ted 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.

AUTHORSHIP OF THE APPROVED TERMS OF SURRENDER

It seems to me a little si