SAVANNAH, Geo., January
15, 1865.
. . . It may be some days yet before I dive again beneath
the surface to turn up again in some mysterious place. I have a clear
perception of the move, but take it for granted that Lee will not let me walk
over the track without making me sustain some loss. Of course my course will be
north. I will feign on Augusta and Charleston, avoid both and make for
Columbia, Fayetteville and Newbern, N. C. Don't breathe, for the walls have
ears, and foreknowledge published by some mischievous fool might cost many
lives. We have lived long enough for men to thank me for keeping my own
counsels, and keeping away from armies those pests of newspaper men. If I have
attained any fame it is pure and unalloyed by the taint of parasitic flattery
and the result is to you and the children more agreeable, for it will go to
your and their benefit more than all the surface flattery of all the newspaper
men of the country. Mr. Stanton has been here and is cured of that Negro nonsense
which arises, not from a love of the Negro but a desire to dodge service. Mr.
Chase and others have written to me to modify my opinions, but you know I
cannot, for if I attempt the part of a hypocrite it would break out at each
sentence. I want soldiers made of the best bone and muscle in the land, and
won't attempt military feats with doubtful materials. I have said that slavery
is dead and the Negro free, and want him treated as free, and not hunted and
badgered to make a soldier of, when his family is left back on the plantations.
I am right and won't change.1 The papers of the 11th are just in and
I see Butler is out. That is another of the incubi of the army. We want and
must have professional soldiers, young and vigorous. Mr. Stanton was delighted
at my men and the tone which pervades the army. He enjoyed a good story, which
is true, told by one of my old 15th corps men. After we reached the coast we
were out of bread, and it took some days for us to get boats up. A foraging
party was out and got a boat and pulled down the Ogeechee to Ossabaw and met a
steamer coming up. They hailed her and got answer that it was the Nemeha, and
had Major General Foster on board; the soldiers answered “Oh H—1, we've got
twenty-seven Major-Generals up at camp. What we want is hard tack.” The
soldiers manifest to me the most thorough affection, and a wonderful
confidence. They haven't found out yet where I have not been. Every
place we go, they hear I lived there once, and the usual exclamation is, The “Old
Man” must be “omnipresent” as well as “omnipotent.” I was telling some officers
the other day if events should carry us to Charleston I would have advantage
because I know the ground, etc., etc. They laughed heartily at my innocence,
for they knew I had been everywhere. But really my long sojourn in this quarter
of the world from 1840 to 1846 was and is providential to me.
I have read most of the current discourses about me, those
you sent inclusive; but take more interest in the London Spectator, the
same that reviewed my Knoxville Campaign. He is surely a critic, for he catches
the real points well. The Times utterly overstates the cases and the
Dublin papers are too fulsome. Our American papers are shallow. They don't look
below the surface. I receive letters from all the great men, so full of real
respect that I cannot disregard them, yet I dread the elevation to which they
have got me. A single mistake or accident, my pile, though well founded, would
tumble; but I base my hopes of fair fame on the opinion of my own army, and my
associates. . . .
I will surely be off in the course of this week, and you
will hear of me only through Richmond for two months. You have got used to it
now and will not be concerned though I think the chances of getting killed on
this trip about even. If South Carolina lets me pass across without desperate
fighting, her fame is gone forever. . . .
I would not be surprised if I would involve our
government with England. I have taken all the cotton as prize of war, thirty
thousand bales, equal to thirteen millions of dollars, much of which is claimed
by English merchants. I disregard their consular certificates on the ground
that this cotton has been notoriously employed to buy cartridges and arms and
piratical ships, and was collected here for that very purpose. Our own
merchants are equally culpable. They buy cotton in advance and take the chances
of capture, and then claim. . . .
___________
1 Sherman's unwillingness to weaken his army by
increasing it with any but the most effective fighting men was frequently
construed as an evidence of hostility to the negro. His true feeling on this
subject is shown especially in the account of Stanton's visit to Savannah in
the Memoirs (Vol.
II, chap. xxii). The clear remembrance of those who knew him best warrants
the belief that his knowledge of the South gave him a sympathetic understanding
of the moral effect of employing negro troops, which increased his reluctance
to include them in his army.
SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 327-30. A full copy of this letter can be
found in the William
T Sherman Family papers (SHR), University of Notre Dame Archives
(UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556, Folder CSHR 2/20
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