Sunday, April 30, 2023

Senator John Sherman to Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman, March 7, 1867

WASHINGTON, March 7, 1867.

Dear Brother: ... You will have noticed that my name is connected with the Reconstruction Law. I did nothing but reduce and group the ideas of others, carefully leaving open to the South the whole machinery of reconstruction. The bill was much injured by the additions in the House, but, after all, there is nothing obnoxious to the South in it but general suffrage. This they must take, and the only question is whether they will take it in their own way by their own popular movements, or whether we shall be compelled at the next session to organize provisional governments. I hope and trust they will learn wisdom from the past. Can't you in some way give them that advice? Three years ago they hated you and Johnson most of all men; now, your advice goes farther than any two men of the nation. We will adjourn soon until November next. The impeachment movement has, so far, been a complete failure. Butler and Logan are reinforcements, but will effect nothing.

The President has only to forward and inforce the law as they stand, and he is safe. He ought not to, and must not stand in the way of the determined movement to recognize the rebel States. He has had his way and it failed; he ought now fairly to try the Congressional way. I think some of going to Paris in April. I am tendered an honorary membership of the commission, and a free passage. The occasion is tempting; if I go, it will be about the middle of April.

Affectionately,
JOHN SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 289-90

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