Citizen Sherman by Michael Fellman

Author:Michael Fellman [Fellman, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82769-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

On April 17, 1865, and the following day, William T. Sherman sat down convivially with his longtime Confederate opponent, Joseph Johnston, at the Bennett farm in the North Carolina hills near Durham, and drafted a peace treaty that would have traded Southern military surrender for a blanket amnesty, both military and civil. At the surrender of the symbolic sword, Sherman welcomed the Confederacy back into the Union. Three days later his treaty would be rejected out of hand in Washington, amid a thunderous clamor, which plunged Sherman into the midst of another huge public storm when he should have been enjoying his days of triumph.

The most extraordinary element in this highly charged episode was the apparent reversal, even revolution of character, whereby the harshest Union scourger of the South became with one pen stroke Sherman the forgiver, the maker of the softest and kindest peace. In fact this act was no internal revolution, but an expression of elements of Sherman’s complex mentality elicited by a new and different issue from war making—that of what ought to be the composition of postwar American society. In the confused endgame of the Civil War, Sherman took enormous latitude—not for the first time—in attempting to impose his own political opinions on war and peace, what he believed ought to be the basic values and structures of American society. Strange things came to pass from Sherman’s bold impatience to reconstitute the nation.

Grant’s peace treaty at Appomattox with Robert E. Lee, which he had dictated eight days before Sherman met with Johnston, provided a clear model for what ought to have been the process of surrender of other Confederate armies. Grant had Lee’s men give up their arms, except for the pistols of the officers, swear an oath not to take up arms against the United States, and return home peacefully, the officers with their horses and personal baggage. In the treaty Grant remained silent on all other issues, purposefully avoiding the introduction of political questions; Lee surrendered to a sovereign United States, which would then fix whatever terms for reconstruction they saw fit, unencumbered by anything Grant had offered in the treaty. This was not a draconian surrender such as many in the North were urging. Grant took great pains to write with a generous rather than a vengeful tone. Neither, however, was it a conditional peace. Though Grant refused Lee’s proffered sword, Lee had capitulated.

On April 12, Sherman received news of Lee’s surrender with great joy. In reply to Grant’s telegram announcing the peace and including its terms, which had taken two days to arrive at his command in North Carolina, Sherman wired back, “I hardly know how to express my feelings, but you can imagine them. The terms you have given Lee are magnanimous and liberal. Should Johnston follow Lee’s example [and surrender unconditionally], I shall of course grant the same.” Sherman also wired Edwin Stanton to assure him that when his turn came, “I will accept the same terms as General Grant gave Lee and be careful not to complicate any points of civil policy.

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