Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 29.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

General Sherman's conduct.

I am sorry to report, that in spite of my orders and entreaties, our troops are committing depredations that will ruin our cause. Horses and wagons have been seized, cattle, sheep, hogs, chickens taken by our men, some of whom wander for miles around. I am doing, and have done, all in my power to stop this, but the men are badly disciplined and give little heed to my orders or those of their own regimental officers.

(See Sherman's Raid, by Boynton, page 23.) [107]

Later on, General Sherman said: ‘War is hell.’ If we could record here all the testimony in our possession, from the people of Georgia and South Carolina, who had the misfortune to live along the line of his famous ‘march to the sea,’ during nearly the whole length of which he was waring against, and depredating on, women, children, servants, old men, and other non-combatants (as to which he wrote in his telegram to Grant, ‘I can make this march and make Georgia howl,’ Boynton, page 129), it would show that he had certainly contributed all in his power to make war ‘Hell,’ as he termed it; and has justly earned the distinction of being called the ruling genius of this creation.

We will first let General Sherman himself tell what was done by him and his men on this famous, or rather infamous, march. He says of it in his official report:

‘We consumed the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah; also the sweet potatoes, hogs, sheep, and poultry, and carried off more than ten thousand horses and mules. I estimate the damage done to the State of Georgia at one hundred million dollars, at least twenty million of which enured to our benefit, and the remainder was simply waste and destruction.’

But we will introduce other witnesses, and these some of his own soldiers, who accompanied him on his march: Captain Daniel Oakley, of the Second Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, in Battles and Leaders, says this:

It was sad to see the wanton destruction of property, which was the work of “bummers,” who were marauding through the country, committing every sort of outrage. There was no restraint, except with the column of the regular foraging parties. * * The country was necessarily left to take care of itself and became a howling waste. The ‘Coffee Coolers’ of the Army of the Potomac were archangels compared to our “bummers,” who often fell to the tender mercies of Wheeler's cavalry, and were never heard of again, meeting a fate richly deserved.

Another Northern soldier writing for the Detroit Free Press, gives the following graphic account: After describing the burning of Marietta, in which the writer says, among other things, ‘soldiers rode from house to house, entered without ceremony, and kindled [108] fires in garrets and closets and stood by to see that they were not extinguished.’ He then further says:

Had one been able to climb to such a height at Atlanta as to enable him to see for forty miles around, the day Sherman marched out, he would have been appalled at the destruction. Hundreds of houses had been burned, every rod of fence destroyed, nearly every fruit tree cut down, and the face of the country so changed that one born in that section could scarcely recognize it. The vindictiveness of war would have trampled the very earth out of sight had such a thing been possible.

Again he says:

‘At the very beginning of the campaign at Dalton, the Federal soldiery had received encouragement to become vandals. * * * * When Sherman cut loose from Atlanta everybody had license to throw off restraint and make Georgia “drain the bitter cup.” The Federal who wants to learn what it was to license an army to become vandals should mount a horse at Atlanta and follow Sherman's route for fifty miles. He can hear stories from the lips of women that would make him ashamed of the flag that waved over him as he went into battle. When the army had passed nothing was left but a trail of desolation and despair. No houses escaped robbery, no woman escaped insult, no building escaped the firebrand, except by some strange interposition. War may license an army to subsist on the enemy, but civilized warfare stops at live stock, forage and provisions. It does not enter the houses of the sick and helpless and rob women of their finger rings and carry off their clothing.’

He then tells of the ‘deliberate burning of Atlanta,’ by Sherman's order, of the driving out from the city of its whole population of all ages, sexes and conditions in the fields of a desolated country to starve and die, as far as he knew or cared. You have only to read these recitals and you have the picture which Sherman made and which he truly denominated ‘Hell.’

The correspondence between Mayor Calhoun and two councilmen of Atlanta, representing to General Sherman the frightful suffering that would be visited on the people of that city by the execution of his inhuman order, and General Sherman's reply, can be found in the second volume of Sherman's Memoirs, at pages 124-5; we can only extract one or two paragraphs from each. The letter of the former says, among other things: [109]

Many poor women are in advanced state of pregnancy, others now having young children, and whose husbands, for the greater part, are either in the army, prisoners, or dead. Some say, I have such a sick one at my house, who will wait on them when I am gone? Others say, what are we do? We have no house to go to, and no means to buy, build or rent any; no parents, relatives or friends to go to.

This being so (they say) how is it possible for the people still here (mostly women and children) to find any shelter? And how can they live through the winter in the woods—no shelter or subsistence, in the midst of strangers who know them not, and without the power to assist them much if they were willing to do so.

This (they say) is but a feeble picture of the consequences of this measure. You know the woe, the horrors and the suffering cannot be described by words; imagination can only conceive it, and we ask you to take these things into consideration.

To this pathetic appeal, Sherman coolly replied on the next day, his letter commencing as follows:

“I have your letter of the 11th, in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet I shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designated to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest,” &c. * *

After he had started on his ‘march to the sea,’ he gives an account of how the foraging details were made and carried out each day, and concludes by saying:

Although this foraging was attended with great danger and hard work, there seemed to be a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be detailed on such a party.

Lastly, they returned mounted on all sorts of beasts, which were at once taken from them and appropriated to the general use, but the next day they would start out again on foot, only to repeat the experience of the day before. No doubt (he says) many acts of pillage, robbery and violence were committed by these parties of foragers, usually called “bummers,” for I have since heard of jewelry taken [110] from women and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary, &c. * * *

(See 2 Mem., p. 182.)

He not only does not say that he tried to prevent his army from committing these outrages, but says, on page 255, in referring to his march through South Carolina:

I would not restrain the army, lest its vigor and energy should be impaired.

He tells on page 185 how, when he reached General Howell Cobb's plantation, he ‘sent word back to General Davis to explain whose plantation it was, and instructed him to spare nothing.’

To show what a heartless wretch he was, he tells, on page 194, about one of his officers having been wounded by the explosion of a torpedo that had been hidden in the line of march, and on which this officer had stepped. He says:

‘I immediately ordered a lot of rebel prisoners to be brought from the provost guard, armed with picks and spades, and made them march in close order along the road, so as to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up. They begged hard, but I reiterated the order, and could hardly help laughing at their stepping so gingerly along the road, where it was supposed sunken torpedoes might explode at each step.’

It may be fairly inferred from General Sherman's middle name (Tecumseh), that some of his ancestors were Indians. But whether this be true or not, no one can read this statement of his without being convinced that he was a savage. But he was not only a confessed savage, as we have seen, but a confessed vandal as well. He says, on page 256, in telling of a night he spent in one of the splendid old houses of South Carolina, where, he says, ‘the proprietors formerly had dispensed a hospitality that distinguished the old regime of that proud State. I slept (he says) on the floor of the house, but the night was so bitter cold, that I got up by the fire several times, and when it burned low I rekindled it with an old mantel clock and the wreck of a bedstead which stood in the corner of the room—the only act of vandalism that I recall done by myself personally during the war.’ Since the admissions of a criminal are always taken as conclusive proof of his crime, we now know from his own lips that General Sherman was a vandal [111]

But we also find, on page 287, that he confessed having told a falsehood about General Hampton, so that we cannot credit his statement that the foregoing was his only act of vandalism. Indeed, we think we have most satisfactory evidence to the contrary. (It will be noted, however, that Sherman makes a distinction between his personal acts of vandalism and those he committed through others.) A part of this evidence is to be found in the following letter from a lieutenant, Thomas J. Myers, published in Vol. 12, Southern Historical Society Papers, page 113, with the following head note:

The following letter was found in the streets of Columbia after the Army of General Sherman had left. The original is still preserved, and can be shown and substantiated, if anybody desires. We are indebted to a distinguished lady of this city for a copy, sent with a request for publication. We can add nothing in the way of comment on such a document. It speaks for itself.

The letter, which is a republication from the Alderson, West Virginia, Statesman, of October 29, 1883, is as follows:

This letter is addressed to Mrs. Thomas J. Myers, Boston, Mass.

This letter was published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, in March, 1884. About a year thereafter, one Colonel Henry Stone, styling himself ‘Late Brevet-Colonel U. S. Volunteers, A. A. G. Army of the Cumberland,’ realizing the gravity of the statements contained in this letter, and the disgrace these, if uncontradicted, would bring on General Sherman and his army, and especially on the staff, of which he (Colonel Stone) was a member, wrote a letter to the Rev. J. William Jones, D. D., the then editor of the Historical Society Papers, in which he undertook to show that the Myers letter was not written by any officer in General Sherman's army. (This letter can be found in Vol. 13, S. H. S. Papers, page 439.) The reasons assigned by Colonel Stone were plausibly set forth, and Dr. Jones, in his anxiety to do justice even to Sherman's ‘bummers,’ after publishing Colonel Stone's letter, said editorially, he was ‘frank to admit that Colonel Stone seems to have made out his case against the authenticity of this letter.’ If the matter had rested here, we would not have thought of using this letter in our report, notwithstanding the fact (1) that we think the letter bears the impress of genuineness on its face; (2) it is vouched for by what Dr. Jones termed a.‘responsible source,’ and what the first paper publishing it cited as a ‘distinguished lady,’ who, it also stated, said that the original was ‘still preserved and could be shown and substantiated;’ (3) the statements contained in Colonel Stone's letter are only his statements, uncorroborated and not vouched for by any one, or by any documentary evidence of any kind, and being those of an alleged accomplice, are not entitled to any weight in a court of justice; (4) we think the reasons assigned by Colonel Stone for the non-genuineness of this letter are for the most part not inconsistent with its genuineness; and (5) some of his statements are, apparently, inconsistent with some of the facts as they appear in the records we have examined, e. g., He says ‘that of the ninety regiments of Sherman's army, which might have passed on the march near Camden, S. C., but a single one—a New Jersey regiment—was from the Middle States. All the rest were from the West. A letter (he says) from the only Thomas J. Myers ever in the army would never contain such a phrase,’ referring to the fact that Myers had said this stolen jewelry, &c., would be scattered ‘all over the North and Middle States.’ Sherman's statement of the organization of his army on this march shows there were several regiments in it from New York and Pennsylvania, besides one from Maryland and [114] one from New Jersey (all four Middle States). But we think this, like other reasons assigned by Colonel Stone, are without merit.

But, as we have said, notwithstanding all these things which seemingly discredit the reasons assigned by Colonel Stone for the non-genuineness of this letter, we should not have used the letter in this report, had not the substantial statements in it been confirmed, as we shall now see. The Myers' letter was first published on October 29, 1883. On the 31st of July, 1865, Captain E. J. Hale, Jr., of Fayetteville, N. C., who had been on General James H. Lane's staff, and who is vouched for by General Lane as ‘an elegant educated gentleman,’ wrote to General Lane, telling him of the destruction and devastation at his home, and in that letter he makes this statement:

You have doubtless heard of Sherman's “bummers.” The Yankees would have you believe that they were only the straggling pillagers usually found in all armies. Several letters written by officers of Sherman's army, intercepted near this town, give this the lie.

In some of these letters were descriptions of the whole bumming process, and from them it appears that it was a regularly organized system, under the authority of General Sherman himself; that onefifth of the proceeds fell to General Sherman, another fifth to the other general officers, another fifth to the line officers, and the remaining two-fifths to the enlisted men.

Now, compare this division of the spoils with that set forth in the Myers' letter, published, as we have said, eighteen years later, and it will be seen that they are almost identical, and this statement was taken, as Captain Hale states, from ‘several letters written by officers of Sherman's army,’ intercepted near Fayetteville, N. C., and as we have said, they confirm the statements of the Myers' letter, and its consequent genuineness, to a remarkable degree. It is proper, also, to state, that we have recently received a letter from Dr. Jones, in which he states that after carefully considering this whole matter again, he is now satisfied that he was mistaken in his editorial comments on Colonel Stone's letter, that he is now satisfied of the genuineness of the Myers' letter, and that in his opinion we could use it in this report ‘with perfect propriety and safety.’¹ [115]

We have discussed this letter thus fully because we feel satisfied that the annals of warfare disclose nothing so venal and depraved. Imagine, if it is possible to do so, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson commanding an army licensed by them to plunder the defenceless, and then sharing in the fruits of this plundering!

We can barely allude to Sherman's burning of Columbia, the proof of which is too conclusive to admit of controversy. On the 18th December, 1864, General H. W. Halleck, major-general and chief-of-staff of the armies of the United States, wrote Sherman as follows: * * *

‘Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by some accident the place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be thrown upon its site, it may prevent the future growth of nullification and secession.’

To this suggestion from this high (?) source to commit murder, arson and robbery, and pretend it was by accident, Sherman replied on December 24, 1664, as follows:

‘I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and do not think that “salt” will be necessary. When I move the Fifteenth corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their position will naturally bring them into Charleston first, and if you have watched the history of that corps, you will have remarked that they generally do their work pretty well; the truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her. I look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston, and I doubt if we shall spare the public buildings there, as we did at Milledgeville.’

(See 2 Sherman's Memoirs, pages 223, 227-8.)

We say proof of his ordering (or permitting, which is just as bad) the destruction of Columbia is overwhelming. (See report of Chancellor Carroll, chairman of a committee appointed to investigate the facts about this in General Bradley T. Johnson's Life of Johnson, from which several of these extracts are taken.) Our people owe General Johnson a debt of gratitude for this and his other contributions [116] to Confederate history. And Sherman had the effrontery to write in his Memoirs that in his official report of this conflagration, he ‘distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and (says) confess I did so pointedly to shake the faith of his people in him.’

（2 Sherman's Memoirs, page 287.)

The man who confessed to the world that he made this false charge with such a motive needs no characterization at the hands of this committee.

General Sherman set out to ‘make Georgia howl,’ and preferred, as he said, to ‘march through that State smashing things to the sea.’ He wrote to Grant after his march through South Carolina, saying:

The people of South Carolina, instead of feeding Lee's army, will now call on Lee to feed them.

（2 Memoirs, page 298.) So complete had been his destruction in that State. He also says:

Having utterly ruined Columbia, the right wing began its march northward, &c.

（2 Memoirs, page 288.)

On the 21st of February, 1865, only a few days after the burning of Columbia, General Hampton wrote to General Sherman, charging him with being responsible for its destruction, and other outrages, in which he said, among other things:

You permitted, if you have not ordered, the commission of these offences against humanity and the rules of war. You fired into the city of Columbia without a word of warning. After its surrender by the mayor, who demanded protection to private property, you laid the whole city in ashes, leaving amid its ruins thousands of old men and helpless women and children, who are likely to perish of starvation and exposure. Your line of march can be traced by the lurid light of burning houses, and in more than one household there is an agony far more bitter than death.

The Indian scalped his victim, regardless of age or sex, but with all his barbarity, he always respected the person of his female captives. Your soldiers, more savage than the Indian, insult those whose natural protectors are absent.

（3 Great Civil War, 601.)