The first Union troops to enter the city were the all Black, Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, commanded by Charles Francis Adams, grandson of former President John Quincy Adams. The Black citizens of the city greeted the liberating Black cavalry with deafening cheers. On April 6, 1865, three Union corps captured six thousand members of Lee’s army, and by the tenth of April, the first war between the American states was over. The nation’s joy was short-lived; four days later, President Lincoln was assasinated by a man the papers described as the sad, mad, bad John Wilkes Booth.