Forty-Six Years in the Army by John McAllister Schofield (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📕

To understand this, it must be remembered that Johnston's army was not surrounded, and its surrender could not have been compelled. Unless the terms of capitulation could be made such as the troops themselves would be willing to accept, they would, it was apprehended, break up into guerrilla bands of greater or less strength and carry on the war in that way indefinitely. So strongly was I impressed at the time with General Johnston's apprehension, that I was often thereafter haunted in my dreams with the difficulties I was actually encountering in the prosecution of military operations against those remnants of the Confederate armies, in marshy and mountainous countries, through summer heats and winter storms. It was several years after the war that I became fully satisfied, at night, that it was really over.

At the time of Sherman's first interview with Johnston I hinted that I would like to accompany him; but he desired me to remain in immediate command, as I was next in rank, and we could not tell what might happen. He took some others with him, but I believe had no one present in the room to assist him in his discussion with Johnston and Breckinridge. At his last interview I accompanied him, by his special request. On meeting at Bennett's House, after the usual salutations General Sherman and Johnston retired to the conference room, and were there a long time with closed doors. At length I was summoned to their presence, and informed in substance that they were unable to arrange the terms of capitulation to their satisfaction. They seemed discouraged at the failure of the arrangement to which they had attached so much importance, apprehensive that the terms of Grant and Lee, pure and simple, could not be executed, and that if modified at all, they would meet with a second disapproval. I listened to their statements of the difficulties they had encountered, and then stated how I thought they could all be arranged. General Johnston replied, in substance, "I think General Schofield can fix it"; and General Sherman intimated to me to write, pen and paper being on the table where I was sitting, while the two great antagonists were nervously pacing the floor. I at once wrote the "military convention" of April 26, handed it to General Sherman, and he, after reading it, to General Johnston. Having explained that I, as department commander, after General Sherman was gone, could do all that might be necessary to remove the difficulties which seemed to them so serious, the terms as written by me were agreed to, as General Sherman says, "without hesitation," and General Johnston, "without difficulty," and after being copied without alteration were signed by the two commanders. Johnston's words, on handing the paper back to Sherman, were: "I believe that is the best we can do." It was in pursuance of this understanding that I made with General Johnston the "supplemental terms," and gave his disbanded men the two hundred and fifty thousand rations, with wagons to haul them, to prevent the troops from robbing their own people, for which, in his "Narrative," he very properly credits General Sherman.

But I also gave to the troops from each State arms enough to arm a guard to preserve order and protect citizens en route, the arms so used to be turned over to United States officers after the troops got home. This was one of the things most bitterly condemned in Sherman's first agreement. Yet not a word was said when I did it! It would be difficult for a soldier to imagine anything more monstrous than the suggestion that he could not trust the officers and men whom he had been fighting four years to go home and turn in their arms after they had voluntarily surrendered and given their parole of honor to do so. Yet there seem to be even in high places some men who have no conception of the sense of honor which exists among brave men.

When that second "convention" was handed to General Grant the same evening, he said that the only change he would have made would have been to write General Sherman's name before General Johnston's. So would I if I had thought about it; but I presume an unconscious feeling of courtesy toward a fallen foe dictated the order in which their names were written.

It seems to me a little singular that neither General Sherman nor General Johnston thought the circumstances above referred to worthy of being preserved in memory, and I am not quite willing that General Breckinridge shall carry off all the honor of assisting the great commanders to make "memoranda" and "military conventions" at "Bennett's House." But Sherman and Johnston were writing their own defense, and it was natural that they should omit matter not pertaining thereto. Besides, I was General Sherman's subordinate, and owed him all the help I could give in every way. He may have regarded my services, and perhaps justly, as little more than clerical, after it was all over, even if he thought of the matter at all.( 2)

The Confederate troops were promptly furnished with all needed supplies of food and transportation and sent in comfort to their homes, freed from the necessity of taxing the slender resources of the impoverished people on their routes. The surplus animals and wagons remaining with the army were given to the people of North Carolina in large numbers, and they were encouraged at once to resume their industrial pursuits. In the meantime, all who were in want were furnished with food.

It may not be possible to judge how wise or unwise Sherman's first "memorandum" might have proved if it had been ratified. It is always difficult to tell how things that have not been tried would have worked if they had been. We now know only this much—that the imagination of man could hardly picture worse results than those wrought out by the plan that was finally adopted—namely, to destroy everything that existed in the way of government, and then build from the bottom on the foundation of ignorance and rascality.

The de facto State governments existing at the time of the surrender would have been of infinite service in restoring order and material prosperity, if they had been recognized by the military authority of the United States and kept under military control similar to that exercised by the district commissioners under the "reconstruction acts." And such recognition would in no manner have interfered with any action Congress might have thought it wise to take looking to the organization of permanent governments and the admission of senators and representatives in Congress. After two years of "reconstruction" under President Johnson's "policy," the Southern State governments were no better than those he had destroyed. Then Congress took the matter in hand, and after years of labor brought forth State governments far worse than either of those that had been torn down.

Party ambition on the one hand, and timidity on the other, were the parents of these great follies. The presidential succession was the mainspring of the first movement and of the opposition thereto, while that and party majority in Congress were the motives of the later "reconstruction." Both ingloriously failed, as they deserved to do. How much stronger the Republican party would have been if it had relied upon the loyal States which had sustained it through the war, instead of timidly distrusting them and trying to bolster itself up by the aid of the negro and "carpet-bag" governments in the South!

Political reconstruction ought not to have been thought of at the close of the war. What was then needed was local civil government under such military control as might be necessary, restoration of order, industry, and material prosperity, leading to a gradual reorganization of the society which had been completely broken up by the war. After this had been done, and Congress had decided upon the conditions of full restoration, it would have been time enough to inaugurate political reconstruction. This was clear enough at the time to those who had studied the subject and knew by personal observation the real condition and feeling of the Southern people. But the leading politicians of either party do not appear to have had the wisdom and moral courage to advocate such a policy. Both were impatient to see their party represented on the floors of Congress by members from the South.

It was something of the kind above suggested which was aimed at by Generals Sherman and Johnston, and which was deemed wise by the leading generals both North and South. There were several conditions in the memorandum that were clearly inadmissible, though easy of correction without changing the essential features of the document. This was to be expected from a hasty effort to solve a great political problem by a man without political education or experience. Sherman's failure was not unlike that of great politicians who undertake to command armies. Their general ideas may be very good, but they have no knowledge of details, and hence make mistakes resulting in failure.

As now seen, projected upon the dark background of the political history of the Southern States during the twelve years from 1865 to 1877, and compared with the plans of political doctrinaires in 1865, under the light of experience and reason, the Sherman-Johnston memorandum and Sherman's letters of that period seem self-luminous with political wisdom. Sherman needed only the aid of competent military advisers in whom he had confidence to have made him one of the greatest generals of any age, and he would have needed only the aid of competent political advisers to have made him a great statesman. But he looked almost with contempt upon a "staff," and would doubtless have thought little better of a "cabinet."

The efforts of political leaders to establish an absolutely impossible popular government in the South seem to show the necessity of general political education, no less than the military blunders of the war show the necessity of general military education. If our schools would drop from their course of studies some of the comparatively unimportant "ologies," and substitute the qualifications for good citizenship, the change would be greatly for the better.

General Sherman was one of those rare actors in historic events who require no eulogy. All his important acts were so unqualifiedly his own, and so emphatically speak for themselves, that it is only necessary to judge of the quality and merits of those acts. There is no question of division of honors between him and any other respecting any of his important operations. It is not meant by this that he was disdainful of the advice or opinions of others. On the contrary, although naturally impulsive and self-reliant, his acquired habit was to study carefully and consult freely with his subordinate commanders respecting all important movements. Yet discussion resulted almost if not quite invariably in the adoption of his own original plans. As to details, he was wont to leave them very much to his subordinates, and, I think, did not estimate very accurately the possibilities or probabilities of the accomplishment of the details necessary to the success of his general plans. It is certainly not too much to say that his expectations in this regard were very frequently unrealized. But of this it must be observed that the character of the theater of war made the handling of a large army extremely difficult, precision of movement impossible, and any accurate estimate of the time in which projected operations could be accomplished by no means easy. Criticism of General Sherman, or of his subordinates, based upon military experience in other countries or upon the success of his able antagonist General