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in the document under consideration.
General Sherman has never shrunk from any responsibility for his actions.
The genuine recollections and experiences of men and women in that exciting and passionate time are legitimate and useful matters for publication, even when they reveal things which, in the cooler days of reason and law, everyone must regret, if not condemn—
Inter arma, silent leges. Till men become perfect, war will be full, always, of cruelest outrages.
When they do become perfect, there will be no war. So far as it may help to restrain men's passions or ambitions, and lead to the adoption of better methods for redressing wrongs, real or fancied, than killing and robbery—which all war is, in its last analysis—every tale of suffering, privation, injury, spoliation, may prove useful, and so its publication justifiable.
But when, as certainly seems the case in this instance, nothing but the provocation and perpetuation of ill-feeling and bitterness can result, I submit that a periodical of the character of the
Southern Historical papers might—as I am happy to see it does, in most instances—find better material than reprinting from obscure newspapers, matter which throws no real light on any single act or motive during the whole of the great contest.
Your periodical is taken by a society of which I am a member, but I did not happen to see the March number earlier, or I should have earlier written you. I do not write now for publication—though to that I have no objection—but simply to give you the facts, and let your own sense of justice decide what you will do.
Very respectfully yours,
Henry Stone, Late
Brevet-Colonel U S. Volunteers, and A. A. G. Army of the Cumberland.
seems to make out his case against the authenticity of this letter, and we regret having republished it.
