Edwin M. Stanton
to
U. S. Grant
[Cipher]
Office United States Military Telegraph,
Headquarters Armies of the United States
[3 March 1865]
Lieutenant-General Grant:
The President directs me to say to you that he
wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the
capitulation of Lee's army or on solely minor and purely military matters.
He instructs me to say that you are not to decide,
discuss, or confer upon any political question; such questions the President
holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences
or conventions.
Meantime you are to press to the utmost your military
advantages.
Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War.
SOURCE: Reprinted in William Tecumseh Sherman,
Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, vol. 2 (New York, 1875), page 848.
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