NEAR MEMPHIS,
March 10, 1864.
General GRANT:
DEAR GENERAL: I have your more than kind and characteristic letter
of the 4th. I will send a copy to General McPherson at once.
You do yourself injustice and us too much honor in assigning
to us too large a share of the merits which have led to your high advancements.
I know you approve the friendship I have ever professed to you, and will permit
me to continue, as heretofore, to manifest it on all proper occasions.
You are now Washington's legitimate successor, and occupy a
position of almost dangerous elevation; but if you can continue, as heretofore,
to be yourself – simple, honest, and unpretending – you will enjoy through life
the respect and love of friends, and the homage of millions of human beings that
will award you a large share in securing to them and their descendants a
government of law and stability.
I repeat, you do General McPherson and myself too much
honor. At Belmont you manifested your traits, neither of us being near; at
Donelson also you illustrated your whole character; I was not near, and General
McPherson in too subordinate a capacity to influence you.
Until you had won Donelson I confess I was almost cowed by
the terrible array of anarchical elements that presented themselves at every
point; but that admitted the ray of light which I have followed since.
I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just as the great
prototype, Washington; as unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a man should
be, but the chief characteristic is the simple faith in success you have always
manifested, which I can liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in
a Savior. This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also, when you
have completed your last preparations you go into battle without hesitation, as
at Chattanooga, no doubts, no reserves; and I tell you it was this that made us
act with confidence. I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got
in a tight place you would come if alive.
My only points of doubt were in your knowledge of grand
strategy, and of books of science and history, but I confess your common sense
seems to have supplied all these.
Now as to future. Don't stay in Washington. Halleck is
better qualified than you to stand the buffets of intrigue and policy. Come
West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi Valley. Let us make it dead sure,
and I tell you the Atlantic slopes and Pacific shores will follow its destiny
as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with the main trunk. We have done
much, but still much remains. Time and time's influences are with us; we could
almost afford to sit still and let these influences work. Even in the seceded
States your word now would go further than a President's proclamation or an act
of Congress. For God's sake and your country's sake come out of Washington. I
foretold to General Halleck before he left Corinth the inevitable result, and I
now exhort you to come out West. Here lies the seat of the coming empire, and
from the West, when our task is done, we will make short work of Charleston and
Richmond and the impoverished coast of the Atlantic.
Your sincere friend,
W. T. SHERMAN.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
32, Part 3 (Serial No. 59), p. 49
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