Wilson moved out with full 12,000 men, well equipped and well armed.  He was an energetic officer and accomplished his work rapidly.  Forrest was in his front, but with neither his old-time army nor his old-time prestige.  He now had principally conscripts.  His conscripts were generally old men and boys.  He had a few thousand regular cavalry left, but not enough to even retard materially the progress of Wilson’s cavalry.  Selma fell on the 2d of April, with a large number of prisoners and a large quantity of war material, machine shops, etc., to be disposed of by the victors.  Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and West Point fell in quick succession.  These were all important points to the enemy by reason of their railroad connections, as depots of supplies, and because of their manufactories of war material.  They were fortified or intrenched, and there was considerable fighting before they were captured.  Macon surrendered on the 21st of April.  Here news was received of the negotiations for the surrender of Johnston’s army.  Wilson belonged to the military division commanded by Sherman, and of course was bound by his terms.  This stopped all fighting.

General Richard Taylor had now become the senior Confederate officer still at liberty east of the Mississippi River, and on the 4th of May he surrendered everything within the limits of this extensive command.  General E. Kirby Smith surrendered the trans-Mississippi department on the 26th of May, leaving no other Confederate army at liberty to continue the war.

Wilson’s raid resulted in the capture of the fugitive president of the defunct confederacy before he got out of the country.  This occurred at Irwinsville, Georgia, on the 11th of May.  For myself, and I believe Mr. Lincoln shared the feeling, I would have been very glad to have seen Mr. Davis succeed in escaping, but for one reason:  I feared that if not captured, he might get into the trans-Mississippi region and there set up a more contracted confederacy.  The young men now out of homes and out of employment might have rallied under his standard and protracted the war yet another year.  The Northern people were tired of the war, they were tired of piling up a debt which would be a further mortgage upon their homes.

Mr. Lincoln, I believe, wanted Mr. Davis to escape, because he did not wish to deal with the matter of his punishment.  He knew there would be people clamoring for the punishment of the ex-Confederate president, for high treason.  He thought blood enough had already been spilled to atone for our wickedness as a nation.  At all events he did not wish to be the judge to decide whether more should be shed or not.  But his own life was sacrificed at the hands of an assassin before the ex-president of the Confederacy was a prisoner in the hands of the government which he had lent all his talent and all his energies to destroy.

All things are said to be wisely directed, and for the best interest of all concerned.  This reflection does not, however, abate in the slightest our sense of bereavement in the untimely loss of so good and great a man as Abraham Lincoln.