Sunday, March 12, 2023

Major General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, February 23, 1866

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION                
OF THE MISSISSIPPI,        
ST. LOUIS, Feb. 23, 1866.

Dear Brother: The political aspect now is interesting to a looker-on. Sumner and Stevens would have made another civil war inevitably the President's antagonistic position saves us war save of words, and as I am a peace man I go for Johnson and the Veto.

I recollect that Congress is but one of three co-ordinate branches of the Government. I want to hear the Supreme Court manifest itself, and then can guess at the conclusion. . . . Let Johnson fight it out with Sumner, who, though sincere, represents an antagonism as ultra as of Davis himself. Both are representative men, and it will be a pity if the great mass of our people have to go on fighting forever to demonstrate the fallacy of extreme opinions.

The Republican party has lost forever the best chance they can ever expect of gaining recruits from the great middle class who want peace and industry. The white men of this country will control it, and the negro, in mass, will occupy a subordinate place as a race. We can secure them the liberty now gained, but we cannot raise them to a full equality in our day, even if at all. Had the Republicans graciously admitted the great principle of representation, leaving members to take the Ironclad Oath, you would have secured the active cooperation of such men as Sharkey, Parsons, Wm. A. Graham, Johnson, and others of the South, and it would not be many years before some of these States would have grown as rabid as Missouri, Maryland, and Arkansas are now disposed to be. The foolish querulousness of the Secessionists untamed would soon make a snarlish minority in their own States. Now, however, by the extreme measures begun and urged with so much vindictiveness, Sumner has turned all the Union people South as well as of the West against the party. . . . It is surely unfortunate that the President is thus thrown seemingly on the old mischievous anti-war Democrats, but from his standpoint he had no alternative. To outsiders it looks as though he was purposely forced into that category.

I know that the Freedmen Bureau Bill, and that for universal suffrage in the District, are impracticable and impolitic. Better let them slide, and devote time to putting the actual Government into the best shape the country admits of, letting other natural causes produce the results you aim at. Whenever State Legislatures and people oppress the negro they cut their own throats, for the negro cannot again be enslaved. Their mistakes will work to the interests of the great Union party.

I can readily understand what the effect must be in your circle. How difficult it is to do anything, but if Congress does nothing it will be the greatest wisdom; for the business relations opening throughout the South will do more to restore peace and prosperity than all the laws that could be published in six months.

I think Mr. Johnson would consent to a modification of the Constitution to change the basis of representation to suit the changed condition of the population South, but at is all he can or should do. . .

We need the Army Bills1 to get to work. I will have to abandon all the remote settlements to the chances of the Indians, for even after the bill passes, it will take months to enlist the men, and in the meantime all volunteers are clamorous for discharge, and must be discharged as soon as winter lets them come in.

Affectionately,
W. T. SHERMAN.
_______________

1 The bills providing for the reorganization of the army.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 263-5

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