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it, his capitulation had been revoked, and another conference became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.
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