IT WAS DONE. The South had been defeated, the Union restored, and it was time to go home to other pursuits and to get on with life.
At the camps outside Washington, in neighboring Virginia and Maryland, the last muster rolls of the Union troops who had participated in the Grand Review were prepared by the company 1st Sergeants and attested to by the Commanding Officers. Discharge papers were prepared, accounts settled, and the soldiers began their journey home, for the first time in a long time unencumbered by muskets and cartridge boxes. A cadre remained to complete the housekeeping—compiling the records, preparing them for storage, etc., work that would go on for months.
But the war didn’t just end with the Grand Review. Many armed troops were still in the field, and much was to be done to gather these men in and effect their surrender. This epilogue summarizes the final stages of the war.
The political prisoners held at various facilities around the country were released and sent home. Some had been incarcerated for up to two years.
The British government officially withdrew belligerency rights from the Confederate government.
In Galveston, Tex., Confederate Gen. E. Kirby Smith officially surrendered, accepting the terms outlined in New Orleans on May 26th. On June 3rd, the Southern naval forces on the Red River officially surrendered.
President Andrew Johnson appointed provisional governors to the various states of the late Confederacy.
On the last day of June, the Lincoln conspirators were found guilty by the military court.
Sgt. Lucius Barber, Co. D, 15th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, had reenlisted for a period of three years on his last reenlistment, believing that he would be discharged at the end of the war.
Barber, since the Grand Review, had been sightseeing in Washington and resting up after his long march from South Carolina. On June 8th, Barber left Washington for Illinois, passing through Harpers Ferry on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to Parkersburg, W.Va., where he boarded the steamer G.R. Gilman on the 10th. With many stops along the way, he passed Cincinnati on the 12th, and arrived in Louisville with his unit on the 15th. On the 20th he was paid up to date, receiving $369.00.
On the 21st, Barber’s unit was on the march again, this time for St. Louis. The reaction to this unexpected event was rather angry:
Marched at 5 AM. Took the transport Camilla for St. Louis. Are just shoving off from shore and slowly dropping down stream. This sudden move still remains a mystery to us. Somethink we are going to be mustered out. Somethink that we are going to some distant post to do garrison duty. We veterans cannot believe that the government will be guilty of so great an injustice as still keeping us in the service after we have so faithfully performed our part of the contract.
The government, considering that they had at least another year to go on their enlistments, was going to put them to work on the frontier. This was finally disclosed to the troops on June 25th, at which time the reaction became even angrier:
At St. Louis. Our astonishment and anger knew no bounds when we found out that we were to be sent to the frontier to fight Indians. Our brigade commander, General Stolbrand, was the author of this outrage. The recruits had no reason to complain as they were bound to service one year if their services were required, but we had fulfilled our part with the government to the very letter. Symptoms of mutiny began to manifest itself. A large number of the veterans took French leave, determined not to go. To quiet the tumult, orders were issued to grant furloughs—twenty percent of all enlisted men, but about ninety percent were given to the veterans. I obtained a furlough without the asking. …
Sgt. Barber went to Pennsylvania to attend a wedding at Titusville, where he arrived on the 29th.
The execution of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, July 7, 1865
On a hot and humid summer day, July 7th, the assassination conspirators were hanged at the Old Capital Prison in Washington.
Sgt. Barber, arriving home in Illinois from the wedding in Pennsylvania, found that he and his friend Rollin had received papers from their Company Commander which be useful in getting them mustered out.
On July 24th, Hillery Boss in Illinois wrote a letter to the parents of Julius Allen in North Carolina concerning the death of the Allens’ son. Allen, originally from Salisbury, N.C., had been in Asheville, N.C., at the beginning of the war and had walked almost all the way to Illinois to enlist in the Union Army. He had served with the 10th Illinois Cavalry in the western campaigns, but never returned to Illinois. The letter stated that “he got drowned in the Mississippi river. I suppose his body was not recovered. To my knowledge, he was drowned between the 26th of April, 1863 and June 12, 1863.”
On the 27th of July, Barber was really no closer to solving the problem of getting mustered out than he had been:
We went to Springfield to see if we could not procure our discharge, but did not succeed. I went to Colonel Oaks, chief mustering officer for the State, and presented my descriptive list, but my furlough ordered me to report back to the regiment and he could do nothing for us. I then went to Adjutant-General Hayne and he told me to go to the commandant of the post and if I could induce him to give me an order for a discharge, I would be all right, but he would not do it, so I had no other resource left but to go back to the regiment or return home. I chose the latter alternative, and in company with five of my comrades, I returned on the evening train. I helped father do his harvesting and then Rollin and I started for the regiment.
At long last, Barber, our final protagonist, was mustered out after many trials and tribulations dealing with the bureaucracy.
September 1: Arrived back at Ft. Leavenworth about the 1st of September, and preparations were immediately made to muster us out. I assisted in making out our company’s rolls. I had now been promoted to 3d sergeant.
September 15: We were mustered out about the middle of the month and the next day started for Springfield for our pay and final discharge. Our progress over the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad was very tedious and slow. There was hardly a mile of track but what had been disturbed by the guerrillas during the way and it was not yet repaired.
September 30: On the 30th day of September we received our final pay and discharge. I had worn the livery of Uncle Sam for four years, five months and twenty-seven days. … it is with a thankful heart and intense joy that I lay aside the honorable title of Soldier and once more enjoy the proud title of American Citizen, a subject of the best and truest government on God’s earth. Before leaving for home, in company with several of my comrades, I paid a parting visit to the tomb of Lincoln at Oak Ridge Cemetery. We passed within the enclosure and registered our names beside hundreds of thousands of others who had been there before us. We then went to the grated opening of the sepulcher and took one last lingering look at the narrow resting place where sleeps all that is mortal of Lincoln, whose noble heart and mind had guided us through all the dark and bloody years of our Nation’s struggle for existence. …
Sgt. Lucius W. Barber recorded the mileage he had traveled during his life in the Union Army. In total it came to an incredible 10,897 miles. Lucius Barber died in Riley, Illinois, on March 12th, 1872, at the age of 32 years and 9 months. He succumbed to consumption, believed to have been contracted while a prisoner at Andersonville.
On November 6th, the C.S.S. Shenandoah, Lt. Waddell, surrendered to British officials at Liverpool, England. The ship would be stripped of its armament and used as a merchant vessel. At the time it was finally sunk, in 1879, it was owned by the Sultan of Zanzibar.
On November 10th, the infamous Capt. Henry Wirz, former commander of the Andersonville Prison, was hanged after a military-commission trial in Washington.
President Johnson officially declared that the war was over and the insurrection was at an end.
For most of our protagonists, the closing of the war wrote a final chapter of a great adventure which would be relived time and time again until, at last, the final bugle sounding “Taps” was played over the last survivor. The mists of memory would gradually cloud the scenes of bloody combat until they were as if in a dream, real, but unreal, in their vivid flashes of remembrance. The old men the veterans were to become would recount their stories to thousands of wide-eyed children for two generations. They would meet in reunions to relive the glory and remember the dead. They are, Blue and Gray, a part of the American heritage forever.