On the 20th I reviewed the Tenth Corps, and was much pleased at the appearance of General Paines’s division of black troops, the first I had ever seen as a part of an organized army; and on the 21st I reviewed the Twenty-third Corps, which had been with me to Atlanta, but had returned to Nashville had formed an essential part of the army which fought at Franklin, and with which General Thomas had defeated General Hood in Tennessee.  It had then been transferred rapidly by rail to Baltimore and Washington by General Grant’s orders, and thence by sea to North Carolina.  Nothing of interest happened at Raleigh till the evening of April 23d, when Major Hitchcock reported by telegraph his return to Morehead City, and that he would come up by rail during the night.  He arrived at 6 a.m., April 24th, accompanied by General Grant and one or two officers of his staff, who had not telegraphed the fact of their being on the train, for prudential reasons.  Of course, I was both surprised and pleased to see the general, soon learned that my terms with Johnston had been disapproved, was instructed by him to give the forty-eight hours’ notice required by the terms of the truce, and afterward to proceed to attack or follow him.  I immediately telegraphed to General Kilpatrick, at Durham’s, to have a mounted courier ready to carry the following message, then on its way up by rail, to the rebel lines: 

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI
IN THE FIELD, RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, April 24, 1865 6 A.M.

General JOHNSTON, commanding Confederate Army, Greensboro’: 

You will take notice that the truce or suspension of hostilities agreed to between us will cease in forty-eight hours after this is received at your lines, under the first of the articles of agreement.

W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.

At the same time I wrote another short note to General Johnston, of the same date: 

I have replies from Washington to my communications of April 18th.  I am instructed to limit my operations to your immediate command, and not to attempt civil negotiations.  I therefore demand the surrender of your army on the same terms as were given to General Lee at Appomattox, April 9th instant, purely and simply.

Of course, both these papers were shown to General Grant at the time, before they were sent, and he approved of them.

At the same time orders were sent to all parts of the army to be ready to resume the pursuit of the enemy on the expiration of the forty-eight hours’ truce, and messages were sent to General Gillmore (at Hilton Head) to the same effect, with instructions to get a similar message through to General Wilson, at Macon, by some means.