Upon the final adjournment of the Thirty-eighth Congress (on March 4, 1865) it continued the existence of the Committee on the Conduct of the War for ninety days, in order to afford it time to finish its work. During this period it closed up some pending inquiries and prepared its final reports. Its last action was an examination into General Sherman's unauthorized and unfortunate negotiations with General Johnston, which the committee disapproved and that officer's superiors promptly repudiated. The final report of the committee bears the date of the 22d of May, 1865, and its closing passages are as follows:
Your committee, at the close of the labors in which the most of them have been engaged for nearly four years past, take occasion to submit a few general observations in regard to their investigations. They commenced them at a time when the government was still engaged in organizing its first great armies, and before any important victory had given token of its ability to crush out the rebellion by the strong hand of physical power. They have continued them until the rebellion has been overthrown, the so-called Confederate government been made a thing of the past, and the chief of that treasonable organization is a proclaimed felon in the hands of our authorities. And soon the military and naval forces, whose deeds have been the subjects of our inquiry, will return to the ways of peace and the pursuits of civil life, from which they have been called for a time by the danger which threatened their country. Yet while we welcome those brave veterans on their return from fields made historical by their gallant achievements, our joy is saddened as we view their thinned ranks and reflect that tens of thousands, as brave as they, have fallen victims to that savage and infernal spirit which actuated those who spared not the prisoners at their mercy, who sought by midnight arson to destroy hundreds of defenseless women and children, and who hesitated not to resort to means and to commit acts so horrible that the nations of the earth stand aghast as they are told what has been done. It is a matter for congratulation that, notwithstanding the greatest provocations to pursue a different course, our authorities have ever treated their prisoners humanely and generously, and have in all respects conducted this contest according to the rules of the most civilized warfare....Your committee would refer to the record of their labors to show the spirit and purpose by which they have been governed in their investigations. They have not sought to accomplish any purpose other than to elicit the truth; to that end have all their labors been directed. If they have failed at any time to accomplish that purpose, it has been from causes beyond their control. Their work is before the people, and by it they are willing to be judged.
Your committee, at the close of the labors in which the most of them have been engaged for nearly four years past, take occasion to submit a few general observations in regard to their investigations. They commenced them at a time when the government was still engaged in organizing its first great armies, and before any important victory had given token of its ability to crush out the rebellion by the strong hand of physical power. They have continued them until the rebellion has been overthrown, the so-called Confederate government been made a thing of the past, and the chief of that treasonable organization is a proclaimed felon in the hands of our authorities. And soon the military and naval forces, whose deeds have been the subjects of our inquiry, will return to the ways of peace and the pursuits of civil life, from which they have been called for a time by the danger which threatened their country. Yet while we welcome those brave veterans on their return from fields made historical by their gallant achievements, our joy is saddened as we view their thinned ranks and reflect that tens of thousands, as brave as they, have fallen victims to that savage and infernal spirit which actuated those who spared not the prisoners at their mercy, who sought by midnight arson to destroy hundreds of defenseless women and children, and who hesitated not to resort to means and to commit acts so horrible that the nations of the earth stand aghast as they are told what has been done. It is a matter for congratulation that, notwithstanding the greatest provocations to pursue a different course, our authorities have ever treated their prisoners humanely and generously, and have in all respects conducted this contest according to the rules of the most civilized warfare....
Your committee would refer to the record of their labors to show the spirit and purpose by which they have been governed in their investigations. They have not sought to accomplish any purpose other than to elicit the truth; to that end have all their labors been directed. If they have failed at any time to accomplish that purpose, it has been from causes beyond their control. Their work is before the people, and by it they are willing to be judged.
The volumes which contain the official record of the proceedings of the Committee on the Conduct of the War are and always must be regarded as the most valuable single magazine of historical material relating to the Great Rebellion. They have been liberally used in the preparation of every important account of our civil strife yet published, and the men, who shall in the light of another century estimate the greatness and significance of that "throe of progress," will inevitably look in their pages to the graphic narratives of those who were parts of memorable movements and actors in famous battles as a means of information, and to the conclusions of those who prosecuted inquiries so zealously when the events were yet fresh in the memory as a source of guidance. Infallibility is not a human attribute, and the work of this committee was not free from misapprehension and mistake. Time, which has shown some of its errors and will correct others, has also sustained the essential justice of its most important conclusions, which will stand unreversed on the pages of impartial history.
But the chief value of the labors of this committee is not to be found in its collection of rich materials for the future chronicler. To its unrecorded but potent influence upon the conduct of the war, adequate justice has not yet been done. Its unwearied investigations constantly exposed corruption, incompetence, and insubordination, and placed in the hands of the authorities the means of discovering and punishing the knavish, the weak, and the disloyal. Its activity was a perpetual prompter to energy, and a vigilant detective by the side of inefficiency and disaffection. As the result of its labors, the unsuccessful,the half-hearted, and the traitorous gave way to the able and the patriotic; because of the knowledge of its relentless questioning, indolent men were vigilant, and laxity was transformed into vigor. Its unremitting labors stayed up the hands of the War Secretary in the heaviest hours of his great task, and usefully informed the counsels and shaped the decisions of the White House. If its every session had been permanently secret, and not a line of its proceedings existed as a public record, there would still remain an ineffaceable transcript of the results of its action in the correcting of mistakes of organization and that crushing of sham generalship which alone made final victory possible.
FOOTNOTES:[22]In "The Republic" magazine of April, 1875.[23]Edwin M. Stanton had succeeded Simon Cameron on Jan. 13. 1862.[24]On Nov. 7, 1862.
[22]In "The Republic" magazine of April, 1875.
[22]In "The Republic" magazine of April, 1875.
[23]Edwin M. Stanton had succeeded Simon Cameron on Jan. 13. 1862.
[23]Edwin M. Stanton had succeeded Simon Cameron on Jan. 13. 1862.
[24]On Nov. 7, 1862.
[24]On Nov. 7, 1862.