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edited by Lightheart - "THE GOSPEL"

Georg Ebers - "A Word Only A Word, Volume 4."

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Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete

U >> Ulysses S. Grant >> Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete




During 1862 and '3, John H. Morgan, a partisan officer, of no military
education, but possessed of courage and endurance, operated in the rear
of the Army of the Ohio in Kentucky and Tennessee. He had no base of
supplies to protect, but was at home wherever he went. The army
operating against the South, on the contrary, had to protect its lines
of communication with the North, from which all supplies had to come to
the front. Every foot of road had to be guarded by troops stationed at
convenient distances apart. These guards could not render assistance
beyond the points where stationed. Morgan Was foot-loose and could
operate where, his information--always correct--led him to believe he
could do the greatest damage. During the time he was operating in this
way he killed, wounded and captured several times the number he ever had
under his command at any one time. He destroyed many millions of
property in addition. Places he did not attack had to be guarded as if
threatened by him. Forrest, an abler soldier, operated farther west,
and held from the National front quite as many men as could be spared
for offensive operations. It is safe to say that more than half the
National army was engaged in guarding lines of supplies, or were on
leave, sick in hospital or on detail which prevented their bearing arms.
Then, again, large forces were employed where no Confederate army
confronted them. I deem it safe to say that there were no large
engagements where the National numbers compensated for the advantage of
position and intrenchment occupied by the enemy.

While I was in pursuit of General Lee, the President went to Richmond in
company with Admiral Porter, and on board his flagship. He found the
people of that city in great consternation. The leading citizens among
the people who had remained at home surrounded him, anxious that
something should be done to relieve them from suspense. General Weitzel
was not then in the city, having taken offices in one of the neighboring
villages after his troops had succeeded in subduing the conflagration
which they had found in progress on entering the Confederate capital.
The President sent for him, and, on his arrival, a short interview was
had on board the vessel, Admiral Porter and a leading citizen of
Virginia being also present. After this interview the President wrote an
order in about these words, which I quote from memory: "General Weitzel
is authorized to permit the body calling itself the Legislature of
Virginia to meet for the purpose of recalling the Virginia troops from
the Confederate armies."

Immediately some of the gentlemen composing that body wrote out a call
for a meeting and had it published in their papers. This call, however,
went very much further than Mr. Lincoln had contemplated, as he did not
say the "Legislature of Virginia" but "the body which called itself the
Legislature of Virginia." Mr. Stanton saw the call as published in the
Northern papers the very next issue and took the liberty of
countermanding the order authorizing any meeting of the Legislature, or
any other body, and this notwithstanding the fact that the President was
nearer the spot than he was.

This was characteristic of Mr. Stanton. He was a man who never
questioned his own authority, and who always did in war time what he
wanted to do. He was an able constitutional lawyer and jurist; but the
Constitution was not an impediment to him while the war lasted. In this
latter particular I entirely agree with the view he evidently held. The
Constitution was not framed with a view to any such rebellion as that of
1861-5. While it did not authorize rebellion it made no provision
against it. Yet the right to resist or suppress rebellion is as
inherent as the right of self-defence, and as natural as the right of an
individual to preserve his life when in jeopardy. The Constitution was
therefore in abeyance for the time being, so far as it in any way
affected the progress and termination of the war.

Those in rebellion against the government of the United States were not
restricted by constitutional provisions, or any other, except the acts
of their Congress, which was loyal and devoted to the cause for which
the South was then fighting. It would be a hard case when one-third of
a nation, united in rebellion against the national authority, is
entirely untrammeled, that the other two-thirds, in their efforts to
maintain the Union intact, should be restrained by a Constitution
prepared by our ancestors for the express purpose of insuring the
permanency of the confederation of the States.

After I left General Lee at Appomattox Station, I went with my staff and
a few others directly to Burkesville Station on my way to Washington.
The road from Burkesville back having been newly repaired and the ground
being soft, the train got off the track frequently, and, as a result, it
was after midnight of the second day when I reached City Point. As soon
as possible I took a dispatch-boat thence to Washington City.

While in Washington I was very busy for a time in preparing the
necessary orders for the new state of affairs; communicating with my
different commanders of separate departments, bodies of troops, etc.
But by the 14th I was pretty well through with this work, so as to be
able to visit my children, who were then in Burlington, New Jersey,
attending school. Mrs. Grant was with me in Washington at the time, and
we were invited by President and Mrs. Lincoln to accompany them to the
theatre on the evening of that day. I replied to the President's verbal
invitation to the effect, that if we were in the city we would take
great pleasure in accompanying them; but that I was very anxious to get
away and visit my children, and if I could get through my work during
the day I should do so. I did get through and started by the evening
train on the 14th, sending Mr. Lincoln word, of course, that I would not
be at the theatre.

At that time the railroad to New York entered Philadelphia on Broad
Street; passengers were conveyed in ambulances to the Delaware River,
and then ferried to Camden, at which point they took the cars again.
When I reached the ferry, on the east side of the City of Philadelphia,
I found people awaiting my arrival there; and also dispatches informing
me of the assassination of the President and Mr. Seward, and of the
probable assassination of the Vice President, Mr. Johnson, and
requesting my immediate return.

It would be impossible for me to describe the feeling that overcame me
at the news of these assassinations, more especially the assassination
of the President. I knew his goodness of heart, his generosity, his
yielding disposition, his desire to have everybody happy, and above all
his desire to see all the people of the United States enter again upon
the full privileges of citizenship with equality among all. I knew also
the feeling that Mr. Johnson had expressed in speeches and conversation
against the Southern people, and I feared that his course towards them
would be such as to repel, and make them unwilling citizens; and if they
became such they would remain so for a long while. I felt that
reconstruction had been set back, no telling how far.

I immediately arranged for getting a train to take me back to Washington
City; but Mrs. Grant was with me; it was after midnight and Burlington
was but an hour away. Finding that I could accompany her to our house
and return about as soon as they would be ready to take me from the
Philadelphia station, I went up with her and returned immediately by the
same special train. The joy that I had witnessed among the people in
the street and in public places in Washington when I left there, had
been turned to grief; the city was in reality a city of mourning. I
have stated what I believed then the effect of this would be, and my
judgment now is that I was right. I believe the South would have been
saved from very much of the hardness of feeling that was engendered by
Mr. Johnson's course towards them during the first few months of his
administration. Be this as it may, Mr. Lincoln's assassination was
particularly unfortunate for the entire nation.

Mr. Johnson's course towards the South did engender bitterness of
feeling. His denunciations of treason and his ever-ready remark,
"Treason is a crime and must be made odious," was repeated to all those
men of the South who came to him to get some assurances of safety so
that they might go to work at something with the feeling that what they
obtained would be secure to them. He uttered his denunciations with
great vehemence, and as they were accompanied with no assurances of
safety, many Southerners were driven to a point almost beyond endurance.

The President of the United States is, in a large degree, or ought to
be, a representative of the feeling, wishes and judgment of those over
whom he presides; and the Southerners who read the denunciations of
themselves and their people must have come to the conclusion that he
uttered the sentiments of the Northern people; whereas, as a matter of
fact, but for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great
majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would
have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the
least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their
government. They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides
being the mildest, it was also the wisest, policy.

The people who had been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the
Union, and be incorporated as an integral part of the nation. Naturally
the nearer they were placed to an equality with the people who had not
rebelled, the more reconciled they would feel with their old
antagonists, and the better citizens they would be from the beginning.
They surely would not make good citizens if they felt that they had a
yoke around their necks.

I do not believe that the majority of the Northern people at that time
were in favor of negro suffrage. They supposed that it would naturally
follow the freedom of the negro, but that there would be a time of
probation, in which the ex-slaves could prepare themselves for the
privileges of citizenship before the full right would be conferred; but
Mr. Johnson, after a complete revolution of sentiment, seemed to regard
the South not only as an oppressed people, but as the people best
entitled to consideration of any of our citizens. This was more than
the people who had secured to us the perpetuation of the Union were
prepared for, and they became more radical in their views. The
Southerners had the most power in the executive branch, Mr. Johnson
having gone to their side; and with a compact South, and such sympathy
and support as they could get from the North, they felt that they would
be able to control the nation at once, and already many of them acted as
if they thought they were entitled to do so.

Thus Mr. Johnson, fighting Congress on the one hand, and receiving the
support of the South on the other, drove Congress, which was
overwhelmingly republican, to the passing of first one measure and then
another to restrict his power. There being a solid South on one side
that was in accord with the political party in the North which had
sympathized with the rebellion, it finally, in the judgment of Congress
and of the majority of the legislatures of the States, became necessary
to enfranchise the negro, in all his ignorance. In this work, I shall
not discuss the question of how far the policy of Congress in this
particular proved a wise one. It became an absolute necessity, however,
because of the foolhardiness of the President and the blindness of the
Southern people to their own interest. As to myself, while strongly
favoring the course that would be the least humiliating to the people
who had been in rebellion, I gradually worked up to the point where,
with the majority of the people, I favored immediate enfranchisement.



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.

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