tary 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, Presid