Headquarters Army Of The Potomac,
Burksville, Va., April 12, 1865.
Your indignation at the exaggerated praise given to certain officers,
and the ignoring of others, is quite natural. Still, I do not see how this evil
is to be remedied, so long as our people and press are constituted as they are
now. I have the consciousness that I have fully performed my duty, and have
done my full share of the brilliant work just completed; but if the press is
determined to ignore this, and the people are determined, after four years'
experience of press lying, to believe what the newspapers say, I don't see
there is anything for us but to submit and be resigned. Grant I do not consider
so criminal; it is partly ignorance and partly selfishness which prevents his
being aware of the effects of his acts. With Sheridan it is not so. His
determination to absorb the credit of everything done is so manifest as to have
attracted the attention of the whole army, and the truth will in time be made
known. His conduct towards me has been beneath contempt, and will most
assuredly react against him in the minds of all just and fair-minded persons.
Grant has left us on a visit to Richmond and Washington. My
army is being assembled around this place, where I presume we will await events
in North Carolina, and go to Danville, and farther South if it should be deemed
necessary. The prevailing belief is that Johnston, on learning the destruction
of Lee's army, will either surrender or disband his. It is hardly probable he
will attempt to face Sherman and us.
SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George
Gordon Meade, Vol. 2, p. 271
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