Bennett Place

• 1. Introduction

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  Bennett Place, a modest farm in Durham, North Carolina, holds a distinction that most Americans have never heard of: it was the site of the largest single surrender of the American Civil War. On the 26th of April, 1865, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston handed over 89,270 soldiers to Union Major General William T. Sherman. That number dwarfs the surrender at Appomattox Court House just weeks earlier. But before that final agreement was reached, two sets of negotiations had to take place at the same farmhouse, and the first collapsed entirely. What made the Bennett Place surrender so complicated? Why did the Union cabinet in Washington reject the first terms? And who were James and Nancy Bennett, the plain farm family caught in the middle of all of it?

• 2. Roads to Durham Station

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  After Sherman's March to the Sea, he turned his army north through the Carolinas. Confederate President Jefferson Davis met with General Johnston in Greensboro, North Carolina, while Sherman had stopped in Raleigh. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on the 9th of April, 1865. Davis wanted the war to continue. Johnston did not share that view. Johnston sent a courier to Union troops encamped at Morrisville Station, offering to meet between the lines to discuss a truce. Johnston's army was still a functioning fighting force; Davis believed that ample supplies had been placed along their available line of retreat.

  Johnston rode east along the Hillsborough Road toward Durham Station, escorted by roughly 60 troopers of the 5th South Carolina Cavalry Regiment. Sherman rode west to meet him with an escort of 200 men drawn from the 9th and 13th Pennsylvania, 8th Indiana, and 2nd Kentucky Cavalry. The farm of James and Nancy Bennett offered the two commanders the privacy they needed for what lay ahead.

• 3. The Telegram About Lincoln

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  The first day of talks at the Bennett farm, the 17th of April, 1865, was sharpened by a piece of news Sherman carried with him. He handed Johnston a telegram informing him of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The two men met again the following day, the 18th of April, and signed terms of surrender. Those terms, however, reached far beyond what Grant had offered Lee at Appomattox.

  Johnston was joined in pressing for broader terms by General John C. Breckinridge, who was also serving at the time as Secretary of War for the Confederacy. Together they pushed for resolutions on political matters: the reestablishment of state governments, the return of some weapons to state arsenals, and civil rights guarantees after the war. Sherman agreed, acting in what he understood to be the spirit of Lincoln's wishes for a compassionate and forgiving end to the conflict. Sherman did not yet know that on the 3rd of March, Lincoln had given Grant explicit orders to discuss only military matters with Lee.

• 4. Washington Rejects the Deal

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  United States Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton read the Sherman-Johnston terms and moved swiftly against them. He persuaded a unanimous Federal cabinet to reject the agreement, citing Lincoln's own instructions to Grant. Sherman was ordered to call Johnston back to the table and limit negotiations to a strictly military surrender.

  Jefferson Davis, hearing the news, ordered Johnston to disband his infantry and escape with his mounted troops. Johnston refused. He disobeyed Davis directly and agreed to meet Sherman again at Bennett Farm. On the 26th of April, 1865, with General John M. Schofield assisting, the two commanders reached new terms. Those terms mirrored the ones Grant had given Lee, with additional corollary terms written by Schofield covering rations and the return of paroled soldiers to their homes. The surrender covered all active Confederate forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Three more surrenders would follow afterward, at Citronelle, Alabama; Galveston, Texas; and Doaksville, Oklahoma.

• 5. The Bennetts Themselves

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  James and Nancy Bennett were yeoman farmers who had lived through four years of war. The conflict cost their family dearly. Their son Lorenzo served in the 27th North Carolina and was buried in Winchester, Virginia. Their son-in-law Robert Duke, husband of their daughter Eliza, died in a Confederate Army hospital and is buried in Lynchburg, Virginia. A third child, Alfonzo, was not in the war but died in 1864 during the war years.

  The family never fully recovered. James Bennett died in 1878, and the family moved to the nearby community of Durham to start over. The farm they had tended was left behind. It fell into ruin, and a fire destroyed the farmhouse in 1921. The site sat abandoned until local preservationists, including the Duke, Everett, and Morgan families, joined efforts to reclaim it. In 1923, a Unity monument was dedicated there.

• 6. From Ruin to Historic Site

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  In 1960, preservationists fully reclaimed and restored the site. The farmhouse was reconstructed as a two-story log structure covered by weatherboards, with a gable roof and a shed addition. A log kitchen and smokehouse also stand on the property. The State of North Carolina then took over the site and designated it a state historic site, now administered by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

  Bennett Place was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The site is open Tuesday through Saturday, nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, and features a visitor center, museum, gift shop, and theater presentation called "Dawn of Peace". On the 15th of April, 2010, the site unveiled a new painting by Civil War artist Dan Nance titled "The First Meeting". That same day, Bennett Place gave its first William Vatavuk Scholarship, a yearly award for students planning to major in history. The scholarship honors the late William Vatavuk, who wrote the first guidebook for the site, also called Dawn of Peace.