“The President was some indisposed and in bed, but not seriously ill,” Gideon Welles noted on his diary. “The [cabinet] members met in his bedroom.”1 Lincoln was still recuperating from stress and strain and overwork, and was also preparing himself mentally for the fighting that would soon begin again. The cabinet meeting was fairly short; the president does not appear to have written any letters or communiques.
In North Carolina, General William Tecumseh Sherman was also getting ready for the coming battles. Or, as he put it, he was preparing “for the next and last stage of the war.” Sherman knew that General Joseph E. Johnston was organizing his army in the vicinity of Raleigh. “I was determined, however, to give him as little time for organization as possible,” Sherman said, and began moving his army away from Fayetteville except for one division. This division was to stay at Fayetteville until the arsenal was completely destroyed. The arsenal “was deliberately and completely levelled on the 14th,” General Sherman recounted, “when fire was applied to the wreck.” He intended to leave nothing behind that might be of any use at all to the enemy, not even any standing walls.2
General Philip Sheridan had been moving north from the Shenandoah Valley for the past several days, heading toward General Grant's army at Petersburg. At Petersburg, Grant's men were expecting to receive orders to move at any time. “Well, I am ready,” Colonel Elisha Hunt Rhodes reflected, “and may God give us victory.”3