6.  The Executive authority of the Government of the United States not to disturb any of the people by reason of the late war, so long as they live in peace and quiet, abstain from acts of armed hostility, and obey the laws in existence at the place of their residence.

7.  In general terms—­the war to cease; a general amnesty, so far as the Executive of the United States can command, on condition of the disbandment of the Confederate armies, the distribution of the arms, and the resumption of peaceful pursuits by the officers and men hitherto composing said armies.

Not being fully empowered by our respective principals to fulfill these terms, we individually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly obtain the necessary authority, and to carry out the above programme.

W. T. Sherman, Major-General,
Commanding Army of the United States in North Carolina.

J. E. Johnston, General,
Commanding Confederate States Army in North Carolina.

Major Hitchcock got off on the morning of the 20th, and I reckoned that it would take him four or five days to go to Washington and back.  During that time the repairs on all the railroads and telegraph-lines were pushed with energy, and we also got possession of the railroad and telegraph from Raleigh to Weldon, in the direction of Norfolk.  Meantime the troops remained statu quo, our cavalry occupying Durham’s Station and Chapel Hill.  General Slocum’s head of column was at Aven’s Ferry on Cape Fear River, and General Howard’s was strung along the railroad toward Hillsboro’; the rest of the army was in and about Raleigh.

On the 20th I reviewed the Tenth Corps, and was much pleased at the appearance of General Paines’s division of black troops, the first I had ever seen as a part of an organized army; and on the 21st I reviewed the Twenty-third Corps, which had been with me to Atlanta, but had returned to Nashville had formed an essential part of the army which fought at Franklin, and with which General Thomas had defeated General Hood in Tennessee.  It had then been transferred rapidly by rail to Baltimore and Washington by General Grant’s orders, and thence by sea to North Carolina.  Nothing of interest happened at Raleigh till the evening of April 23d, when Major Hitchcock reported by telegraph his return to Morehead City, and that he would come up by rail during the night.  He arrived at 6 a.m., April 24th, accompanied by General Grant and one or two officers of his staff, who had not telegraphed the fact of their being on the train, for prudential reasons.  Of course, I was both surprised and pleased to see the general, soon learned that my terms with Johnston had been disapproved, was instructed by him to give the forty-eight hours’ notice required by the terms of the truce, and afterward to proceed to attack or follow him.  I immediately telegraphed to General Kilpatrick, at Durham’s, to have a mounted courier ready to carry the following message, then on its way up by rail, to the rebel lines: