Showing posts with label James B Beck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James B Beck. Show all posts

Thursday, July 4, 2024

General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, February 28, 1882

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 28, 1882.
HON. JOHN SHERMAN,
        United States Senate.

When a senator or member of Congress discovers in some newspaper a statement which he considers offensive to himself, he rises to a question of privilege, and makes his statement of facts. Now when an outsider finds himself misrepresented in the Congressional Record, I suppose he may rise and make his statement of facts.

In the Congressional Record, Saturday, February 25th, the Hon. James B. Beck is reported as having said that General Sheridan had come to Washington at an expense to the United States of a thousand dollars, to assist in having his father-in-law, General Rucker, made a brigadier-general and quartermaster-general for the purpose of being retired with increased pay. I know that General Sheridan was ordered to come to Washington by Secretary of War Lincoln, for an entirely different matter, at an expense of not to exceed $200, viz. eight cents a mile, coming and going by the shortest possible mail route, according to a law made by the Congress of which Mr. Beck was a member.

Mr. Beck is further reported to have said that General Sherman was in the habit of travelling, with his large staff, in palace cars at the expense of the United States, nominally to inspect posts, but really for pleasure. Now this is so totally untrue, and so diametrically opposed to my usage, that I am simply amazed. Not a cent can be drawn from the Treasury of the United States without the warrant of law. I never hired a palace car in my life, surely not at the expense of the United States, for no quarter-master would pay the voucher, and if such voucher exist, it can be had on demand of any senator.

General Sherman, like every army officer, is entitled by law, and receives eight cents a mile when travelling on duty. My duty and inclination carry me to the remotest parts of our country, where travel usually costs from ten to twenty-five cents a mile.

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I think the law ought to provide me a palace car, and I think Mr. Beck agrees with me, and supposes such to be the fact. I have not a particle of doubt he supposed such to be the fact, else he would not have asserted it on the floor of the Senate; but I beg you will on some opportune occasion tell him it is not true, but on the contrary, that the Government expects me to make tours of the Indian frontier chiefly at my own cost. The general or lieutenant-general draws the same travelling allowance as a second lieutenant. No more and no less.

The general of a department has the right to inspect every post of his command, so the General of a division is expected to be familiar with the condition of every post within his sphere of command; and, of course, the commanding general has a similar right. Without this right an intelligent commander would be impossible. By this system I am kept informed of everything pertaining to the military establishment in peace as well as war, and the constant inquiries by Committees of Congress can thus alone be answered, and I will not alter or change my plans to suit Senator Beck.

I believe it is construed as discourteous to refer to a senator in debate by name,—thus you are addressed as the Honorable Senator from Ohio,—but I infer the rules of the Senate are not so punctilious about the names of outsiders. Thus Senator Beck spoke of Generals Sheridan and Sherman by name, and not by office.

We are not ashamed of our names, and have no objection to their free use on the floor of the Senate. We fear nothing, not even a positive misstatement, but it surely adds nothing to the dignity or manliness of a senator to attempt to misrepresent an absent officer of the common Government, sworn to obey its laws, and to submit to such measures as it, in its wisdom, may prescribe. . . .

W. T. SHERMAN,        
General.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 353-5