CHAPTER LXIX.

SHERMAN AND JOHNSTON--JOHNSTON'S SURRENDER TO SHERMAN--CAPTURE OF

MOBILE--WILSON'S EXPEDITION--CAPTURE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS--GENERAL

THOMAS'S QUALITIES--ESTIMATE OF GENERAL CANBY.

When I left Appomattox I ordered General Meade to proceed leisurely back

to Burkesville Station with the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the

James, and to go into camp there until further orders from me. General

Johnston, as has been stated before, was in North Carolina confronting

General Sherman. It could not be known positively, of course, whether

Johnston would surrender on the news of Lee's surrender, though I

supposed he would; and if he did not, Burkesville Station was the

natural point from which to move to attack him. The army which I could

have sent against him was superior to his, and that with which Sherman

confronted him was also superior; and between the two he would

necessarily have been crushed, or driven away. With the loss of their

capital and the Army of Northern Virginia it was doubtful whether

Johnston's men would have the spirit to stand. My belief was that he

would make no such attempt; but I adopted this course as a precaution

against what might happen, however improbable.

Simultaneously with my starting from City Point, I sent a messenger to

North Carolina by boat with dispatches to General Sherman, informing him

of the surrender of Lee and his army; also of the terms which I had

given him; and I authorized Sherman to give the same terms to Johnston

if the latter chose to accept them. The country is familiar with the

terms that Sherman agreed to CONDITIONALLY, because they embraced a

political question as well as a military one and he would therefore have

to confer with the government before agreeing to them definitely.

General Sherman had met Mr. Lincoln at City Point while visiting there

to confer with me about our final movement, and knew what Mr. Lincoln

had said to the peace commissioners when he met them at Hampton Roads,

viz.: that before he could enter into negotiations with them they would

have to agree to two points: one being that the Union should be

preserved, and the other that slavery should be abolished; and if they

were ready to concede these two points he was almost ready to sign his

name to a blank piece of paper and permit them to fill out the balance

of the terms upon which we would live together. He had also seen

notices in the newspapers of Mr. Lincoln's visit to Richmond, and had

read in the same papers that while there he had authorized the convening

of the Legislature of Virginia.

Sherman thought, no doubt, in adding to the terms that I had made with

general Lee, that he was but carrying out the wishes of the President of

the United States. But seeing that he was going beyond his authority,

he made it a point that the terms were only conditional. They signed

them with this understanding, and agreed to a truce until the terms

could be sent to Washington for approval; if approved by the proper

authorities there, they would then be final; if not approved, then he

would give due notice, before resuming hostilities. As the world knows,

Sherman, from being one of the most popular generals of the land

(Congress having even gone so far as to propose a bill providing for a

second lieutenant-general for the purpose of advancing him to that

grade), was denounced by the President and Secretary of War in very

bitter terms. Some people went so far as to denounce him as a traitor

--a most preposterous term to apply to a man who had rendered so much

service as he had, even supposing he had made a mistake in granting such

terms as he did to Johnston and his army. If Sherman had taken

authority to send Johnston with his army home, with their arms to be put

in the arsenals of their own States, without submitting the question to

the authorities at Washington, the suspicions against him might have

some foundation. But the feeling against Sherman died out very rapidly,

and it was not many weeks before he was restored to the fullest

confidence of the American people.

When, some days after my return to Washington, President Johnson and the

Secretary of war received the terms which General Sherman had forwarded

for approval, a cabinet meeting was immediately called and I was sent

for. There seemed to be the greatest consternation, lest Sherman would

commit the government to terms which they were not willing to accede to

and which he had no right to grant. A message went out directing the

troops in the South not to obey General Sherman. I was ordered to

proceed at once to North Carolina and take charge of matter there

myself. Of course I started without delay, and reached there as soon as

possible. I repaired to Raleigh, where Sherman was, as quietly as

possible, hoping to see him without even his army learning of my

presence.

When I arrived I went to Sherman's headquarters, and we were at once

closeted together. I showed him the instruction and orders under which

I visited him. I told him that I wanted him to notify General Johnston

that the terms which they had conditionally agreed upon had not been

approved in Washington, and that he was authorized to offer the same

terms I had given General Lee. I sent Sherman to do this himself. I

did not wish the knowledge of my presence to be known to the army

generally; so I left it to Sherman to negotiate the terms of the

surrender solely by himself, and without the enemy knowing that I was

anywhere near the field. As soon as possible I started to get away, to

leave Sherman quite free and untrammelled.

At Goldsboro', on my way back, I met a mail, containing the last

newspapers, and I found in them indications of great excitement in the

North over the terms Sherman had given Johnston; and harsh orders that

had been promulgated by the President and Secretary of War. I knew that

Sherman must see these papers, and I fully realized what great

indignation they would cause him, though I do not think his feelings

could have been more excited than were my own. But like the true and

loyal soldier that he was, he carried out the instructions I had given

him, obtained the surrender of Johnston's army, and settled down in his

camp about Raleigh, to await final orders.

There were still a few expeditions out in the South that could not be

communicated with, and had to be left to act according to the judgment

of their respective commanders. With these it was impossible to tell

how the news of the surrender of Lee and Johnston, of which they must

have heard, might affect their judgment as to what was best to do.

The three expeditions which I had tried so hard to get off from the

commands of Thomas and Canby did finally get off: one under Canby

himself, against Mobile, late in March; that under Stoneman from East

Tennessee on the 20th; and the one under Wilson, starting from Eastport,

Mississippi, on the 22d of March. They were all eminently successful,

but without any good result. Indeed much valuable property was destroyed

and many lives lost at a time when we would have liked to spare them.

The war was practically over before their victories were gained. They

were so late in commencing operations, that they did not hold any troops

away that otherwise would have been operating against the armies which

were gradually forcing the Confederate armies to a surrender. The only

possible good that we may have experienced from these raids was by

Stoneman's getting near Lynchburg about the time the armies of the

Potomac and the James were closing in on Lee at Appomattox.

Stoneman entered North Carolina and then pushed north to strike the

Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. He got upon that road, destroyed its

bridges at different places and rendered the road useless to the enemy

up to within a few miles of Lynchburg. His approach caused the

evacuation of that city about the time we were at Appomattox, and was

the cause of a commotion we heard of there. He then pushed south, and

was operating in the rear of Johnston's army about the time the

negotiations were going on between Sherman and Johnston for the latter's

surrender. In this raid Stoneman captured and destroyed a large amount

of stores, while fourteen guns and nearly two thousand prisoners were

the trophies of his success.

Canby appeared before Mobile on the 27th of March. The city of Mobile

was protected by two forts, besides other intrenchments--Spanish Fort,

on the east side of the bay, and Fort Blakely, north of the city. These

forts were invested. On the night of the 8th of April, the National

troops having carried the enemy's works at one point, Spanish Fort was

evacuated; and on the 9th, the very day of Lee's surrender, Blakely was

carried by assault, with a considerable loss to us. On the 11th the

city was evacuated.

I had tried for more than two years to have an expedition sent against

Mobile when its possession by us would have been of great advantage. It

finally cost lives to take it when its possession was of no importance,

and when, if left alone, it would within a few days have fallen into our

hands without any bloodshed whatever.

Wilson moved out with full 12,000 men, well equipped and well armed. He

was an energetic officer and accomplished his work rapidly. Forrest was

in his front, but with neither his old-time army nor his old-time

prestige. He now had principally conscripts. His conscripts were

generally old men and boys. He had a few thousand regular cavalry left,

but not enough to even retard materially the progress of Wilson's

cavalry. Selma fell on the 2d of April, with a large number of

prisoners and a large quantity of war material, machine shops, etc., to

be disposed of by the victors. Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and West Point

fell in quick succession. These were all important points to the enemy

by reason of their railroad connections, as depots of supplies, and

because of their manufactories of war material. They were fortified or

intrenched, and there was considerable fighting before they were

captured. Macon surrendered on the 21st of April. Here news was

received of the negotiations for the surrender of Johnston's army.

Wilson belonged to the military division commanded by Sherman, and of

course was bound by his terms. This stopped all fighting.

General Richard Taylor had now become the senior Confederate officer

still at liberty east of the Mississippi River, and on the 4th of May he

surrendered everything within the limits of this extensive command.

General E. Kirby Smith surrendered the trans-Mississippi department on

the 26th of May, leaving no other Confederate army at liberty to

continue the war.

Wilson's raid resulted in the capture of the fugitive president of the

defunct confederacy before he got out of the country. This occurred at

Irwinsville, Georgia, on the 11th of May. For myself, and I believe Mr.

Lincoln shared the feeling, I would have been very glad to have seen Mr.

Davis succeed in escaping, but for one reason: I feared that if not

captured, he might get into the trans-Mississippi region and there set

up a more contracted confederacy. The young men now out of homes and

out of employment might have rallied under his standard and protracted

the war yet another year. The Northern people were tired of the war,

they were tired of piling up a debt which would be a further mortgage

upon their homes.

Mr. Lincoln, I believe, wanted Mr. Davis to escape, because he did not

wish to deal with the matter of his punishment. He knew there would be

people clamoring for the punishment of the ex-Confederate president, for

high treason. He thought blood enough had already been spilled to atone

for our wickedness as a nation. At all events he did not wish to be the

judge to decide whether more should be shed or not. But his own life

was sacrificed at the hands of an assassin before the ex-president of

the Confederacy was a prisoner in the hands of the government which he

had lent all his talent and all his energies to destroy.

All things are said to be wisely directed, and for the best interest of

all concerned. This reflection does not, however, abate in the

slightest our sense of bereavement in the untimely loss of so good and

great a man as Abraham Lincoln.

He would have proven the best friend the South could have had, and saved

much of the wrangling and bitterness of feeling brought out by

reconstruction under a President who at first wished to revenge himself

upon Southern men of better social standing than himself, but who still

sought their recognition, and in a short time conceived the idea and

advanced the proposition to become their Moses to lead them triumphantly

out of all their difficulties.

The story of the legislation enacted during the reconstruction period to

stay the hands of the President is too fresh in the minds of the people

to be told now. Much of it, no doubt, was unconstitutional; but it was

hoped that the laws enacted would serve their purpose before the

question of constitutionality could be submitted to the judiciary and a

decision obtained. These laws did serve their purpose, and now remain "a

dead letter" upon the statute books of the United States, no one taking

interest enough in them to give them a passing thought.

Much was said at the time about the garb Mr. Davis was wearing when he

was captured. I cannot settle this question from personal knowledge of

the facts; but I have been under the belief, from information given to

me by General Wilson shortly after the event, that when Mr. Davis

learned that he was surrounded by our cavalry he was in his tent dressed

in a gentleman's dressing gown. Naturally enough, Mr. Davis wanted to

escape, and would not reflect much how this should be accomplished

provided it might be done successfully. If captured, he would be no

ordinary prisoner. He represented all there was of that hostility to

the government which had caused four years of the bloodiest war--and the

most costly in other respects of which history makes any record. Every

one supposed he would be tried for treason if captured, and that he

would be executed. Had he succeeded in making his escape in any

disguise it would have been adjudged a good thing afterwards by his

admirers.

As my official letters on file in the War Department, as well as my

remarks in this book, reflect upon General Thomas by dwelling somewhat

upon his tardiness, it is due to myself, as well as to him, that I give

my estimate of him as a soldier. The same remark will apply also in the

case of General Canby. I had been at West Point with Thomas one year,

and had known him later in the old army. He was a man of commanding

appearance, slow and deliberate in speech and action; sensible, honest

and brave. He possessed valuable soldierly qualities in an eminent

degree. He gained the confidence of all who served under him, and

almost their love. This implies a very valuable quality. It is a

quality which calls out the most efficient services of the troops

serving under the commander possessing it.

Thomas's dispositions were deliberately made, and always good. He could

not be driven from a point he was given to hold. He was not as good,

however, in pursuit as he was in action. I do not believe that he could

ever have conducted Sherman's army from Chattanooga to Atlanta against

the defences and the commander guarding that line in 1864. On the other

hand, if it had been given him to hold the line which Johnston tried to

hold, neither that general nor Sherman, nor any other officer could have

done it better.

Thomas was a valuable officer, who richly deserved, as he has received,

the plaudits of his countrymen for the part he played in the great

tragedy of 1861-5.

General Canby was an officer of great merit. He was naturally studious,

and inclined to the law. There have been in the army but very few, if

any, officers who took as much interest in reading and digesting every

act of Congress and every regulation for the government of the army as

he. His knowledge gained in this way made him a most valuable staff

officer, a capacity in which almost all his army services were rendered

up to the time of his being assigned to the Military Division of the

Gulf. He was an exceedingly modest officer, though of great talent and

learning. I presume his feelings when first called upon to command a

large army against a fortified city, were somewhat like my own when

marching a regiment against General Thomas Harris in Missouri in 1861.

Neither of us would have felt the slightest trepidation in going into

battle with some one else commanding. Had Canby been in other

engagements afterwards, he would, I have no doubt, have advanced without

any fear arising from a sense of the responsibility. He was afterwards

killed in the lava beds of Southern Oregon, while in pursuit of the

hostile Modoc Indians. His character was as pure as his talent and

learning were great. His services were valuable during the war, but

principally as a bureau officer. I have no idea that it was from choice

that his services were rendered in an office, but because of his

superior efficiency there.