PITTSBURGH, [Pa.]
Sunday, June 8, 1861.
. . . Now that the War has begun, no man can tell when it
will end. Who would have supposed old England, chuck full of Abolitionists,
would side with the southern against their northern descendants. Nations like
men are governed solely by self interest, and England needs cotton, and the
return market for the manufactures consumed in exchange. Again corruption seems
so to underlie our government that even in this time of trial, cheating in
clothes, blankets, flour, bread, everything, is universal. It may be the simple
growl of people unaccustomed to the privations of war. Again some three or four
hundred thousand people are now neglecting work and looking to war for the
means of livelihood. These, hereafter, will have a say in politics, so that I
feel that we are drifting on the high seas, and no one knows the port to which
we are drifting. The best chance of safety is our old government, with all its
political chicanery and machinery, and to it we tie our fortunes. . . .
SOURCE: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 198-9
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