Sherman The Press Burned General Sherman

[frontrank2]

An older article but still appropriate.

It took long enough, but Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman has joined Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, Oliver North, Sean Penn, Frank Sinatra and Nicaragua`s Daniel Ortega. He, too, detested the American press.

The July-August American Heritage has ''Sherman Bashes the Press,'' or 24 previously unpublished letters written during the Civil War by the fabled Union general to his foster father and a boyhood companion. The letters, which spent most of the succeeding years in a family`s Roselle, N.J., attic, are marked by an aversion to a group he considered ''the direct cause of more bloodshed than 50 times their number of armed Rebels.''

The article underlines that Sherman was a headstrong sort given to dark and silent moods. The New York Tribune suggested he was unstable, a Chicago Tribune war correspondent wrote that he was ''possessed of neither mind nor manner,'' and the Cincinnati Commercial, citing ''painful intelligence,'' said he was insane.

His letters are remarkable in underlining a tension well known in the modern day, that between a free press and the military, especially when it comes to democratic values and covert operations. continued: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-07-15-8702210628-story.html

 

[DixieRifles]

I might have the quote somewhere but General Sherman threatened to shut down the press when he was in Memphis area in 1863. They were reporting the truth about the engagements with the Confederate raiders.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

I don't know if he was indeed unbalanced but it's a better explanation than just, plain mean. Yes, I realize we Yanks up here are supposed to be fans but I'll bet there are a lot more like me who are giant un-fans. Still, I'm not sure the article makes the same case against the press Sherman did and it seems more of an anti-press article than an historical look at an ACW general. For Heaven's sake, what on earth does anything Sherman had to say have to do with which reporter did or did not pass an acting class in college?

 

[JOHN42768]

So back when the Chicago Tribune had their own Psychiatric Dept. reporter who was able to tell what was really in his mind as opposed to carrying out orders to the fullest. Headstrong and silent moods, sort of like any soldier who complies with orders he would not consider if it was not War.