Sherman Uncle Billy said the darndest things

In September of 1870 the Shenandoah Herald reported a conversation overheard between General William Tecumseh Sherman (U.S.) and General Nathan Bedford Forrest (formerly C.S.A) on a riverboat somewhere on the Mississippi River. The article reported that Sherman explained to Forrest the trouble he had created for him filling not only his every waking thought, but his dreams as well. Forrest replied by telling Sherman that if he had been given the command he had asked for he would have not only been a dream but a real nightmare pressing Sherman’s flanks on their “march to the sea” and forcing them to walk through the most hazardous land.*

Would have loved to have be there and listen to these veterans sharing stories!
Regards
David
*https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5813
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of THAT enounter!:frog:
 
One of the most interesting facets of Sherman was his appreciation of the South and her people. Prior to the ACW, he was the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy now known as LSU. He was a man much respected by the citizens of Louisiana before the War and after.

James Carville, a former political adviser for the Clintons, wrote an article last year promoting that LSU should erect a suitable memorial honoring Sherman for his service and support for the school. It is a fascinating article and I have listed a link for it below. I believe many will be surprised at how he was feted on trip to New Orleans in 1878.
Regards
David
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/article_fc70868a-25dc-11e7-86a2-2b4ada8d06e7.html
 
ames Carville, a former political adviser for the Clintons, wrote an article last year promoting that LSU should erect a suitable memorial honoring Sherman for his service and support for the school. It is a fascinating article and I have listed a link for it below. I believe many will be surprised at how he was feted on trip to New Orleans in 1878.
Regards
David
http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/article_fc70868a-25dc-11e7-86a2-2b4ada8d06e7.html

Thanks for that link David. The Ragin' Cajun makes a good case for Sherman. I see that the article is almost a year old, has there been any movement on his proposal?

As he notes, if Grant was able to "invade" MSU, surely Uncle Billy can "reconquer" Baton Rouge.
 
"The South began war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or title of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds of thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and all through Mississippi, we fed thousands upon thousands of families of rebel soldiers left in our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. You depreciate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds of thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance."
Sherman's letter to James M. Calhoun, E.E. Rawson, and S.C. Wells. September 12, 1864
 
An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

Letter to E. D. Townsend, Assistant Adjutant-General (26 March 1869 )
 
''Come with a sword or musket in your hand, prepared to share with us our fate, and I will welcome you as a brother and associate,'' Sherman wrote. But come as a reporter, he added, ''And my answer is Never!''
Sherman to Thomas W. Knox, a reporter with the NY Herald after Knox was court martialed for disobeying Sherman's ban against reporters traveling with his army.


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Thomas W. Knox
 
" There are no Southern railroads to speak of. My bummers have broken up the roads in sections all behind us - and they did it well."
Sherman responding to President Lincoln at the conference on the River Queen when the President expressed concern that Joe Johnstone and his army might escape. April, 1865

The_Peacemakers_1868.jpg
 
" People must learn that war is a question of physical force and Carnage. A million men engaged in peaceful pursuits will be vanquished by a few thousand determined armed men. The justice of the cause has nothing to do with it - It is a question of force. "
Letter to John Sherman - April 3, 1863

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain 2.jpg

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
 
" People must learn that war is a question of physical force and Carnage. A million men engaged in peaceful pursuits will be vanquished by a few thousand determined armed men. The justice of the cause has nothing to do with it - It is a question of force. "
Letter to John Sherman - April 3, 1863

View attachment 215437
Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

that's a great quote

... and explains a lot


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Sherman smackdown of Halleck ...

By Telegraph Morehead City-Beaufort Harbor N.C. May 7th 1865
To Maj. Gen. Halleck
Richmond
After your dispatch to Mr. Stanton of Apl. 26, I cannot have any friendly
intercourse with you. I will come to City Point tomorrow, and march with my
troops and I prefer we should not meet.
W. T. Sherman Maj. Genl.
 
''I will illustrate why I regard newspaper correspondents as spies,'' Sherman wrote on Feb. 17, 1863. ''A spy is one who furnishes an enemy with knowledge useful to him and dangerous to us. I say in giving intelligence to the enemy, in sowing discord & discontent in an army, these men fulfill all the conditions of spies. I am satisfied they have cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars & brought our country to the brink of ruin & that unless the nuisance is abated we are lost.''
''While they cry about blood & slaughter they are the direct cause of more bloodshed than fifty times their number of armed Rebels,'' he wrote.
 
''I will illustrate why I regard newspaper correspondents as spies,'' Sherman wrote on Feb. 17, 1863. ''A spy is one who furnishes an enemy with knowledge useful to him and dangerous to us. I say in giving intelligence to the enemy, in sowing discord & discontent in an army, these men fulfill all the conditions of spies. I am satisfied they have cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars & brought our country to the brink of ruin & that unless the nuisance is abated we are lost.''
''While they cry about blood & slaughter they are the direct cause of more bloodshed than fifty times their number of armed Rebels,'' he wrote.
IMHO, he had a good point.
 
In a letter to his wife during the Atlanta Campaign, Sherman wrote: "I begin to regard the death & mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash."

Author Stephen Davis comments: "such crudeness may have been meant by Sherman as some perverse way of impressing his wife of his manliness. Yet one is hard pressed to find such an unflatteringly morbid statement made by any other officer on both sides during the war."
 
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