Beschreibung:

CIVIL WAR]. SHERMAN, William Tecumseh (1820-1891), Major General, U.S. Army. Autograph manuscript draft signed ("W.T. Sherman Maj. Genl. Commdg"), his "Special Field Order No. 54," "Headquarters Mil. Divn. of the Mississippi, In the Field, Smithfield, N.C.," 12 April 1865. 1 full page, 4to, penned in ink on lined stationery, central horizontal fold neatly strengthened from verso. "GLORY TO GOD AND OUR COUNTRY": SHERMAN ANNOUNCES LEE'S SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX: "OUR GOVERNMENT STANDS REGENERATED AFTER FOUR LONG YEARS OF BLOODY WAR" A very remarkable relic of the final days of the War, and a manuscript lost from sight since 1930. It constitutes Sherman's working draft of one of his most momentous orders issued in the field, the order announcing to his battle-hardened Army--which had campaigned for almost a full year across Georgia, to Atlanta, overland to Savannah, then northwards through the Carolinas--that Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. Sherman writes: "The General commanding announces to the Army that he has official notice from General Grant that Lee surrendered to him his entire Army on the 9th inst. at Appomatox Court House." It is interesting to note that the word "bloody" in the last line was inserted by Sherman as an afterthought, and the words "in arms" inserted after "comrades." In his memoirs, Sherman reprints the entire text of the order and explains that during the night of 11th "I received a message from General Grant, at Appomattox, that General Lee had surrendered to him his whole army, which I at once announced to the troops in orders." This order, when it was distributed, Sherman writes, "created a perfect furore of rejoicing, and we all regarded the war as over, for I knew well that [Confederate] General [Joseph E.] Johnston had no army with which to oppose me. So that the only questions that remained were, would he surrender at Raleigh? Or would he allow his army to disperse into guerilla-bands, to 'die in the last ditch'..." Memoirs , Library of America edn., p.832. On 18 April Sherman and Johnston signed an armistice, but the terms became the subject of dispute with the Federal government, and it was not until 26 April that Johnston, commanding the last major Confederate Army in the field, formally surrendered to Sherman. Provenance: Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner from Thomas F. Madigan in the 1920s. See Madigan, Word Shadows of the Great , New York, 1930, a full-page illustration facing p.94.