Details
SHERMAN, WILLIAM TECUMSEH, Major General, U.S. Army. Three autograph letters signed ("W. T. Sherman") to the Honorable John Conness in Mattapan, Mass.; Army Headquarters, St. Louis, 9 January, 4 and 11 February 1876. Together 12 pages, 8vo, on printed Army Headquarters stationery, separating at folds.
"NO ONE NOT IN MY POSITION COULD COMREHEND THE FORCE OF THE BLOW & STIGMA FIXED ON ME"
An unusually impassioned group of letters to a former Senator from California in which Sherman discusses his recently published Memoirs and reveals the depth of his resentment toward and distrust of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. On 18 April 1865, Sherman signed an armistice with General Joseph Johnston, commanding the Army of Tennessee, that implied a conciliatory attitude on the part of the U.S. Government, notably the recognition of existing Southern state governments and a political amnesty. Although the agreement clearly stated that political decisions were beyond the scope of both generals, and that they simply pledged to do their utmost to secure similar terms from their respective governments, the hostile atmosphere in Washington following Lincoln's assassination enabled the Radical Republican views to prevail, and the agreement was repudiated in very harsh terms by President Johnson and his cabinet on the 21st of April. Grant was sent to Raleigh to order Sherman to demand that Johnston surrender on the same terms given to Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia (Johnston surrendered on the 26th). Stanton at the same time published a widely publicized report implying that Sherman had been willfully insubordinate. In his memoirs Sherman gave a full account of the affair, showing how he had been led to believe that he was acting in accord with government policy, and how Stanton had misrepresented Sherman's actions, implying that he had ignored crucial instructions which had in reality never been communicated to him. Sherman was deeply offended, and publicly refused to shake Stanton's hand at the grand military review in Washington.
9 January: "...I have made some... mistakes in life...among them in regard to Mr. Stanton. I have always admitted his strong character, and eminent services, but at the close of the war I was convinced that he had come to Savannah to destroy me because he supposed I was not acting in full harmony with their policy...and failing that he had used the last possible opportunity in making public the Johnston Terms at a time of profound national excitement. I then thought if I tamely submitted he would have crushed me out of sight. If wrong in this I did him & myself a great wrong..."
4 February: "...had some one like you been near in 1865 I might have escaped the unhappy consequences of that imbroglio. There is one fact that has since come to my knowledge, which I long suspected, that there existed a conbination to sweep me into oblivion before the war closed. I am told by one who saw it that General Hooker has now a letter to himself, from Wilkes of the Spirit of the Times in 1864 in which he Wilkes repeats a conversation he had just had with Mr. Stanton, in which the latter told him...that he, Stanton, had placed Hooker in a position where he could build himself up and pull me down. I would not have put in the memoirs any of that. Only I thought to have avoided it would have been a confession of wrong. I was not entirely right -- but no one not in my position could comprehend the force of the blow & stigma fixed on me just as I hoped to be 'out of the wood'. I must in time revise the Memoirs, and I will...". (The second revised edition appeared in 1885).
11 February: "...My memoirs are subject to criticism, but I cannot for the life of me help having positive opinions... I feel the greatest possible love for my old comrades in arms... I have the highest opinion of Stanton's administrative qualities and fully accord to him all honor for marshalling to the defense of the Nation its maximum strength, but it struck me both he & [General] Halleck, dealing with papers, forgot that others had equally strong feelings that could be wounded...". (3)
"NO ONE NOT IN MY POSITION COULD COMREHEND THE FORCE OF THE BLOW & STIGMA FIXED ON ME"
An unusually impassioned group of letters to a former Senator from California in which Sherman discusses his recently published Memoirs and reveals the depth of his resentment toward and distrust of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. On 18 April 1865, Sherman signed an armistice with General Joseph Johnston, commanding the Army of Tennessee, that implied a conciliatory attitude on the part of the U.S. Government, notably the recognition of existing Southern state governments and a political amnesty. Although the agreement clearly stated that political decisions were beyond the scope of both generals, and that they simply pledged to do their utmost to secure similar terms from their respective governments, the hostile atmosphere in Washington following Lincoln's assassination enabled the Radical Republican views to prevail, and the agreement was repudiated in very harsh terms by President Johnson and his cabinet on the 21st of April. Grant was sent to Raleigh to order Sherman to demand that Johnston surrender on the same terms given to Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia (Johnston surrendered on the 26th). Stanton at the same time published a widely publicized report implying that Sherman had been willfully insubordinate. In his memoirs Sherman gave a full account of the affair, showing how he had been led to believe that he was acting in accord with government policy, and how Stanton had misrepresented Sherman's actions, implying that he had ignored crucial instructions which had in reality never been communicated to him. Sherman was deeply offended, and publicly refused to shake Stanton's hand at the grand military review in Washington.
9 January: "...I have made some... mistakes in life...among them in regard to Mr. Stanton. I have always admitted his strong character, and eminent services, but at the close of the war I was convinced that he had come to Savannah to destroy me because he supposed I was not acting in full harmony with their policy...and failing that he had used the last possible opportunity in making public the Johnston Terms at a time of profound national excitement. I then thought if I tamely submitted he would have crushed me out of sight. If wrong in this I did him & myself a great wrong..."
4 February: "...had some one like you been near in 1865 I might have escaped the unhappy consequences of that imbroglio. There is one fact that has since come to my knowledge, which I long suspected, that there existed a conbination to sweep me into oblivion before the war closed. I am told by one who saw it that General Hooker has now a letter to himself, from Wilkes of the Spirit of the Times in 1864 in which he Wilkes repeats a conversation he had just had with Mr. Stanton, in which the latter told him...that he, Stanton, had placed Hooker in a position where he could build himself up and pull me down. I would not have put in the memoirs any of that. Only I thought to have avoided it would have been a confession of wrong. I was not entirely right -- but no one not in my position could comprehend the force of the blow & stigma fixed on me just as I hoped to be 'out of the wood'. I must in time revise the Memoirs, and I will...". (The second revised edition appeared in 1885).
11 February: "...My memoirs are subject to criticism, but I cannot for the life of me help having positive opinions... I feel the greatest possible love for my old comrades in arms... I have the highest opinion of Stanton's administrative qualities and fully accord to him all honor for marshalling to the defense of the Nation its maximum strength, but it struck me both he & [General] Halleck, dealing with papers, forgot that others had equally strong feelings that could be wounded...". (3)