Working historians tend to Xerox first and think later. In trying to do all our research as quickly as possible, we collect reams of evidence from the archives and printed documents, most of which is ultimately forgettable and usually ends up in the recycle bin. This was almost the case when I came across a brief telegram in the Official Records, dated July 21, 1864, from William T. Sherman to Abraham Lincoln. It appeared to be a minor but friendly dispatch demonstrating Sherman's acquiescence to the highest political authority of the land. Only much later, when I was working through the documentary ma­terials surrounding this seemingly innocent missive, did I suddenly realize that Sherman was saying exactly the opposite of what his words appeared to mean.

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It hit me like a bolt of lightning that, far from being co­operative, Sherman had been completely insubordinate, more profoundly and far more ex­plic­itly than even Douglas Mac­Arthur was during the Ko­rean War when he ignored President Harry S. Truman's orders to stop his army well south of the Yalu River—the Chinese border—a move that provoked powerful Chinese intervention and thus prolonged and stalemated the war at great cost. For that, Truman famously sacked MacArthur.

None of the previous Sherman biographies had noted this major collision of military and civil authority, a fundamental danger to the American constitutional system during wars. Coincidentally, none had been much interested in Sherman's racial attitudes, which given the rapidly evolving participation of newly emancipated African Americans in the Federal army, proved to be a profound policy issue dividing the military and Northern voters.

Immediately after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, his administration had put a major effort into creating a vast number of black troops. In part this policy answered growing manpower concerns—as the war ground on, fewer whites were enlisting, which led to the unpopular draft. Lincoln often argued for African-American enlistment in the most practical terms. As he wrote a conservative backer on August 26, 1863, trying to elicit his support on hardheaded grounds, "I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union."

And yet in the same letter Lincoln revealed his idealism when he linked practical applications to a moral imperative: "If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom….And the promise made, must be kept." He believed it would be morally liberating for black soldiers to fight for their own freedom, that they would later remember "with silent tongue and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation [of freedom]." As for white men who opposed using black troops "with malignant heart, and deceitful speech," their spiritual dishonor would later come back to haunt them, Lincoln said.

At about the same time Ulysses S. Grant had written Lincoln that he had "given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. [It is] the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy. [They] will make good soldiers," powerful allies, while simulta­neously weakening the enemy "in the same proportions as they strengthen us." As Lincoln and Grant believed would be the case, arming blacks proved to be a major upside for the Union Army, even though the men enlisted were often abused and treated as second-class soldiers.

Sherman disagreed vehemently with this policy, and did everything in his power to negate it. When black troops were first recruited in April 1863, he wrote his wife: "I would prefer to have this a white man's war….With my opinion of negroes and my experience, yea prejudice, I cannot trust them yet…with arms in positions of danger."

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