"Not being fully empowered by our respective principals
to fulfil these terms," the agreement truthfully concluded, "we
individually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly obtain the
necessary authority."
The rebel President, with unnecessary formality, required a report from
General Breckinridge, his Secretary of War, on the desirability of
ratifying this most favorable convention. Scarcely had he given it his
indorsement when news came that it had been disapproved at Washington,
and that Sherman had been directed to continue his military operations;
and the peripatetic government once more took up its southward flight.
The moment General Grant read the agreement he saw it was entirely
inadmissible. The new President called his cabinet together, and Mr.
Lincoln's instructions of March 3 to Grant were repeated to
Sherman--somewhat tardily, it must be confessed--as his rule of action.
All this was a matter of course, and General Sherman could not properly,
and perhaps would not, have objected to it. But the calm spirit of
Lincoln was now absent from the councils of the government; and it was
not in Andrew Johnson and Mr. Stanton to pass over a mistake like this,
even in the case of one of the most illustrious captains of the age.
They ordered Grant to proceed at once to Sherman's headquarters, and to
direct operations against the enemy; and, what was worse, Mr.
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