HDQRS. MILITARY
DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
In the Field,
Savannah, January 12, 1865.
Major-General HALLECK:
MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yours
of January 1* about the “negro.” Since Mr. Stanton got here we have talked
over all matters freely, and I deeply regret that I am threatened with that
curse to all peace and comfort—popularity; but I trust to bad luck enough in
the future to cure that, for I know enough of “the people” to feel that a
single mistake made by some of my subordinates will tumble down my fame into
infamy.
But the nigger? Why, in God's name, can't sensible men let
him alone? When the people of the South tried to rule us through the negro, and
became insolent, we cast them down, and on that question we are strong and
unanimous. Neither cotton, the negro, nor any single interest or class should
govern us.
But I fear, if you be right that that power behind the
throne is growing, somebody must meet it or we are again involved in war with
another class of fanatics. Mr. Lincoln has boldly and well met the one attack,
now let him meet the other.
If it be insisted that I shall so conduct my operations that
the negro alone is consulted, of course I will be defeated, and then where will
be Sambo?
Don't military success imply the safety of Sambo and vice
versa? Of course that cock-and-bull story of my turning back negroes that
Wheeler might kill them is all humbug. I turned nobody back. Jeff. C. Davis did
at Ebenezer Creek forbid certain plantation slaves—old men, women, and children—to
follow his column; but they would come along and he took up his pontoon bridge,
not because he wanted to leave them, but because he wanted his bridge.
He and Slocum both tell me that they don't believe Wheeler
killed one of them. Slocum's column (30,000) reports 17,000 negroes. Now, with 1,200
wagons and the necessary impedimenta of an army, overloaded with
two-thirds negroes, five-sixths of whom are helpless, and a large proportion of
them babies and small children, had I encountered an enemy of respectable
strength defeat would have been certain.
Tell the President that in such an event defeat would have
cost him ten thousand times the effort to overcome that it now will to meet
this new and growing pressure.
I know the fact that all natural emotions swing as the
pendulum. These southrons pulled Sambo's pendulum so far over that the danger
is it will on its return jump off its pivot. There are certain people who will
find fault, and they can always get the pretext; but, thank God, I am not
running for an office, and am not concerned because the rising generation will
believe that I burned 500 niggers at one pop in Atlanta, or any such nonsense.
I profess to be the best kind of a friend to Sambo, and think that on such a
question Sambo should be consulted.
They gather round me in crowds, and I can't find out whether
I am Moses or Aaron, or which of the prophets; but surely I am rated as one of
the congregation, and it is hard to tell in what sense I am most appreciated by
Sambo—in saving him from his master, or the new master that threatens him with
a new species of slavery. I mean State recruiting agents. Poor negro—Lo, the
poor Indian! Of course, sensible men understand such humbug, but some power
must be invested in our Government to check these wild oscillations of public
opinion.
The South deserves all she has got for her injustice to the
negro, but that is no reason why we should go to the other extreme.
I do and will do the best I can for negroes, and feel sure
that the problem is solving itself slowly and naturally. It needs nothing more
than our fostering care. I thank you for the kind hint and will heed it so far
as mere appearances go, but, not being dependent on votes, I can afford to act,
as far as my influence goes, as a fly wheel instead of a mainspring.
With respect,
&c., yours,
W.
T. SHERMAN.
_______________
* General Halleck’s copy is dated December 30, 1864; see Vol.
XLIV, p. 836
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
47, Part 2 (Serial No. 99), p. 36-7