Colonel: I had the honor to receive-your letter of May 25th last evening, and hasten to answer.
I wish to precede it by renewed assurance of my confidence and respect for the
President and
Lieutenant-General Grant, and that in all matters I will be most willing to shape my official and private conduct to suit their wishes.
The past is beyond my control, and the matters embraced in the operations to which you refer are finished.
It is but just the reasons that actuated me, right or wrong, should stand of record, but in all future cases, should any arise, I will respect the decision of
General Grant, though I think it wrong. * * * *
In discussing this matter, I would like to refer to many writers on military law, but am willing to take
Halleck as the text (see his
Chapter No. 27). In the very first article he prefaces that ‘Good Faith’ should always be observed between enemies in war, because when our faith has been pledged to him, as far as the promise extends he ceases to be an enemy.
He then defines the meaning of compacts and conventions, and says they are made some times for a general or a partial suspension of hostilities, for the surrender of an army, etc. They may be special, limited to particular places, or to particular forces, but of course can only bind the armies subject to the general who makes the truce, and co-extensive only with the extent of his command.
This is all I ever claimed, and clearly covers the whole case.
All of
North Carolina was in my immediate command, with
General Schofield its department commander, and his army present with me. I never asked the truce to have effect beyond my own territorial command.
General Halleck himself, in his
Orders No. 1, defines his own limits clearly enough, viz.: ‘Such part of
North Carolina as was not occupied by the command of
Major-General Schofield.’
He could not pursue and cut off
Johnston's retreat toward
Saulsbury and
Charlotte without invading my command, and so patent was his purpose to
defy and
violate my truce that
Mr. Stanton's publication of the fact, not even yet recalled, modified, or explained, was headed: ‘
Sherman's Truce Disregarded,’ that the whole world drew but one inference.
It admits of no other.
I never claimed that the truce bound
Generals Halleck and
Canby within the sphere of their respective commands as defined by
