The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox

by Shelby Foote

  They parted “in extreme cordiality,” Johnston later declared, he to wait near Greensboro for Breckinridge to arrive from Salisbury, which Davis and his party had reached by then, and Sherman to face the problem of how to go about informing his troops of Lincoln’s death. So far, the occupation of the North Carolina capital had been orderly and forbearing; “Discipline was now so good that the men didn’t know themselves,” an Illinois infantryman observed. But their commander, nursing his bombshell of news on the trainride back to Raleigh, was aware that “one single word by me would have laid the city in ashes and turned its whole population homeless upon the country, if not worse.” Accordingly, he ordered all units back to their camps before releasing a bulletin in which he was careful to exonerate the Confederate army from complicity in the assassination. It seemed to work. At least there was no violent reaction within the guarded bivouacs. However: “The army is crazy for vengeance,” a private wrote home, remarking that “if we make another campaign it will be an awful one.” Some even went so far as to hope that Johnston would not surrender; in which case they planned to turn loose with both hands. “God pity this country if he retreats or fights us,” the soldier closed his letter.

  From what he had heard today in the roadside farmhouse Sherman believed there was little chance of that; Johnston, he knew, was eager to surrender, and he intended to give him every chance. He would do so in part because of his soldier’s pride in being generous to a disadvantaged foe who asked for mercy. “The South is broken and ruined and appeals to our pity,” he would tell Rawlins before the month was out. “To ride the people down with persecutions and military exactions would be like slashing away at the crew of a sinking ship.” There was that, and there was also his reaction to the Good Friday assassination, which was quite the opposite of the angered private’s hope that Old Joe would not surrender. Lincoln’s death brought Lincoln himself into sharper focus in Sherman’s memory: particularly as he had come to know him at City Point, three weeks ago. Remembering his concern for avoiding “this last bloody battle,” his eagerness “to get the men composing the Confederate armies back to their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops,” he was resolved, as he set out for the second meeting Tuesday morning, “to manifest real respect for his memory by following after his death that policy which, if living, I felt certain he would have approved.” Grant had removed from the contest the most feared and admired of the rebel armies; now Sherman would remove all the rest by taking Johnston up on his soldier-to-soldier proposal that they “make one job of it,” here and now in the Bennett farmhouse, and settle “the fate of all armies to the Rio Grande.”

  He arrived first and went in alone, his saddlebags over one arm. They contained writing materials, together with something else he mentioned when Johnston entered the room with Breckinridge. “Gentlemen, it occurred to me that perhaps you were not overstocked with liquor, and I procured some medical stores on my way over. Will you join me before we begin work?” Johnston afterwards described his companion’s expression — till now “rather dull and heavy” — as “beatific” when he heard these words. For some days the Kentuckian had been deprived of his customary ration of bourbon and had had to make do with tobacco, which he was chewing vigorously with a steady sidewise thrust of his jaw beneath the outsized mustache of a Sicilian brigand. When the bottle appeared, along with a glass, he tossed his quid into the fireplace, rinsed his mouth with water, and “poured out a tremendous drink, which he swallowed with great satisfaction. With an air of content he stroked his mustache and took a fresh chew of tobacco,” while Sherman returned the bottle to his saddlebags. Thus refreshed, the three generals then got down to business, and Johnston observed that the former Vice President “never shone more brilliantly than he did in the discussions which followed. He seemed to have at his tongue’s end every rule and maxim of international and constitutional law.” Indeed, he cited and discoursed with such effect that Sherman — “confronted by the authority, but not convinced by the eloquence” — pushed his chair back from the table and registered a complaint. “See here, gentlemen,” he protested. “Who is doing this surrendering anyhow? If this thing goes on, you’ll have me sending a letter of apology to Jeff Davis.”

  Certain of his superiors would presently accuse him of having done just about that in the “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” arrived at in the course of the discussion. He wrote it himself, after rejecting a draft of terms prepared that morning in Greensboro by John Reagan — who had also come up from Salisbury but was not admitted to the conference because of his nonmilitary status — as “too general and verbose.” Having said as much, he settled down to composing one of his own, more soldierly and direct, based on Reagan’s and the agreements reached with Johnston yesterday and the silver-tongued Kentuckian today. As he worked he grew increasingly absorbed, until at one point, pausing to arrange his thoughts, he stopped writing, rose from the table, walked over to his saddlebags, and fumbled absent-mindedly for the bottle. Seeing this, Breckinridge removed his quid in anticipation of another treat. But that, alas, was not to be. Still preoccupied, the Ohioan poured himself a couple of fingers of whiskey, recorked the bottle and returned it to the bag, then stood gazing abstractedly out of a window, sipping the drink while he got his thoughts in order; which done, he set the empty glass down, still without so much as a sidelong glance at his companions, and returned to his writing. In a state of near shock, his face taking on what Johnston called “an injured, sorrowful look,” the Kentuckian solaced himself as best he could with a new chew of tobacco. Finally Sherman completed his draft of the terms and passed it across the table, saying: “That’s the best I can do.”

  It was enough, perhaps indeed even more than enough from the rebel point of view. In seven numbered paragraphs, the memorandum provided that the present truce would remain in effect pending approval by superior authorities on both sides; that the troops in all Confederate armies still in existence would be “disbanded and conducted to their several state capitals, there to deposit their arms and public property in the state arsenals”; that federal courts would be reëstablished throughout the land; that the U.S. President would recognize existing state governments as soon as their officials took the required oath of loyalty, and would guarantee to all citizens “their political rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person and property, as defined by the Constitution,” pledging in addition that neither he nor his subordinates would “disturb any of the people by reason of the late war, so long as they live in peace and quiet, abstain from acts of armed hostility, and obey the laws in force at the place of their residence.” Such, in brief, were the terms set forth, and though Sherman knew that they went far beyond those given Lee, and knew too that he had violated his promise “not to complicate any points of civil policy,” he felt more than justified by the assurance, received in return, that all the surviving gray armies — not one of which had been brought to bay, let alone hemmed in, as Lee’s had been at Appomattox — would disband en masse, rather than fragment themselves into guerilla bands which might disrupt and bedevil the nation for years to come. In any case, nothing he had promised would be given until, and unless, it was approved by his superiors. Moreover, even if all he had written was rejected — which, on second thought, seemed possible, and on third thought seemed likely — he still would be the gainer by the provisional arrangements he had made. “In the few days it would take to send the papers to Washington, and receive an answer,” he rather slyly pointed out, “I could finish the railroad up to Raleigh, and be the better prepared for a long chase.”

  Once he and Johnston had signed the copies then drawn up, Sherman shouldered his saddlebags and walked out into the gathering dusk, convinced that he had found a simple, forthright, soldierly solution to the multifarious problems of reconstruction by declaring, in effect, that there would be no reconstruction; at any rate none that would involve the politicians. They might not be willing to go along with the instrument whic
h achieved this — the “Memorandum, or Basis of Agreement” — but he believed he knew a solution to that, too. “If you will get the President to simply indorse the copy and commission me to carry out the terms,” he told Grant in a letter sent north by courier with the document next morning, “I will follow them to the conclusion.”

  Johnston too seemed in good spirits as he walked out of the Bennett house and across the yard with his fellow Confederate, who, on the other hand, had reverted to the “full and heavy” condition that preceded the one drink he had been offered before their host recorked the bottle and stuffed it back into his saddlebag. Hoping to divert him, and perhaps dispel the gloom, the Virginian asked his companion what he thought of Sherman. Breckinridge glowered. “He is a bright man, a man of great force,” he replied. “But, General Johnston” — his voice rose; his face took on a look of intensity — “General Sherman is a hog. Yes, sir, a hog. Did you see him take that drink by himself?” Johnston suggested that the Ohioan had merely been absent-minded, but Breckinridge had been offended past endurance. He could overlook charges of pillage and arson; not this, which he found quite beyond the pale. “No Kentucky gentleman would ever have taken away that bottle,” he said hotly. “He knew we needed it, and needed it badly.”

  There was a five-day wait, both armies remaining in position as agreed, and then on April 24 the staff courier sent to Washington returned, accompanied — much to Sherman’s surprise — by Grant, who had come down the coast to say in person that the proposed “agreement” wouldn’t do; wouldn’t do at all, in fact, from several points of view.

  He himself had seen as much in a single hurried reading when the document first reached him, late in the afternoon three days ago, and got in touch at once with Stanton to have the President call a meeting of the cabinet that night. This was done, and when he read them what Sherman had written, the reaction of the assembled dignitaries was even more vehement than he had expected. Lincoln’s body, on display for the past three days in the East Room of the White House and the Capitol rotunda, had been put aboard a crepe-draped train that morning for the burial journey back to Illinois; now, hard in the wake of that emotional drain — that sense of loss which swept over them as they watched the train fade down the track, the smell of cinders fading too — came this documentary evidence that one of the nation’s top generals wanted to end the war by reproducing the conditions that began it. Not only was there no mention of the Negro in any of the seven numbered paragraphs Grant read, but the provision for home-bound rebel soldiers to deposit their arms in state arsenals sounded suspiciously like a plan for keeping them ready-stacked for re-rebellion once the men who had carried them for the past four years grew rested enough to try their hand again at tearing the fabric of the Union. Hard to take, too, was the suggested exculpation of all Confederates from all blame, which contrasted strongly with the new President’s post-inaugural statement lumping treason with rape and murder as a crime that “must be punished.” Johnson was particularly angered by this attempt to override his bedrock pronouncement on the issue of guilt. Angriest of all, however, was the Secretary of War, who saw Sherman’s so-called “memorandum” as a bid for the “Copperhead nomination for President” three years hence — if, indeed, he was willing to wait that long and was not planning a military coup when he marched north. Speed, “prompted by Stanton, who seemed frantic,” according to Welles, “expressed fears that Sherman, at the head of his victorious legions, had designs upon the government” right now.

  Grant defended his friend as best he could; defended his motives, that is, even though he agreed that what they had led to “could not possibly be approved.” Nor was he displeased with instructions from his superiors to go in person down to Raleigh and inform his out-of-line subordinate that, his plan having been rejected, he was to “notify General Johnston immediately of the termination of the truce, and resume hostilities against his army at the earliest moment.” Their notion was that he should be there in case the red-head attempted defiance of the order, whereas his own purpose was to be on hand to blunt the sting of the rebuke; which was also why he kept the trip a secret, thereby avoiding speculation and gossip about his mission, as well as embarrassment for the man he was going to see. He left at midnight, steaming away from the 6th Street wharf, and two mornings later, after a trainride from the coast, was with Sherman at his headquarters in the North Carolina capital.

  Actually, when told of the disapproval of his plan for bringing peace “from the Potomac to the Rio Grande,” the Ohioan was not as shocked as Grant expected him to be. Just yesterday he had received a bundle of newspapers reflecting anger throughout the North at the shock of Lincoln’s murder, and he sent them along to Johnston with the comment: “I fear much the asassination of the President will give such a bias to the popular mind, which, in connection with the desires of the politicians, may thwart our purpose of recognizing ‘existing local governments.’ ” This last, in fact, was what Grant chose to stress as the principal reason for disapproval of the terms proposed. Making no mention of Johnson’s or Stanton’s fulminations, he produced a copy of the War Department telegram he had received in early March while still in front of Petersburg. “You are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political question,” he had been told. “Such questions the President holds in his own hands; and will submit them to no military conference or conventions.” Sherman read the dispatch through, then remarked that he wished someone had thought to send him a copy at the time. “It would have saved a world of trouble,” he said dryly, and promptly notified Johnston that Washington had called off their agreement. “I am instructed to limit my operations to your immediate command and not to attempt civil negotiations,” he wrote, serving notice that hostilities would resume within forty-eight hours unless the Virginian surrendered before that time, “on the same terms as were given General Lee at Appomattox on April 9, instant, purely and simply.”

  This was plainly an ultimatum; events had taken the course predicted by Davis even as he approved the now repudiated “Basis of Agreement.” Dismayed, Johnston wired Breckinridge for instructions, but when these turned out to be a suggestion that he fall back toward Georgia with his cavalry, light guns, and such infantry as could be mounted on spare horses, he replied that the plan was “impracticable,” and instead got in touch with Sherman to arrange a third meeting and work out the details for surrender in accordance with the scaled-down terms. Two days later — April 26; Grant, still concerned with avoiding any show of interference, did not attend — they met again in the Bennett farmhouse and the matter was soon disposed of, including an issue of ten days’ rations for 25,000 paroled graybacks, offered by Sherman “to facilitate what you and I and all good men desire, the return to their homes of the officers and men composing your army.” Johnston replied that “the enlarged patriotism manifested in these papers reconciles me to what I previously regarded as the misfortune of my life — that of having had you to encounter in the field.” On this high note of mutual esteem they parted to meet no more, though Johnston would die some twenty-six years later from the effects of a severe cold he contracted in New York while standing bareheaded in raw February weather alongside the other pallbearers at Sherman’s funeral. “General, please put on your hat,” a friend urged the eighty-four-year-old Virginian; “you might get sick.” Johnston refused. “If I were in his place,” he said, “and he were standing here in mine, he would not put on his hat.”

  But that would be a full generation later. Just now all the talk was of surrender, at any rate in the Federal camps; for though a Confederate staffer had remarked on “the eagerness of the men to get to their homes” through these past ten days of on-and-off negotiations, another observed that on the day when the actual news came down, “they scarcely had anything to say.” Such dejection was offset by the elation of the bluecoats in their bivouacs around Raleigh. One wrote home of how the birds woke him that morning with their singing — four years and two weeks, to the day, since the
first shot was fired in Charleston harbor. “I never heard them sing so sweetly, and never saw them flit about so merrily,” he declared, adding that “the green groves in which we were camped had a peculiar beauty and freshness, and as the sun rose above the steeples, it seemed as if we could float right up with it.”

  Presently there was other news, to which reactions also varied. On that same April 26, about midway between Washington and Richmond, Lincoln’s assassin, run to earth at last, was shot and killed by a platoon of New York cavalry. After a week spent hiding in the woods and swamps of southeast Maryland, suffering all the while from pain in the leg he had broken in his leap from the box at Ford’s, Booth and an associate succeeded in crossing the Potomac near Port Tobacco on April 22, then two days later made it over the Rappahannock, some twenty miles below Fredericksburg, only to be overtaken the following night on a farm three miles from the river. Surrounded by their pursuers they took refuge in a tobacco shed, and though his companion surrendered when ordered out (and was carried back to the capital next day to stand trial along with seven other alleged conspirators, including one who had made the knife attack on Seward and another who had been slated to dispose of the Vice President but had lacked the nerve to try) Booth himself refused to emerge, even after the tinder-dry structure was set afire. The troopers could see him in there, a crippled figure with a crutch and a carbine, silhouetted against the flames. Then one fired and he fell, dropped by a bullet that passed through his neck, “perforating both sides of the collar.” He was still breathing when they dragged him out of the burning shed and onto the porch of a nearby house, but he was paralyzed below the point where his spinal cord had been struck. Two weeks short of his twenty-seventh birthday, he was so much the worse for wear — and the loss of his mustache, which he had shaved off the week before — that he scarcely resembled the darkly handsome matinee idol he had been before his ordeal of the past eleven days. “I thought I did for the best,” he managed to say. Just at sunup he asked to have his hands lifted so he could see them, and when this was done he stared at them in despair. “Useless, useless,” he muttered. Then he died.