it not clear the guard must defend the prisoners? Same of a safe-guard. So jealous is the military law to protect and maintain "good faith" when pledged that the law adjudges death and no alternative punishment to one who violates a safeguard in foreign parts. (See Article of War, Numbers 55.) For murder, arson, treason, and the highest military crimes, the punishment prescribed by law is death, or some minor punishment, but for the violation of a safeguard death and death alone is the prescribed penalty. I instance this to illustrate how, in military stipulations to an enemy, our Government commands and enforces "good faith. " In discussing this matter I would like to refer to many writers on military law, but am willing to take Halleck as the text. (See his chapter Numbers 27). In the very first article he prefaces that "good faith" should always be observed between enemies in war, because, when our faith has been pledged to him, so far as the promise extends, he ceases to be an enemy. He then defines the meaning of compacts and conventions, and says they are made sometimes for a general or a partial suspension of hostilities for the surrender of an army, &c. They may be special, limited to particular places, or to particular forces, but, of course, can only bind the armies subject to the general who makes the truce, and coextensive only with the extent of his command. This is all I ever claimed and clearly covers the whose case. All of North Carolina was in my immediate command, with General Schofield, its department commander, and his army present with me. I never asked the truce to have effect beyond my own territorial command. General Halleck himself, in his Orders, Numbers 1, defines his own limits clearly enough, viz, "Such part of North Carolina as was not occupied by the command of Major General Sherman. " He could not pursue and cut off Johnston's retreat toward Salisbury and Charlotte without invading my command, and so patent was his purpose of defy and violate my truce that Mr. Stanton's publication of the fact, not even yet recalled, modified, orheaded "Sherman's truce disregarded," that the whole world drew but one inference. It admits of no other. I never claimed that the truce bound Generals Halleck or Canby within the sphere of their respective commands as defined by themselves. It was a partial truce of very short duration, clearly within my limits and right, justified by events, and, as in the case of prisoners in my custody, or the violation of a safeguard given by me in my own territorial limits, I was bound to maintain "good faith. " I prefer not to change my report, but again repeat that in fall future cases I am willing to be governed by the interpretations of General Grant, although I again invite his attention to the limits of my command and those of General Halleck at the time, and the pointed phraseology of General Halleck's dispatch to Mr. Stanton, wherein he reports that he had ordered his generals to pay no need to my orders within the clearly defined area of my command.

I am, &c.,

W. T. SHERMAN,

Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,
Washington, D. C., May 27, 1865.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War:

SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith Major General W. T. Sherman's official report of the operations of his armies in the campaign of