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. Stanton printed in the newspapers the reasons of the government for disapproving the agreement in terms of sharpest censure of General Sherman.  This, when it came to his notice some weeks later, filled him with hot indignation, and, coupled with some orders Halleck, who had been made commander of the armies of the Potomac and the James, issued to Meade, to disregard Sherman’s truce and push forward against Johnston, roused him to open defiance of the authorities he thought were persecuting him, and made him declare in a report to Grant, that he would have maintained his truce at any cost of life.  Halleck’s order, however, had been nullified by Johnston’s surrender, and Grant, suggesting that this outburst was uncalled for, offered Sherman the opportunity to correct the statement.  This he refused, insisting that his record stand as written, although avowing his readiness to obey all future orders of Grant and the President.

So far as Johnston was concerned, the war was indeed over.  He was unable longer to hold his men together.  Eight thousand of them left their camps and went home in the week of the truce, many riding away on the artillery horses and train mules.  On notice of Federal disapproval of his negotiations with Sherman, he disregarded Jefferson Davis’s instructions to disband the infantry and try to escape with the cavalry and light guns, and answered Sherman’s summons by inviting another conference, at which, on April 26, he surrendered all the forces in his command on the same terms granted Lee at Appomattox; Sherman supplying, as did Grant, rations for the beaten army.  Thirty-seven thousand men and officers were paroled in North Carolina—­exclusive, of course, of the thousands who had slipped away to their homes during the suspension of hostilities.

After Appomattox the rebellion fell to pieces all at once.  Lee surrendered less than one sixth of the Confederates in arms on April 9.  The armies that still remained, though inconsiderable when compared with the mighty host under the national colors, were yet infinitely larger than any Washington ever commanded, and capable of strenuous resistance and of incalculable mischief.  But the march of Sherman from Atlanta