread result!

By order of Major-General W. T. Sherman,

L. M. Dayton, Assistant Adjutant-General.

During the evening of the 17th and morning of the 18th I saw nearly all the general officers of the army (Schofield, Slocum, Howard, Logan, Blair), and we talked over the matter of the conference at Bennett’s house of the day before, and, without exception, all advised me to agree to some terms, for they all dreaded the long and harassing march in pursuit of a dissolving and fleeing army—­ a march that might carry us back again over the thousand miles that we had just accomplished.  We all knew that if we could bring Johnston’s army to bay, we could destroy it in an hour, but that was simply impossible in the country in which we found ourselves.  We discussed all the probabilities, among which was, whether, if Johnston made a point of it, I should assent to the escape from the country of Jeff.  Davis and his fugitive cabinet; and some one of my general officers, either Logan or Blair, insisted that, if asked for, we should even provide a vessel to carry them to Nassau from Charleston.

The next morning I again started in the cars to Durham’s Station, accompanied by most of my personal staff, and by Generals Blair, Barry, Howard, etc., and, reaching General Kilpatrick’s headquarters at Durham’s, we again mounted, and rode, with the same escort of the day, before, to Bennett’s house, reaching there punctually at noon.  General Johnston had not yet arrived, but a courier shortly