Tyrone Plantation, Sunday, 1:15 p.m., January 15, 1860.
Dear Sir: Captain
Jarreau has just left here, after bringing me yours
of Friday night. I can well comprehend the pressure on your time, which
keeps you constantly busy, and therefore makes you write hurriedly. I have more
letters on hand now myself than I shall ever have time to answer. You were in
this sort of hurry when you wrote me on the eleventh. . .
I entirely approve and authorize your suggestions in regard
to approaches and enclosures. You will see where I formerly had the gate put,
in the neighborhood of where [you] propose to put it now, with the express view
to avoid injury to the front ground. Its removal to its present site was the
work of more thoughtful heads that succeeded me.
In regard to the fencing, pine posts, whether sawed or
split, will rot off very quick, the more lasting is the chinkapin, of which a
good deal is generally to be found in the ravines and branch bottoms. If you
cannot get it convenient to yourself the Pinewood's wagoners can get it for
you, if they will. The gates I would move immediately. . .
Rest assured that I neither have made nor will make any use
of Colonel Bragg's or your brother's letters to you that you could yourself
object to, although you could not show them to those that I can. The only
persons I have shown them to are Dr. Smith, Mr. Manning, Captain Elgee, and Mr.
Halsey and Goodwin in my room at Mr. Fellows' on Thursday night, and I should
now return them to you but that there is one other person I am desirous to show
them to. I showed them to Mr. Halsey not as an editor, yet because he is an
editor too, in order that he might in that capacity say nothing ignorantly, but
principally from the estimation in which I hold him as a gentlemanly and right
minded man, as far as the occupation, that of a hired partizan editor, he is
engaged in, will permit. . .
I think the declaration of your brother in the House in one
of the early days of the present session of Congress, and in the debate on the
President's message in 1856, republished in the National Intelligencer of
the twentieth ult. ought to be sufficient for any thinking, reflecting southern
man, who has reason enough in him to admit of a difference of opinion between
himself and other people.
Demagogical politicians and partizan editors make all the
mischief. Since 1830-1833, I have always believed and never hesitate to express
myself so on all occasions, that southern people of the above classes, many of
them northern and eastern born, have had quite as much to do with producing the
troubles of the country as any body else.
For yourself, my dear Sir, if I had never seen you at all, a
knowledge of the facts that you had passed through the Military Academy, had
served and resided in the south, and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of
Colonel Bragg, was enough for me. The use that I desired to make of your
letters was to forestall any apprehensions on the minds of others, not to
remove any that I knew of. Am truly glad to learn from you that your own mind
is quiet on this point.
SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman
as College President, p. 122-4
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