MEMPHIS, August 10,
1862.
. . . The fact is we are fast approaching a state of war and
if soon we don't awake to the dream we will find ourselves involved in war.
Thus far it has been by-play, and whilst the whole South is in deep intense
earnest we of the north still try reconciliation, etc. I am putting the screws
to some, but find more trouble in combatting the North whose merchants and
traders think they have a right to make money out of the present state of
things, and Memphis was on my arrival fast becoming a depot of supplies for the
hostile army in the interior.
If Mr. Lincoln had accepted the fact of war on the start and
raised his army, as I then advised, of a million of men, the South would have
seen they had aroused a lion. Whereas by temporizing expedients, first 75,000,
then ten new regiments, then half a million, etc., they find it necessary again
and again to increase the call. Well, at last I hope the fact is clear to their
minds that if the North design to conquer the South, we must begin at Kentucky
and reconquer the country from there as we did from the Indians. It was this
conviction then as plainly as now that made men think I was insane. A good many
flatterers now want to make me a prophet . . . .
SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 230-1. 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 1/147.
No comments:
Post a Comment