lished
with General Johnston the terms on which the remaining Confederate
forces should be disbanded. This "Memorandum or basis of agreement,"[60]
then entered into by him, stipulated for "the recognition by the
executive of the United States, of the several state governments, on
their officers and legislatures taking the oaths prescribed by the
Constitution of the United States;" also that the inhabitants of the
Southern States should "be guaranteed, so far as the executive can,
their political rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person
and property;" also that the government would not "disturb any of the
people by reason of the late war," if they should dwell quiet for the
future; and, in short, that there should be "a general amnesty," so far
as it was within the power of the executive of the United States to
grant it, upon the return of the South to a condition of peace.

No sooner were these engagements reported in Washington than they were
repudiated. However they might have accorded with, or might have
transcended, the sentiments of him who had been president only a few
days before, they by no means accorded with the views of Andrew Johnson,
who was president at that time, and still less with the views of the
secretary of war, who well represented the vengeful element of the
country. Accordingly Mr. Stanton at once annulled them by an order,
which he followed up by a bulletin containing ten reasons in support of
the order. This document was immediately published in the newspapers,
and was so vituperative and insulting towards Sherman[61] that the
general, who naturally did not feel himself a fitting object for
insolence at this season of his fresh military triumphs, soon afterward
showed his resentment; at the grand parade of his army, in Washington,
he conspicuously declined, in the presence of the President and the
notabilities of the land, to shake the hand which Secretary Stanton did
not hesitate then and there to extend to him,--for Stanton had that
peculiar and unusual form of meanness which endeavors to force a
civility after an insult. But however General Sherman might feel about
it, his capitulation had been revoked, and another conference became
necessary between the two generals, which was followed a little later by
still another between Generals Schofield and Johnston. At these meetings
the terms which had been established between Generals Grant and Lee were
substantially repeated, and b