William Boynton, Sherman's Historical Raid

The officers charged with preserving all means of identification, employed a force of citizen clerks, who had long been engaged in the cotton warehouses of Savannah, to superintend the re-pressing and shipping of the cotton, and they selected the books and blanks in common use for this purpose, and copied into and upon these all marks by which the merchants of Savannah and the shippers from that port had been accustomed to insure the perfect identification of cotton.

Aside from the records thus made, and forwarded afterward to Washington, there existed in each of the great cotton warehouses of Savannah a full record and description of each bale on hand when General Sherman's army took possession of the city, and these have been accessible to all interested.

Of the existence and completeness of the records here, General Sherman could have satisfied himself in a very few moments on any occasion. He could have ascertained all the above facts any day, and in less time than it must have taken him to compile the page of errors concerning the matter which his book contains.

If these records had been filed away among the musty documents pertaining to the war, there would have been a slight show of excuse for General Sherman; but what shall be said for him in view of the fact that he wrote thus recklessly about Secretary Stanton, with these records open to all men, in the War Department, with duplicates of them in the Treasury, in the Court of Claims, and in the printed files of Congress. They are records of the most public character. They have been consulted by the parties to every suit in which this cotton was involved. The War Department had furnished transcripts of the marks for seventy-seven cases to the Court of Claims, and the Government had printed them. Congress had called on the War Department for the entire record, embracing all the orders and directions which were given, and the receipts in full taken by Colonel Ransom, setting forth all