William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

‘ [239] parts of North Carolina as were not occupied by the command of Major-General Sherman.’ At the time my troops were ordered to Greensboro, General Sherman's troops did not occupy that part of North Carolina; it was occupied by the enemy, and consequently within my command, as defined by General Orders, No. 71, of the War Department.

But whether or not Greensboro, or any part of North Carolina, was in my command, General Sherman's remarks are equally without justification. On the 22d of April Lieutenant-General Grant notified me that Sherman's arrangements had been disapproved and orders given to resume hostilities, and directed me to move my troops on Danville and Greensboro, precisely as I did move them, there to await his further orders. My instructions to Generals Meade, Sheridan, and Wright were just such instructions as General Grant had directed me to give. The offense, or whatever he may please to call it, if any there was, of marching my troops within territory claimed by General Sherman, was not mine, but General Grant's, and all the abuse which he has directed upon me for that act must fall upon the General-in-Chief.

2d. General Sherman charges that by marching my troops into North Carolina I violated his truce, which he was bound to enforce even at the cost of many lives by a collision of our respective armies.

General Sherman had never sent me his truce; I had never seen it and did not know its terms or conditions. I only knew that his truce or ‘arrangement,’ whatever it was, had been disapproved and set aside by the President, and General Grant in ordering the movement of my troops simply notified me of this fact and of the renewal of hostilities. Even if Sherman's truce had been binding on me, which it was not, I had no knowledge of the clause relating to forty-eight hours notice.

It is strange that he should seek to bind me by conditions of the existence of which I was ignorant, and he had taken no measures to inform me. But even had I known them I could not have acted otherwise than I did. I simply carried out the orders of my superior officer, who had seen the truce and knew its terms. If General Sherman was, under the circumstances, justified in stopping the movements of my troops, even by destroying the commands of General Sheridan and General Wright, the responsbility of this sacrifice of human life must have rested either upon General Sherman or upon General Grant, for I simply obeyed the orders of the latter in regard to these movements.

General Sherman reflects on me for not going in person to violate, as he is pleased to call it, a truce which he ‘was bound in honor to defend and maintain,’ ‘even at the cost of many lives,’ and upon the marching powers of the troops which I sent into North Carolina. In reply to this I can only say that I was not ordered to go with these troops, but to send them under their commanders to certain points, there to await further orders from Lieutenant-General Grant, precisely as I directed. The troops were mostly selected by General Grant, not by me, and as he had commanded them for a year he probably