Notes from General Sherman

As the American Civil War dawned, William Tecumseh Sherman, the man who was to be called the “first modern general”, remarked to a Southern friend:

You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

Years later, even as he destroyed the South, Sherman wrote in May of 1865:

I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers … tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

Sometimes, when I hear the rhetoric of the far fringes of politics, I marvel that mankind has not learned from the lessons of our forefathers.

This is on my mind because I just bought a copy of Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea, about the campaign during which General Sherman tore out the heart of the South, burned its cities, and occupied Atlanta, helping bring about the end of the American Civil War.