Surrender of General Joseph Johnston

A hand-colored lithograph produced by Currier & Ives in New York City, presents the scene of the surrender of Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston to Union general William T. Sherman near Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. After General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, Johnston wanted to negotiate a truce for his own forces, which consisted of the weakened Army of Tennessee as well as other troops from the Carolinas. Confederate president Jefferson Davis, however, wanted the fighting to continue. Davis and Johnston met in a railroad car in Greensboro, and the president reluctantly granted the general permission to seek an armistice. Johnston met with Sherman on April 17 near Durham Station, North Carolina, but the initial agreement they reached was rejected by the federal government in the wake of the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln just three days before. On April 26 Johnston formally surrendered his army to Sherman on the same terms Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had given Lee.