General William T. Sherman's Letter to my 5th great grandfather

NickajackRanger

Sergeant
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Location
North Alabama
The following letters were written between my 5th great grandfather Daniel McNair Martin of Bellefonte, Jackson County, Alabama and General William T. Sherman during the Atlanta campaign. Daniel Martin was a local plantation owner and mercantile. He and Sherman became friends in 1844 on a trip to Bellefonte by Sherman. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Martin funded local Confederate units using his wealth and even his youngest son joined Morton's Tennessee Artillery Battery and was later killed at the Battle of Parker's Crossroads. These letters show an interesting mutual respect between men on opposing sides. I hope y'all enjoy this. His letter to Sherman was retrieved from the Library of Congress. I have images of it and here they are:

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I unfortunately do not have any images of Sherman's reply but here it is as it was published in a local newspaper in 1865 that I was sent via a Word document:


" HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION MISSISSIPPI, IN THE FIELD, NEAR ATLANTA, GA., Aug. 10, 1864.


Daniel M. Martin, Sand Mountain:

MY DEAR OLD FRIEND: When in Larkinsville last Winter, I inquired after you, and could get no positive answer. I wish you had sent me your letter of Jan. 22 -- which I have just received -- for I could have made you feel at ease at once. Indeed, do I well remember our old times about Bellefonte, and the ride we took to the corn mill, and the little farm where I admired the handsome colt and tried to buy it. Time has worn on, and you are now an old man, in want and suffering, and I, also no longer young, but leading an hostile army on the very road I came when I left Bellefonte, and at this moment pouring into Atlanta the dread missiles of war -- seeking the lives of its people. And yet I am the same WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN you knew in 1844, with as warm a heart as ever, and anxious that peace and plenty shall prevail in this land; and to prove it, I defy JEFF. DAVIS, Gen. LEE or Gen. HOOD to make the sacrifice for peace that I will make, personally or officially. I will to-day lay down my power and my honor -- already won -- will strip myself naked, and my wife and child stark naked in the world as we came, and begin life anew, if the people of the South will but cease the war, elect their members of Congress, and let them settle by argument and reason the questions growing out of slavery, instead of trying to divide our country into two angry halves, to quarrel and fight to the end of time. Our country cannot be divided by an East and West line, and must be one, and if we must fight, let us fight it out now, and not bequeath it to our children. I was never a politician, but resigned from the army and lived in California till 1857, when I came back with my wife and three children, who wanted to be near home, -- Mr. EWING's, not Mr. CORWIN's -- but I had the old army so ground in my composition that civil pursuits were too tame, and I accepted an offer as President of the Louisiana Military Academy. Therefore, at the time of LINCOLN's election I was at Alexandria, on Red River. I saw, and you must have seen, that the Southern politicians wanted to bring about secession, separation. They could have elected Mr. Mr. DOUGLAS, but they so managed that LINCOLN's election was made certain, and after they had accomplished this, was it honest or fair for them to allege it as a cause of war? Did not Mr. BRECKINRIDGE, as Vice-President, in his seat, declare Mr. LINCOLN the lawfully elected President of the United States? Was it ever pretended the President was the government? Don't you know that Congress makes laws, the Supreme Court judges them, and the President only executes them? Don't you know that Mr. LINCOLN of himself could not take away your rights? Now, I was in Louisiana, and while the planters and mechanics and industrious people were happy and prosperous, the politicians and busy-bodies were scheming and plotting, and got the Legislature to pass an ordinance of secession, which was submitted to the people, who voted against it, yet the politicians voted the State out, and proceeded to takes possession of the United States mint, the forts, the arsenal -- and tore down our old flag and insulted it. That, too, before Mr. LINCOLN had got to Washington I saw these things, and begged BRAGG, and BEAUREGARD, and Gov. MOORE, and a host of personal friends, to beware. In that was high treason. But they answered: The North was made up of mean mechanics, manufacturers, traders and farmers, who would not fight. The people of the North never dreamed of interfering with the slaves or property of the South. They simply voted as they had a right to do, and they could not understand why the people of the South should begin to take possession of the forts and arsenals till our government had done something wrong -- had done something oppressive. The South began the war. You know it. I, and millions of others living at the South, know it; but the people of the North were as innocent of it as your little grandchildren. Even after forts had been taken, public arms stolen from our arsenals, and distributed among the angry militia, the brave and honest freemen of the great North could not realize the fact, and did not until BEAUREGARD began to fire upon a garrison of United States troops in a fort built by the common treasury of the whole country. Then, as by a mighty upheaval, the people rose and began to think of war, and not until then. I resigned my post in Louisiana in March, 1861, because of the public act on the part of the State in seizing the United States Arsenal at Baton Rouge, and went to St. Louis, where I readily got lucrative employment, hoping that some change would yet avert war. But it came, and I, and all of military education had to choose. I repeat that then, as now, I had as much love for the honest people of the South as any living man. Had they remained true to the country, I would have resisted even with arms any attack upon their rights -- even their slave rights. But when as a people they tore down our old flag and spat upon it, and called us cowards, and dared us to the contest, then I took up arms to maintain the integrity of our country, and punish the men who challenged us to the conflict.


Is this not a true picture? Suppose the North had patiently submitted, what would have been the verdict of history and the world? Nothing else but that the North was craven and coward. Will you say the North is craven and coward now? Cruel and inhuman as this war has been, and may still continue to be, it was forced upon us. We had no choice. And we have no choice yet. We must go on even to the end of time; even if it result in taking a million of lives and desolating the whole land, leaving a desert behind. We must maintain the integrity of our country; and the day will come when the little grandchild you love so well will bless us who fought that the United States of America should not sink into infamy and worse than Mexican anarchy by the act of Southern politicians, who care no more for you, or such as you, than they care for Hottentots. I have never underrated the magnitude of this war, for I know the size of the South, and the difficulty of operating in it. But I also know that the Northern races have, ever since the war begun, had more patience and perseverance, than the Southern races. And so will it be now -- we will persevere to the end. All mankind shall recognize in us a brave and stubborn race, not to be deterred by the magnitude of the danger. Only three years have passed, and that is but a minute in a nation's life, and see where we are. Where are the haughty planters of Louisiana, who compared our hard-working, intelligent whites of the North with their negroes?


The defeats we have sustained have hardly made a pause in our course, and the vaunted braves of Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, &c., instead of walking rough-shod over the freemen of the North, are engaged in stealing horses and robbing poor old people for a living, whilst our armies now tread in every Southern State, and your biggest armies in Virginia and Georgia lay behind forts, and dare not come out and fight, us cowards of the North, who have come five hundred miles into their country to accept the challenge. But, my dear old friend, I have bor[???]d you too much. My handwriting is not plain, but you have time to study it out, and as you can understand, I have a great deal of w[???] to do, and it must be done in a hurry. Think of what I have written. Talk it over with your neighbors, and ask yourselves if in your trials and tribulations you have suffered more from the Union soldiers than you would had you built your barn where lightning was sure to burn and tear it down. Their course has provoked the punishment of an indignant God and government! I care not a straw for ******s. The moment the master rebels, the negro is free, of course, for he is a slave only by law, and the law broken, he is free.


I command in all Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. The paper I inclose will be of service to you.


Love to Mrs. MARTIN.


(Signed) W.T. SHERMAN, Major-Gen."
 
Moderators: sorry I didn't censor some of the wording that is inappropriate or derogatory I figured for historical purposes it would be best to let the individuals say what they wanted in context.
 
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