The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1914-12-29
GENERAL SHERMAN
WAS SYMPATHETIC
Not the Cruel Monster Some
SoutheTners Believed.

dIkk1y
How up-to-date Charles Summers
"Ifue Grandeur of Nations" reads,
though addressed to Bostonians of two
generations agol Germany's siege
guns described as 40 years ahead of
their day. But is the middle of the
10th century to tolerate such weapons
in the hands of any but an interna-
tional law-enforcing power?
No other Characterization OF war
has ever satisfied Americans so well
as that attributed to Gen. Sherman
1t leaps to our lips as we read each
new report from the front. This leads
me to believe that no slight interest
may attach to the following letter.
The manuscript, in Gen. Sherman's
own hand, is one of the treasures in
the library of the American Antiquar-
ian Society in Worcester. To the best
of my belief it has never been printed
except in the report of the former lib
rarian of the society, Edmund M.
Barton april, 1917
Headquarters Military Division of
the Mississippi.
In the Field, near Marietta, Ga.
June 80, 1864.
Mrs. Annie Gilman Bowen,
Baltimore, Md.
Dear Madam Your welcome letter
of June Is came to me here amid the
sound of battle, and, as you say, little
ibid dream when knew you playing
as school girl on Sullivan's Island
beach, that | should control vast
army pointing like the swarm of
Alaric toward the plains Of the South.
Why, Oh why is this? know my
own heart, it beats as warmly as ever
toward those kind and generous fam
lilies that greeted us with such warm
hospitality in days long past but still
present in memory; and today were
Frank and Mrs. Porcher, or Eliza Gill
man, or Mary Lamb, or Margaret
Blake, the Barkdales. the Quashes, the
Poyas, indeed any and all of our cher
ished circle, their children, or even
their children's children, to come to
me as OF old, the stern feelings of duty
would melt, as snow before the genial
sun, and / believe / would strip my
own children that they might be shell
tered: and yet they call me barbarian,
vandal. monster, and all the epithets
that language can invent that are sig
niflcant of malignity and hate. All
pretend to say, on earth as in heaven
man must submit to some arbiter He
must not throw off his allegiance to
his government or his God without
Just reason and cause. The South
had no cause, not even pretext. In
deed by her unjustifiable course she
has thrown. away the proud history
of the past and laid open her fa1r
country to the tread of devastating
war She bantered and bullied us to
the conflict. Had we declined battle,
America wuold have sunk back cow
ard and craven, meriting the contempt
of all mankind. AS nation we were
forced to accept battle, and that once
begun It has gone on until the war
has assumed proportions at which
even we in the hurly-burly sometimes
stand agast / would not subjugate
the South in the sense so extensively
assumed, but would make every citi-
zen of the land obey the common law.
submit to the same that we do-no
worse, no better-our equals and not
our superiors. / know and you know
that there were young men In our day,
men no longer young but who con-
troll their fellows, who assumed to
the gentlemen of the South super
iority of courage, and boastingly de-
fed us of northern birth to arms. God
only knows how reluctantly we accept
ed the issue, but once the issue joined,
like in other ages, the northern races,
though slow to anger, once aroused
are more terrible than the more in
fiamable of the South. Even yet my
heart bieeds when | see the carnage
Of battle, the desolation of homes, the
bitter anguish of families, but the very
moment the men of the South say that
instead of appealing to war, they
should have appealed to reason, to our
Congress-, to our courts, to religion
and to the experience of history, then
will say peace. Go back to your
points of error and resume your places
as American citizens with all their
proud heritages. Whether | shall live
to see this period is pr0blematical, but
you may, and may tell your mother
and sisters that / never forgot one
kind look of greeting, or ever wished
to efface it's remembrance, but in put
ting on the armoreof war, did 1t that
our common country should not perish
'.in 1nfamy and dishonOr: | am mar
ried-have a wife and six children liv-
ing in Lancaster. Ohio-my career has
been an eventful one, but | hope when
Jthe clouds of anger and passion are
dispersed and truth emerges bright
and clear, you and all who knew me
in early years will not blush that we
were once close friends Tell Eliza
for me that ] hope she may live to
realize that the doctrine of succession
is as monstrous in our civil code as
disobedience was in the divine law.
And should the fortunes Of war ever
brng your mother or sisters, or any of
our old clique under the shelter of my
authority / do not believe they will
have cause to regret it. Give my love
to your children and the assurances
Of my respect to your honored hus-
band. Truly.
w. T. SHERMAN,
Major-General.
Mr.. Barton calls attention to the
significance of the place and date
Near Marietta, June 30, 1854" Gen
eral Sherman was at the moment suf-
fering personal grief.
Gen. Daniel McCook was desperate
ly wounded-from the effects of which
he afterward died-in an unsuccessful
assault of the 9th, and the whole
month had been one of anxiety. In
! point of fact, according to the chapter
ION the Atlanta campaign in Sherman's
||memoirs: "The losses from June l
10 July 8, (7,50O) were all substantially
ustained about Kenesaw and Mar
eta and 1t was really a continuous
tattle lasting from the 10th day Of
June till the Sd of July"
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