Durham's Station - "Prelude to Peace" - Durham, North Carolina - Civil War Discovery Trail Sites on Waymarking.com

On April 17, 1865, Union Gen. William T. Sherman arrived by train at Durham's Station (two blocks northeast of this sign) at the culmination of his Carolinas Campaign to discuss terms of peace at the request of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, headquartered in nearby Hillsborough.

General Sherman and General Johnston

Sherman carried a telegram in his pocket that announced the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman spoke with his calvary commander, Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick, near here at the Durham home of Dr. Richard Blacknall. Then Sherman rode three miles west to meet Johnston at James and Nancy Bennett's farmhouse to open negotiations for Confederate surrender.

Since the 1820's, the U.S. Post Office Department had assigned this community various names. It was officially named Durham in 1853, after Dr. Bartlett Durham donated four acres of land for a North Carolina Railroad station and the Durham's Station post office was established. About 100 people called this hamlet home in 1865, and the community grew rapidly around the station. After the Civil War, Durham developed rapidly as a tobacco and textile manufacturing center. Durham County was established in 1881, and by 1900 its population was more than 26,000 (a century later, the metropolitan area totaled more than 450,000).

Next to the Durham's Station sign is another sign covering Sherman's Carolinas Campaign with a map detailing the campaign.

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