Sherman, William Tecumseh

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“After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.”

-- William Tecumseh Sherman, after the War
 
“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”

-- William Sherman, wire to Abraham Lincoln, December 22, 1864
 
"For Gods sake don't mention their brass... or lack there of." General Sherman to a new aide regarding the rough appearance of one of his Iowa Regiments.
 
"God will judge us in due time, and he will pronounce whether it be more humane to fight with a town full of women and brave people at our back, or to remove them in time to places of safety among their own friends and people." W.T. Sherman
 
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it... You might as well appeal against the thunder storm as against these terrible hardships of war... We don't want your negroes, or your houses, or your lands, or anything you have, but we do want and will have first obedience to the laws of the United States... if it involves the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it... But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter." W.T. Sherman
 
"My heart bleeds when I see... the desolution of homes, the bitter anguish of families, but the very moment the men of the South say that instead of appealing to war they should have appealed to reason, to our Congress, to our courts, to religion, and to the experiance of history, then I will say peace; go back to your point of error, and resume your places as American citizens, with all their proud heritages." W.T. Sherman
 
"Can you not send over to Fairmount and Adairsville, burn 10 or 12 houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon from Resaca to Kingston."

General Sherman also wrote to U.S. Brig. Gen. Louis Douglass Watkins at Calhoun, Georgia, on Oct. 29, 1864
 
"If torpedoes (mines) are found in the possession of an enemy to our rear, you may cause them to be put on the ground and tested by a wagon load of prisoners, or if need be a citizen implicated in their use. In like manner, if a torpedo is suspected on any part of the road, order the point to be tested by a carload of prisoners, or by citizens implicated, drawn by a long rope."


General William T. Sherman, June 23, 1864
 
I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.

-- William Tecumseh Sherman
 
The soldiers and people of the south entertained an undue fear of our western men, and invented such ghostlike stories of our progress through Georgia that they were scared by their own inventions... this was a power, and I intended to utilize it. W.T. Sherman
 
"I think we know what military fame is: To be killed on the field of battle and have our names spelled wrong in the newspapers." W.T. Sherman

(Message edited by admin on February 22, 2004)
 
"...I'd wake up some morning and find all over the papers that I'd poisoned my grandmother. Now you know I never saw my mother's mother, but the newspapers would say I killed her, and prove it." W.T. Sherman
 
If we must be enemies, let us be men, and fight it out as we propose to do, and not deal in hypocritical appeals to God and humanity.

Letter to Gen Hood from Gen Sherman.
 
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