William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

[247] closed so as to exclude the hope of procuring arms and supplies from abroad; and we are unable to arm our people if they were willing to continue the struggle. The supplies of quartermaster and commissary stores in the country are very limited in amount, and our railroads are so broken and destroyed as to prevent, to a great extent, the transportation and accumulation of those remaining. Our currency has lost its purchasing power, and there is no other means of supplying the treasury; and the people are hostile to impressments and endeavor to conceal such supplies as are needed for the army from the officers charged with their collection. Our armies, in case of a prolongation of the struggle, will continue to melt away as they retreat through the country. There is danger, and I think I might say certainty, based on the information we have, that a portion, and probably all of the States will make separate terms with the enemy as they are overrun, with the chance that the terms so obtained will be less favorable to them than those contained in the agreement under consideration. And the despair of our people will prevent a much longer continuance of serious resistance, unless they shall be hereafter urged to it by unendurable oppressions.

The agreement under consideration secures to our people, if ratified by both parties, the uninterrupted continuance of the existing State Governments; the guarantees of the Federal Constitution, and of the Constitutions of their respective States; the guarantee of their political rights and of their rights of person and property, and immunity from future prosecutions and penalties for their participation in the existing war, on the condition that we accept the Constitution and Government of the United States, and disband our armies by marching the troops to their respective States, and depositing their arms in the State arsenals, subject to the future control of that Government, but with a verbal understanding that they are only to be used for the preservation of peace and order in the, respective States. It is also to be observed that the agreement contains no direct reference to the question of slavery, requires no concessions from us in regard to it, and leaves it subject to the Constitution and Laws of the United States and of the several States just as it was before the war.

With these facts before us, and under the belief that we can not now reasonably hope for the achievement of our independence, which should be dearer than life if it were possibly attainable, and under the belief that a continuance of the struggle, with its sacrifices of life and property, and its accumulation of sufferings, without a reasonable prospect of success, would be both unwise and criminal, I advise that you assent to the agreement as the best you can now do for the people who have clothed you with the high trust of your position.

In advising this course I do not conceal from myself, nor would I withhold from your Excellency, the danger of trusting the people who drove us to war by their unconstitutional and unjust aggressions, and who will now add the consciousness of power to their love of dominion and greed of gain.

It is right also for me to say that much as we have been exhausted in men