previous next
[208] slaves) and all the political power they possessed before the rebellion, and to be relieved from all consequences of the rebellion by a proclamation of general amnesty. The arrangement concluded with the following words:

‘Not being fully empowered by our respective principals to fulfill these terms, we individually and officially pledge ourselves to obtain the necessary authority and to carry out the above programme.’

A messenger was sent to Washington with the proposed agreement. At the same time General Sherman wrote the commanding general of the armies in Virginia:

‘I have agreed with General Joseph E. Johnston for a temporary cessation of active hostilities, to lay before our government at Washington the agreement made between us, with the full sanction of Mr. Davis and in the presence of Mr. Breckinridge.’

His messenger reached Washington on the 21st of April, and delivered his despatches to General Grant. You represented General Grant as coming to General Sherman's relief, from which those not acquainted with the history of the case would suppose that he approved the agreement. When you made this statement you must have known that General Grant condemned General Sherman's act before consulting either President Johnson or Secretary Stanton. He wrote that very evening to General Sherman, acknowledging receipt of the agreement, and said:

‘I read it carefully before submitting it to the President and the Secretary of War, and feel satisfied that it could not possibly be approved.’

In the same letter he says that upon his suggestion a Cabinet meeting was called, the result of which was ‘the disapproval by the president of the basis laid down and the disapproval of the negotiations altogether, except for the surrender of the army commanded by General Johnston, and an order for the termination of the armistice and the resumption of hostilities.’ I have before me while I write the original of the following note from General Grant to General Stanton:

headquarters armies of the United States, Washington, D. C., April 21, 1865.
Hon. E. M. Slanon, Secretary of War:
Sir—I have received and just completed reading the despatches brought by special messenger from General Sherman. They are of


Richmond, VA. 1892.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Washington (United States) (1)
United States (United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April 21st, 1865 AD (1)
April 21st (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: