CAMP ON BEAR CREEK, 20
MILES N. W.
OF VICKSBURG, June 27,
1863.
I am out here studying a most complicated geography and
preparing for Joe Johnston if he comes to the relief of Vicksburg. As usual I
have to leave my old companions and troops in the trenches of Vicksburg, and
deal with strange men, but I find all willing and enthusiastic. Although the
weather is intensely hot I have ridden a great deal, and think I know pretty
well the weak and strong points of this extended line of circumvallation, and
if Johnston comes I think he will have a pretty hard time to reach Vicksburg,
although from the broken nature of the country he may feign at many points and
attack but at one. Black River, the real line, is now so low it can be forded
at almost any point and I prefer to fight him at the ridge along which all the
roads lead. Of these there are several some of which I have blocked with fallen
trees and others left open for our own purposes, and which will be open to him
if he crosses over. . . .
My military family numbers by the tens of thousands and all
must know that they enjoy a part of my thoughts and attention. With officers
and soldiers I know how to deal, but am willing to admit ignorance as to the
people who make opinions according to their contracted knowledge and biassed
prejudices, but I know the time is coming when the opinion of men ‘not in arms
at the country's crisis, when her calamities call for every man capable of
bearing arms’ will be light as [compared] to those of men who first, last and
all the time were in the van. . . .
I doubt if history affords a parallel to the deep and bitter
enmity of the women of the South. No one who sees them and hears them but must
feel the intensity of their hate. Not a man is seen; nothing but women with
houses plundered, fields open to the cattle and horses, pickets lounging on
every porch, and desolation sown broadcast, servants all gone and women and
children bred in luxury, beautiful and accomplished, begging with one breath
for the soldiers’ rations and in another praying that the Almighty or Joe
Johnston will come and kill us, the despoilers of their homes and all that is
sacred. Why cannot they look back to the day and the hour when I, a stranger in
Louisiana, begged and implored them to pause in their career, that secession
was death, was everything fatal, and that their seizure of the public arsenals
was an insult that the most abject nation must resent or pass down to future
ages an object of pity and scorn? Vicksburg contains many of my old pupils and
friends; should it fall into our hands I will treat them with kindness, but
they have sowed the wind and must reap the whirlwind. Until they lay down their
arms and submit to the rightful authority of the government they must not
appeal to me for mercy or favors. . . .
SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 267-9. 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 2/05.
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