Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete
J. M. SCHOFIELD, Secretary of War.
By command of the General of the Army.
E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General.
On the same day I issued my General Orders No. 12, assuming command
and naming all the heads of staff departments and bureaus as
members of my staff, adding to my then three aides, Colonels McCoy,
Dayton, and Audenried, the names of Colonels Comstock, Horace
Porter, and Dent, agreeing with President Grant that the two latter
could remain with him till I should need their personal services or
ask their resignations.
I was soon made aware that the heads of several of the staff corps
were restive under this new order of things, for by long usage they
had grown to believe themselves not officers of the army in a
technical sense, but a part of the War Department, the civil branch
of the Government which connects the army with the President and
Congress.
In a short time General John A. Rawlins, General Grant's former
chief of staff, was nominated and confirmed as Secretary of War;
and soon appeared this order:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,
ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE,
WASHINGTON, March 27, 1869.
General Orders No. 28:
The following orders received for the War Department are published
for the government of all concerned:
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON CITY, March 26, 1869.
By direction of the President, the order of the Secretary of War,
dated War Department, March 5, 1869, and published in General
Orders No. 11, headquarters of the army, Adjutant-General's Office,
dated March 8, 1869, except so much as directs General W. T.
Sherman to assume command of the Army of the United States, is
hereby rescinded.
All official business which by law or regulations requires the
action of the President or Secretary of War will be submitted by
the chiefs of staff corps, departments, and bureaus to the
Secretary of War.
All orders and instructions relating to military operations issued
by the President or Secretary of War will be issued through the
General of the Army.
JOHN A. RAWLINS, Secretary of War.
By command of General SHERMAN:
E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General.
Thus we were thrown back on the old method in having a double--if
not a treble-headed machine. Each head of a bureau in daily
consultation with the Secretary of War, and the general to command
without an adjutant, quartermaster, commissary, or any staff except
his own aides, often reading in the newspapers of military events
and orders before he could be consulted or informed. This was the
very reverse of what General Grant, after four years' experience in
Washington as general-in-chief, seemed to want, different from what
he had explained to me in Chicago, and totally different from the
demand he had made on Secretary of War Stanton in his complete
letter of January 29, 1866. I went to him to know the cause: He
said he had been informed by members of Congress that his action,
as defined by his order of March 5th, was regarded as a violation
of laws making provision for the bureaus of the War Department;
that he had repealed his own orders, but not mine, and that he had
no doubt that General Rawlins and I could draw the line of
separation satisfactorily to us both. General Rawlins was very
conscientious, but a very sick man when appointed Secretary of War.
Several times he made orders through the adjutant-general to
individuals of the army without notifying me, but always when his
attention was called to it he apologized, and repeatedly said to me
that he understood from his experience on General Grant's staff how
almost insulting it was for orders to go to individuals of a
regiment, brigade, division, or an army of any kind without the
commanding officer being consulted or even advised. This habit is
more common at Washington than any place on earth, unless it be in
London, where nearly the same condition of facts exists. Members
of Congress daily appeal to the Secretary of War for the discharge
of some soldier on the application of a mother, or some young
officer has to be dry-nursed, withdrawn from his company on the
plains to be stationed near home. The Secretary of War, sometimes
moved by private reasons, or more likely to oblige the member of
Congress, grants the order, of which the commanding general knows
nothing till he reads it in the newspapers. Also, an Indian tribe,
goaded by the pressure of white neighbors, breaks out in revolt.
The general-in-chief must reenforce the local garrisons not only
with men, but horses, wagons, ammunition, and food. All the
necessary information is in the staff bureaus in Washington, but
the general has no right to call for it, and generally finds it
more practicable to ask by telegraph of the distant division or
department commanders for the information before making the formal
orders. The general in actual command of the army should have a
full staff, subject to his own command. If not, he cannot be held
responsible for results.
General Rawlins sank away visibly, rapidly, and died in Washington,
September 6,1869, and I was appointed to perform the duties of his
office till a successor could be selected. I realized how much
easier and better it was to have both offices conjoined.
The army then had one constitutional commander-in-chief of both
army and navy, and one actual commanding general, bringing all
parts into real harmony. An army to be useful must be a unit, and
out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but
doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an
inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads. Our
political system and methods, however, demanded a separate
Secretary of War, and in October President Grant asked me to scan
the list of the volunteer generals of good record who had served in
the civil war, preferably from the "West." I did so, and submitted
to him in writing the names of W. W. Belknap, of Iowa; G. M.
Dodge, the Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad; and Lucius
Fairchild, of Madison, Wisconsin. I also named General John W.
Sprague, then employed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in
Washington Territory. General Grant knew them all personally, and
said if General Dodge were not connected with the Union Pacific
Railroad, with which the Secretary of War must necessarily have
large transactions, he would choose him, but as the case stood, and
remembering the very excellent speech made by General Belknap at
the Chicago reunion of December, 1868, he authorized me to
communicate with him to ascertain if he were willing to come to
Washington as Secretary of War. General Belknap was then the
collector of internal revenue at Keokuk, Iowa. I telegraphed him
and received a prompt and favorable answer. His name was sent to
the Senate, promptly confirmed, and he entered on his duties
October 25,1869. General Belknap surely had at that date as fair a
fame as any officer of volunteers of my personal acquaintance. He
took up the business where it was left off, and gradually fell into
the current which led to the command of the army itself as of the
legal and financial matters which properly pertain to the War
Department. Orders granting leaves of absence to officers,
transfers, discharges of soldiers for favor, and all the old
abuses, which had embittered the life of General Scott in the days
of Secretaries of War Marcy and Davis, were renewed. I called his
attention to these facts, but without sensible effect. My office
was under his in the old War Department, and one day I sent my
aide-de-camp, Colonel Audenried, up to him with some message, and
when he returned red as a beet, very much agitated, he asked me as
a personal favor never again to send him to General Belknap. I
inquired his reason, and he explained that he had been treated with
a rudeness and discourtesy he had never seen displayed by any
officer to a soldier. Colonel Audenried was one of the most
polished gentlemen in the army, noted for his personal bearing and
deportment, and I had some trouble to impress on him the patience
necessary for the occasion, but I promised on future occasions to
send some other or go myself. Things went on from bad to worse,
till in 1870 I received from Mr. Hugh Campbell, of St. Louis, a
personal friend and an honorable gentleman, a telegraphic message
complaining that I had removed from his position Mr. Ward, post
trader at Fort Laramie, with only a month in which to dispose of
his large stock of goods, to make room for his successor.
It so happened that we of the Indian Peace Commission had been much
indebted to this same trader, Ward, for advances of flour, sugar,
and coffee, to provide for the Crow Indians, who had come down from
their reservation on the Yellowstone to meet us in 1868, before our
own supplies had been received. For a time I could not-comprehend
the nature of Mr. Campbell's complaint, so I telegraphed to the
department commander, General C. C. Augur, at Omaha, to know if any
such occurrence had happened, and the reasons therefor. I received
a prompt answer that it was substantially true, and had been
ordered by The Secretary of War. It so happened that during
General Grant's command of the army Congress had given to the
general of the army the appointment of "post-traders." He had
naturally devolved it on the subordinate division and department
commanders, but the legal power remained with the general of the
army. I went up to the Secretary of War, showed him the
telegraphic correspondence, and pointed out the existing law in the
Revised Statutes. General Belknap was visibly taken aback, and
explained that he had supposed the right of appointment rested with
him, that Ward was an old rebel Democrat, etc.; whereas Ward had
been in fact the sutler of Fort Laramie, a United States military
post, throughout the civil war. I told him that I should revoke
his orders, and leave the matter where it belonged, to the local
council of administration and commanding officers. Ward was
unanimously reelected and reinstated. He remained the trader of
the post until Congress repealed the law, and gave back the power
of appointment to the Secretary of War, when of course he had to
go. But meantime he was able to make the necessary business
arrangements which saved him and his partners the sacrifice which
would have been necessary in the first instance. I never had any
knowledge whatever of General Belknap's transactions with the
traders at Fort Sill and Fort Lincoln which resulted in his
downfall. I have never sought to ascertain his motives for
breaking with me, because he knew I had always befriended him while
under my military command, and in securing him his office of
Secretary of War. I spoke frequently to President Grant of the
growing tendency of his Secretary of War to usurp all the powers of
the commanding general, which would surely result in driving me
away. He as frequently promised to bring us together to agree upon
a just line of separation of our respective offices, but never did.
Determined to bring the matter to an issue, I wrote the following
letter:
HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES,
WASHINGTON, D. C., August 17, 1870.
General W. W. BELKNAP, Secretary of War.
GENERAL: I must urgently and respectfully invite your attention
when at leisure to a matter of deep interest to future commanding
generals of the army more than to myself, of the imperative
necessity of fixing and clearly defining the limits of the powers
and duties of the general of the army or of whomsoever may succeed
to the place of commander-in-chief.
The case is well stated by General Grant in his letter of January
29, 1866, to the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, hereto appended,