tinuous operations
of all the troops that could be brought into the field regardless of
season and weather were necessary to a speedy termination of the war."
He had seen, as he expressed it in his own terse, quaint language, that
"the armies of the East and the West had been acting independently and
without concert, like a balky team, no two of them ever pulling
together." Under his direction the forces of the Union, however
distant from each other, were brought into harmonious co-operation and
with the happiest results. The discipline of the Union army was never
so fine, its vigor was never so great, its spirit was never so high, as
at the close of that terrible campaign which under Grant's command in
the East began at the Wilderness and ended with Lee's surrender, and
which under Sherman's command in the West began with the march towards
Atlanta, and closed with the complete conquest of Georgia and the
Carolinas.

A grave moral responsibility rests upon those who continue a contest
of arms after it is made clear that there is no longer a possibility of
success. However far the laws of war may justify a belligerent in
deceiving an enemy, the laws of honorable and humane dealing are
violated with one's own partisans when a brave and confiding soldiery
are led into a fight known by their commanders to be hopeless. Early
in January, 1865, Jefferson Davis indicated the desire of the
Confederate authorities to negotiate with the National Government for
the arrangement of the terms of peace, and as a result the famous
conference was held at Fortress Monroe. This step was taken by Mr.
Davis because he saw that further effort on the part of the
Confederates must be utterly futile. When he failed at this conference
to secure any recognition of his government, he spitefully turned to
the prolongation of the struggle. Every life destroyed in the conflict
thereafter was needless slaughter, and the blood of the victims cries
out against the Confederate Government for compelling the sacrifice.

When at last through sheer exhaustion the Confederate Armies ceased
resistance and surrendered, they did so on precisely the same terms
that had been offered by the Government of the Union three months
before. In the _interim_ the Confederate leaders had been deluding
their people with the pretense that the "Lincoln Government" had
outraged the South in refusing to recognize Confederate Nationality
even long enough to treat with it