Do Not Burn The Cities

The Augusta (Ga.) Constitutionalist in remonstrating against the policy of burning the cities of the South as the Federal army advances, says:

A captured city, for instance, may serve only as a temporary convenience to an enemy, for the occupation of troops.  If it be a strategic point, he would hold it though its buildings were a heap of smouldering ruins.  His tents would be pitched among the rubbish, or on the outskirts.  No General would leave it because his troops did not have houses to live in.  Nor would he keep his army in the best built city, on account of its fine houses, if the plans of the campaign required them elsewhere, or if the position could not be held against a superior force moving to repossess it.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1