at Fortress Monroe returning from Savannah, Sherman
received an invitation from Halleck to come to Richmond and be his
guest. This he indignantly refused, and informed Halleck, furthermore,
that he had seen his order. He also stated that he was coming up to
take command of his troops, and as he marched through it would probably
be as well for Halleck not to show himself, because he (Sherman) would
not be responsible for what some rash person might do through
indignation for the treatment he had received. Very soon after that,
Sherman received orders from me to proceed to Washington City, and to go
into camp on the south side of the city pending the mustering-out of the
troops.

There was no incident worth noting in the march northward from
Goldsboro, to Richmond, or in that from Richmond to Washington City.
The army, however, commanded by Sherman, which had been engaged in all
the battles of the West and had marched from the Mississippi through the
Southern States to the sea, from there to Goldsboro, and thence to
Washington City, had passed over many of the battle-fields of the Army
of the Potomac, thus having seen, to a greater extent than any other
body of troops, the entire theatre of the four years' war for the
preservation of the Union.

The march of Sherman's army from Atlanta to the sea and north to
Goldsboro, while it was not accompanied with the danger that was
anticipated, yet was magnificent in its results, and equally magnificent
in the way it was conducted. It had an important bearing, in various
ways, upon the great object we had in view, that of closing the war.
All the States east of the Mississippi River up to the State of Georgia,
had felt the hardships of the war. Georgia, and South Carolina, and
almost all of North Carolina, up to this time, had been exempt from
invasion by the Northern armies, except upon their immediate sea coasts.
Their newspapers had given such an account of Confederate success, that
the people who remained at home had been convinced that the Yankees had
been whipped from first to last, and driven from pillar to post, and
that now they could hardly be holding out for any other purpose than to
find a way out of the war with honor to themselves.

Even during this march of Sherman's the newspapers in his front were
proclaiming daily that his army was nothing better than a mob of men who
were frightened out of their wits and hastening, panic-stricken, to try
to get under the