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the orders in his presence, and then he said: "If I find you on any of the boats, I will have you shot." I then brought to his mind who I was, and what General Grant had told me. He said: "Oh, yes, you are going along. I want you to go with me on the Forest Queen. That boat will be my headquarters." He named the hour of departure, and enjoined me to be promptly on hand at that time.

Thus it was that my intimate acquaintance with General Sherman and his surroundings began, and subsequent friendships grew during the war and maintained to this time. Who of those now living who were messmates on the steamboat Forest Queen during that expedition do not have pleasant recollections of the associations? There are not many of the messmates who were on the Forest Queen in December, 1862, now living. Major Daniel Chase, of the Thirteenth U. S. Infantry, was among the number who gave life to our social circle by cracking the jokes of soldier life on the frontier. He was an elderly man, probably the oldest on board of the Forest Queen. The Major did more to destroy my confidence in the success of premonitions in time of war than any other human being, or all things else combined. On the morning of the 27th of December, 1862, as the boat was approaching the landing at Chickasaw Bayou, the Major became suddenly depressed and despondent, without seeming cause. He took me aside and confided to me the cause. He had a premonition that he would likely be killed in the fight which was expected to take place on our landing. I was asked to draw up a will for him to sign. I tried to assure him that premonitions were only jacko'-lanterns, and should not be considered seriously. My arguments were useless, and answered by him with the statement that he was the oldest officer in the Thirteenth Infantry, and that he intended to lead his command in the thickest of the fight. I drew up the wlll for him, in accordance with his directions. When it was signed, sealed, witnessed and delivered, there was a smile of satisfaction all over his countenance. Whether because of its legal accuracy, its beautiful penmanship, or because he had disposed of the lifetime earnings of a bachelor, I do not know. Major Chase did go into the thickest of the fight, acquitted himself well, did not turn up on the list of the killed, wounded and missing, but lived many years after the war, and died a richer man, I hope, than he was at the time of our landing at Chickasaw Bayou. I have, among my papers, the will referred to. I was named in it as one of the administrators, and I am sure the settlement of the estate never gave me any trouble.

From the time of the landing of our troops, below Vicksburg, there never was a doubt but what we would occupy that city. Looking to that occupation, a few officers, whose headquarters were in my neighborhood, commenced saving small stores, that we might have a little reunion. We could get small stores, but it was mighty hard to save them-they were so enticing. The time came for our looked-for reunion, and our accumulated stock of small stores consisted of two baskets of champagne wine, plenty of crackers, some canteens of whisky, a box or two of cigars, and a few more canteens of whisky. I don't think we would have had the whisky, if the water had been good. The opening speech of the reunion was made by Commodore Wash Graham,

of the transport fleet. A reasonably good one it was, under the circumstances. The peroration, which was intended as a piece of pathos, was laughed at as a piece of foolishness.

It was in these words: "Boys, when we get to be old men, seventy-five or eighty years old, we will be meeting each other, and forgetting the names of those we have not recently met. We will say, in the shrill voice of age, What ever became of that fellow-Oh, you know his name-Oh, that fellow who used to be about with us, and kept the post-office? The name will be gone, but the fellow, with all his fun and frolic, will be remembered." I have lived long enough to see how his theory of the meeting of old army companions works. The meetings of that comrade band are almost ended. There are but two or three now living. Graham himself was among the first to camp on the other side.

You and General W. E. Strong will well remember how we entertained a portion of the staff of General Banks, when that officer visited General Grant at Vicksburg; how that matchless soldier and genial comrade, McPherson, then in command of that city, laid aside the emblems of command and the pomp and circumstance of war, to become a troubadour under the windows of the fair ladies of that war-stricken city. What higher compliment could have been paid to the people of the city? We were young then, and the melody of our voices made the listeners wondrous kind. What a trio of vocal musicians you and I and Strong would be now! Our voices would grate so harshly on the midnight air as that old soldiers would be reminded of the approach of a wagon train.

When the old army swung away from Atlanta, bidding good-bye to me, and severing all its connections with home, family and friends, I had a sorrow that it was not my lot to have gone with it; but when I met its commander in Ossabaw Sound, and a day later I was again with the army at King's Bridge. the sorrow was gone. At daylight on the second morning after the fall of Fort McAllister, General Sherman called to me from the Fort to tell me how anxious he was that the little steamboat Island City, on which I had the mail, should get through the obstructions of the Ogeeche river, below Fort McAllister, and reach King's Bridge, where the Army was, so as to deliver the mail to the soldiers before the dusk of that day. He said: "I'll go over to the rice mill, and signal all over the army that you are here with the mail, and they will all be on the lookout for you." He did signal. The army did look out for the mailboat, and before the going down of the sun of that day the connection between the army, home, family and friends, had been made. What a bewildering reception that was. All the boys brought out their canteens to show them to me, as if they were a novelty. Those quiet fellows like Poe, of the engineers; Beckwith, of the commissariat, and Moore, of the medical department, laughed and danced to think that old times had come again. You boys of the Army of the Tennessee left me again at Savannah, and took up your march through the Carolinas. But General Sherman made for me, before leaving, the closest military calculation of the campaign. He told me about how long to remain in Savannah. then to go to Charleston. He thought it would be evacuated by the time I got there. I

got there the morning after the evacuation, on the tug Grant, and breakfasted with General Schimmelpfening, who was in command. He told me this story at table about President Lincoln: Schimmelpfening was Colonel of a Pennsylvania Regiment, and was looking for a promotion to the rank of Brigadier-General. He called in person on President Lincoln, to ask for the promotion. Mr. Lincoln could give him no assurance of promotion, but told him that he thought there was a good deal in the name, and said: "Suppose you write that name down, and let me put it in my drawer; I think it will be a good thing to keep there." Sure enough, shortly after, Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, brought over to Mr. Lincoln the names of some German offcers he wanted commissioned as Brigadier-Generals. The reasons given for commissioning the German officer was that it was necessary to have such officers to promote volunteering from that nationality. "If that is it,” said Mr. Lincoln, pulling out his drawer, "I have a name here that I think will suit. It is distinctively German, and can not be misunderstood." Schimmelpfening was promoted, made a good officer, and was a patriotic man. But to General Sherman's close calculation, I was to stay at Charleston about so many days. and then to go to Morehead City, N. C., and from thence to Newberne. Kingston and Goldsboro, where he thought I would meet the army. The morning after the battle of Bentonville, or Averysboro, the mail was delivered to the troops upon a calculation made by General Sherman before he left Savannah.

The last order given me by General Sherman, in reference to the army mails, was by telegraph from Goldsboro to Newberne, N. C. I give it in full, to show the interest and good judgment he displayed in that branch of the service.

COLONEL MARKLAND:

“Goldsboro, April, 1864.

I have thought over mail matters. Give publicity that all mail matter for Sherman's army should come to Old Point, via Baltimore. Have an agent there to see that all bags are sent to Roanoke Island and Newberne, there to be distributed. Should I move up the Roanoke, it will be easy enough to deflect the mails after I get off. The probabilities are now that we will continue in connection with the coast at some point of North Carolina. All these campaign mails for Charleston and Savannah might also come this way, leaving Adams Express to carry the mail matter by ocean. The quicker you get a regular daily or tri-weekly mail through, the less bulky will the mails prove, and the work of reading letters, and answering, be better distributed. I will instruct General Easton to send an Inspector hence, to Old Point, to inspect and improve the route hence to Old Point, with a view to make it regular and prompt-mail matters and carriers to have preference of carriage, and all citizens or goods debarred the privilege. If you have any suggestions, make them

now.

W. T. SHERMAN,
Major General.”

He not only looked to the mails for those about him, but for his scattered commands. To the Army of the Tennessee is due the credit for demonstrat

ing that mails could be accurately distributed in transitu, under the most adverse circumstances, and to that Army, as much as to any other agency, is due the credit of originating the railway mail service in the United States. The Hon. Montgomery Blair, and the Hon. John A. Kasson, were the fast friends of the army mail service in the Postoffice Department. General Grant first made it a distinctive feature of army service, and thereafter it was given a generous countenance by every one within the lines of the army. When the war was over, civilians were quick to claim a credit for originating a mail service which they did not deserve.

In the latter part of March, 1865, when I was on my way from Goldsboro, N. C., to the headquarters of General Grant, at City Point, on business connected with the postal service of the army, I was the guest, for a few days, at the quarters of Captain A. S. Kimball, then the Depot Quartermaster at Newberne, N. C., and now a Quartermaster in the U. S. Army. While at Captain Kimball's quarters, General Sherman returned from his visit to Mr. Lincoln, at Hampton Roads, in company with his brother, the Hon. John Sherman, and Mr. Edwin Stanton, the son of the Secretary of War. General Sherman and Mr. Stanton were the guests of Captain Kimball during their stay of one day at Newberne, before going to the front at Goldsboro.

At the breakfast table were seated General Sherman, Mr. Stanton, Captain Kimball and wife, and Mrs. Markland, my wife, and myself. During the breakfast I entered into conversation with General Sherman about his visit to President Lincoln, at Hampton Roads, and in the conversation, I suggested that we were approaching the end of the war, and that the final surrender might be made to him as the commander of the Army of the Tennessee. I asked what terms he, General Sherman, would give, in the event that a surrender should be offered to him. General Sherman replied by naming substantially the terms he subsequently gave to General Joseph E. Johnston, of the Confederate Army.

General Sherman did not say that President Lincoln suggested the terms. But I asked in the same connection, and immediately after General Sherman had named the terms, "What will be done with President Davis and his Cabinet?" General Sherman replied: “And Mr. Lincoln says, we will leave the door open, and let them go. We don't want to be bothered with them in geting the Government to running smoothly."

I felt then that General Sherman had really given me the terms suggested by Mr. Lincoln to him. General Sherman was then fresh from the presence of Mr. Lincoln, with whom he had, undoubtedly, close confidential conversations, and, of necessity, a part of the conversations must have turned on a probable early surrender.

Richmond had not then fallen, and General Lee had not surrendered. General Sherman could not have dreamed that Mr. Lincoln would not be living when he gave the terms to General Johnston. The history of General Sherman as a subordinate officer, forbid the idea that he would act contrary to the views of his superior officer, with whom he had been so recently in consultation, on so grave a matter as granting terms of surrender to an opposing army. If it be asked why I have not heretofore made this conversation public,

my answer is, that during the war my relations to the officers of the army were such as that I heard very many things concerning military movements, and army operations, which I was not expected to make public, at the time, or after. Though others were at the table at the time of this conversation, it was really a private conversation between General Sherman and myself, while the other members of the company were conversing on different subjects. I regarded the conversation as one of the highest confidence and observed it as such. When the news of the surrender of General Johnston, and the terms given to him by General Sherman, reached Washington City, where I then was, Mr. Lincoln had been assassinated, and the excitement and alarm, consequent on his assassination, were intense. It would not only have been idle, but the extreme of folly for me to have publicly repeated the conversation then. The people of the North were frenzied, and would not have listened to anything short of an abrogation of the terms, even though General Grant had himself known that the terms would have been satisfactory to President Lincoln.

When General Sherman reached Washington City, or rather the south bank of the Potomac, with his army, and established his camp and headquarters there, I, in company with my wife and General O. O. Howard, went over to the headquarters to make a social call on General Sherman and his staff officers. My real object in making that call was to get General Sherinan's permission to make the conversation we had had at the breakfast table in Newberne, N. C., public. General Sherman was in no mood to take up the subject, and very clearly intimated to me, that I should be silent concerning it. I have on more than one occasion since, referred to it when in conversation with General Sherman, without getting his sanction to make it public. I know that the conversation, as stated, was had with me in the early morning of the 31st of March, 1865. We breakfasted by candlelight. I have always had the conviction that the terms offered by General Sherman to General Johnston were to be offered with the knowledge and consent of President Lincoln, if not by his direct orders. If General Sherman did not choose to defend his action in the matter by referring to conversations, verbal orders, or suggestions made by President Lincoln, there can be no good reason why I may not refer to the above mentioned conversation. It is due to the truth of history that I should, and I do it without further consultation with General Sherman, and possibly at the risk of his displeasure.

In conclusion, I may properly call your attention to a popular fallacy of war times-that is, that there was an excess of drinking of spirituous liquors, and consequent drunkenness, in the army. I had as good an opportunity to know and judge of this matter as any man who was in or out of the lines of the army, and you will bear me witness when I say that there was less drunkenness among the officers and men of the army than could have been found in the same number of men in any well-regulated community outside of the army. The stories of commanding officers being drunk were untrue. I was within the lines of all the armies during the war, and in a position to see as much of the personal habits of the commanding officers as any other man,

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