William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

However, he was made colonel of the Thirteenth Infantry, and this was his ‘new regiment.’ But, instead of following Colonel Warner's example, who went from inspector on the staff to the command of a regiment, he reversed it, and with his colonel's commission in his pocket passed to duty as inspector on the staff of General Scott, and this duty continued until he was assigned to the command of a brigade some weeks later. From this time forward he ‘had the good sense to prefer service with troops to staff duty.’

In this last chapter General Sherman argues that military correspondence with higher officials should pass through the hands of the intermediate generals, in order that they may never be ignorant of any thing that concerns their command. This has always been considered sound doctrine in the army, and yet General Sherman's records show that he constantly corresponded directly with General Halleck, on matters intimately affecting the whole army, without sending the letters through his own superiors. Now he writes: ‘I don't believe in a chief-of-staff at all.’ But up to the 18th of April, 1865, he sustained most intimate, cordial, and confidential relations with General Halleck as chief-of-staff, and on that date, as has been seen, wrote, asking him to influence the President, ‘if possible, not to vary the first terms made with Johnston at all.’ So close were these relations as to suggest the idea that his present non-belief in a chief-of-staff dates from a few days later, when, in addressing General Grant after his terms had been rejected, he wrote:

‘It now becomes my duty to paint in justly severe characters the still more offensive and dangerous matter of General Halleck's dispatch of April 26th to the Secretary of War, embodied in his to General Dix of April 27th.’

Out of the circumstances attending the rejection of the Johnston-Reagan terms, grew the controversy with the