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Weekly 150: Andrew Johnson

The War is Virtually at an End

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With time ticking away and deadline quickly approaching, I struggled to find a muse for this week’s story. Thank goodness for Google as a search of "on this date in history” turned up a quote from Tennessee’s Andrew Johnson. On May 9, 1865, President Johnson declared the Civil War “may be regarded as virtually at an end.” This opened the rabbit hole and away I went.

Many folks believe the war ended on April 9, 1865, with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, but that was just the white flag of one Confederate Army. Others may claim April 26, 1865, with the surrender of General Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee to General Sherman. Well, both sides are wrong, the official end date was August. 20, 1866. This came from an official declaration from President Johnson.

The May 9 declaration, according to journalist David Tristan, “this proclamation was primarily aimed at nations and ships still harboring ‘fugitives’ (privateers), announcing they would be denied entry to U.S. ports, and fugitives found on such ships would no longer be given immunity for their crimes.” On May 10, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured and it appeared the war was all but over as armies from Florida, South Carolina, and South Georgia surrendered.

Yet, west of the Mississippi River the war dragged on in its own regards. The main fighting took place in Texas and in Indian Territory. Near Brownsville, Texas on May 12, a force of 350 Confederates under Colonel John “Rip” Ford defeated 800 Union troops led by Colonel Theodore H. Barrett in the Battle of Palmito Ranch. On May 26, 1865, Lieutenant General E. Kirby Smith, Army of the Trans-Mississippi, surrendered.

On May 29, 1865, President Johnson issued his proclamation granting amnesty “to all persons who have directly or indirectly taken part in the rebellion, with the restoration of all rights of property except as to slaves, and except in cases where legal proceedings have been instituted for the confiscation of property, on condition of their taking an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States and to obey all laws and proclamations which have been made during the rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves. There are excluded from pardon, except on special application to the President, the following classes of persons: Those who have, in order to aid the rebellion, left judicial positions or seats in Congress, or who have resigned commissions in the army or navy, or absented themselves from the country; those who were educated at West Point or in the United States Naval Academy; those who have engaged in any way in torturing our prisoners; those who have been engaged in the destruction of our commerce, or who have made raids from Canada into the United States; all persons in military, naval, or civil confinement as prisoners of war; all persons who have voluntarily participated in the rebellion, and the estimated value of whose taxable property is over twenty thousand dollars; all who have taken and violated the previous amnesty oath; and all officers of the Confederate service above the rank of colonel in the army or lieutenant in the navy.”

In Indian Territory, Brigadier General Stand Watie, the first Native American to serve as a Confederate general, kept his troops in the field. On June 23, 1865, Watie finally acknowledged defeat and surrendered his unit

On April 2, 1866, President Johnson issued a proclamation stating that the insurrection was over in all of the former Confederate states but one: Texas, which had not yet succeeded in establishing a new state government.

Charles D. Grear, professor of history at Central Texas College wrote about the time period, “The Texas economy is prime, and it becomes this beacon for the rest of the South. People that are disgruntled throughout the South about their economic situation after the war—they’re going to be flooding into Texas.”

On August 20, 1866, in acknowledgment of Texas’ new state government, Johnson was able to finally proclaim that “said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole United States of America.”