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Originally Posted by Rain Man
Wow. That's news to me.
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There are some very interesting stories around Grant and, especially, Sherman. Sherman in all likelihood would have rounded up and shot all the newspapermen around the army if he could. He literally thought of them all as traitors.
Sherman, FWIW, was clearly no abolitionist. While he didn't come out and say it, he was probably not a big fan of abolition or the 14th Amendment. There was a very unpleasant episode during Sherman's March where the Union Army, ostensibly to prevent Confederate troops from continuing to follow them and their baggage train (a legitimate concern) destroyed a pontoon bridge they had made over a river, making it harder for the Confederates to follow. There is some considerable argument as to whether Sherman was aware of this, as this wing of his army was commanded by Union General Jefferson C. Davis (no relation, and one of the weirdest coincidences of the war), who was VERY clearly a racist.
As a result of the cutting of the bridge, the very large number of slaves who had escaped their plantations and were following the Union Army to, hopefully, freedom, were suddenly cut off. Many, in desperation, sought to swim the river, and many drowned. Many of the runaway slaves were older, or women with children.
The Confederate forces who had been trailing the Union Army, once they saw the runaway slaves bereft of Sherman's protection, did the inevitable, and unspeakable.
Word of this somehow got back to Washington, and the abolitionist movement, and in particular Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, were absolutely irate. There was discussion of relieving Sherman -- who had just accomplished one of the most amazing feats in modern military history -- of command. Grant stepped in and mediated.
Stanton was also extremely vexed by the cease-fire/armistice agreement made between Sherman and General Joseph Johnston of the Confederacy, which Stanton, and ultimately President Johnson, thought far too generous (and over-reaching) and they ordered revoked/null. Sherman thought he was carrying otu Lincoln's oft-stated wishes regarding peace, but was overruled and publicly embarrassed.
Weeks later, when the Union armies paraded through Washington DC, the Army of the Potomac, nominally under Meade but really under Grant, were camped closer to the city, and paraded on the first day. Sherman's Army was across the river, and when his men marched through the city, they and Sherman refused pointedly to acknowledge the Secretary of War.