IN THE FIELD, NEAR
ATLANTA, Georgia,
August 11, 1864.
I can well understand the keen feelings of apprehension that
agitate you, as you sit with mind intent on the fate of a vast machine, like
the one I am forced to guide, whose life and success depend on the single
thread of rails that for near five hundred miles lies within an hostile or
semi-hostile country. I assure you that to the extent of my ability, nothing has
been left undone that could be foreseen, and for one hundred days not a man or
horse has been without ample food, or a musket or gun without adequate
ammunition. I esteem this a triumph greater than any success that has attended
me in battle or in strategy, but it has not been the result of blind chance. At
this moment I have abundant supplies for twenty days, and I keep a construction
party in Chattanooga that can in ten days repair any break that can be made to
my rear. I keep a large depot of supplies at Chattanooga and Allatoona, two
mountain fastnesses which no cavalry force of the enemy can reach, and in our
wagons generally manage to have from ten to twenty days' supplies.
I could not have done this without forethought beginning
with the hour I reached Nashville. I found thousands of citizens actually
feeding on our stores on the plea of starvation, and other citizens by paying
freights were allowed to carry goods, wares and merchandise, to all the towns
from Nashville to Chattanooga; also crowds of idlers, sanitary agents,
Christian commissions, and all sorts of curiosity hunters loading down our
cars. It was the Gordian Knot and I cut it. People may starve, and go without,
but an army cannot and do its work. A howl was raised, but the President and
Secretary of War backed me, and now all recognize the wisdom and humanity of
the thing. Rosecrans had his army starving at Chattanooga, and I have brought
an army double its size 138 miles further, and all agree that they were never
better fed, clothed and supplied. I think you may rest easy on that score.
My only apprehension arises from the fact that the time of
the three year men is expiring all the time, and daily regiments are leaving
for home, diminishing my fighting force by its best material; and the draft has
been so long deferred, and the foolish law allowing niggers and the refuse of
the South to be bought up and substituted on paper (for they never come to the
front) will delay my reinforcements until my army on the offensive, so far from
its base, will fall below my opponent's, who increases as I lose. I rather
think to-day Hood's army is larger than mine, and he is strongly fortified. I
have no faith in the people of the North. They ever lose their interest when
they should act — they think by finding fault with an officer they clear their
skirts of their own sins of misfeasance. . . .
The good news has just come that Farragut's fleet is in
Mobile Bay, and has captured the Rebel fleet there; also that Fort Gaines which
guards the west entrance to the Bay has surrendered, and some prisoners we took
this morning say it was the talk in their camp that the Yankees had the City of
Mobile. So all is coming round well, only we should not relax our energies or
be deluded by any false hope of a speedy end to this war, which we did not
begin, but which we must fight to the end, be it when it may. . . .
SOURCES: M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Editor, Home Letters of
General Sherman, p. 306-8
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