Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

[705] by the signature of the Secretary of War, Hon. E. M. Stanton, which is grouped in such a way as to give the public very erroneous impressions. It embraces a copy of the basis of agreement between myself and General Johnston, of April 18th, with comments, which it will be time enough to discuss two or three years hence, after the government has experimented a little more in the machinery by which power reaches the scattered people of the vast country known as the ‘South.’ In the meantime, however, I did think that my rank (if not past services) entitled me at least to trust that the Secretary of War would keep secret what was communicated for the use of none but the cabinet, until further enquiry could be made, instead of giving publicity to it along with documents which I never saw, and drawing there from inferences wide of the truth. I never saw or had furnished me a copy of President Lincoln's dispatch to you of the 3rd of March, nor did Mr. Stanton or any human being ever convey to me its substance, or anything like it. On the contrary, I had seen General Weitzel's invitation to the Virginia legislature, made in Mr. Lincoln's very presence, and failed to discover any other official hint of a plan of reconstruction, or any ideas calculated to allay the fears of the people of the South, after the destruction of their armies and civil authorities would leave them without any government whatever.

We should not drive a people into anarchy, and it is simply impossible for our military power to reach all the masses of their unhappy country.

I confess I did not desire to drive General Johnston's army into bands of armed men, going about without purpose, and capable only of infinite mischief. But you saw, on your arrival here, that I had my army so disposed that his escape was only possible in a disorganized shape; and as you did not choose to ‘direct military operations in this quarter,’ I inferred that you were satisfied with the military situation; at all events, the instant I learned what was proper enough, the disapproval of the President, I acted in such a manner as to compel the surrender of General Johnston's whole army on the same terms which you had prescribed to General Lee's army, when you had it surrounded, and in your absolute power.

Mr. Stanton, in stating that my orders to General Stoneman were likely to result in the escape of ‘Mr. Davis to Mexico or Europe,’ is in deep error. General Stoneman was not at ‘Salisbury,’ but had gone back to ‘Statesville.’ Davis was between us, and therefore Stoneman