Sherman’s Thoughts On The War During The Atlanta Campaign

There are few topics from the civil war that are still as divisive as Sherman’s Atlanta campaign from May to September of 1864.  This divide over the merits and actions during the campaign still exists today.  Author Noah Trudeau summed up this divide best when he wrote, “Everyone knows Sherman’s March.   Just to say the words is to select from a list of mental images of destructiveness, raw power, civil terror, and youthful adventure whose choice depends a great deal on where on encountered Civil War 101.”[i]  The tactics and battle strategies during the campaign are well documented, but the opinions Sherman expressed in his correspondence during campaign are enlightening.  They express his views on the causes for the continuation of the war, and the justifications for Union military action in the south as well. 

              

          Of particular interest is a letter showing General Sherman’s thoughts on the press and its effects on the war as a whole.  In a letter to his wife Ellen from June 9^th 1864 Sherman does not hold back on his negative views of the press.  He wrote, “The Press caused the war-the Press gives it point and bitterness, and as long as the Press, both north and south is allowed to fan the flames of discord and hostility so long must the war last-The Southern Press is just the same, and as long as people look to the Press for Truth and counsel so long will the war and anarchy prevail.”[ii]  This statement from Sherman is interesting for its timelessness.  This quote is something that was a complaint of military people far beyond the Civil War.  In the Vietnam War and others, complaints were often raised about the press and the effects it had on war efforts.  The argument from Sherman is obviously different than those from Vietnam, but the complaint of the press causing a divisive element within society still exists today.

             

        A letter to Emily Hoffman from June 9^th 1864 shows a very strong unionist argument for the war from Sherman.  He does not speak to the injustice of slavery but rather the issue of breaking with the Union.  He wrote, “The People of the South were bound to us by a Solemn Compact which they have broken, and they taunted us with cowardice and poltroonery, which had we borne with submission, we would have passed down to history as a craven and coward race.  We have rights in the south, in its ruins and vacant lands, the right to come and go when we please and these rights as a brave people we cannot and will not surrender on compulsion.”[iii]  This is a revealing statement to the resentment felt by staunch unionists.  For the majority of northerners that supported the Union war effort, it was the breaking with the constitution and the union itself that was the greatest slap in the face not slavery.  Sherman’s remarks are enlightening in that even as late as 1864 the scars of having the union broken were still as fresh for Sherman as they were at the beginning of the war.  His statements also bring to bear the common held belief among many war supporters in the north that the south gave up its rights the moment they left the Union and fired on Fort Sumter.  Even as the fighting was going on in Georgia Sherman’s thoughts were still on causes of the war within the country and the rights he and many in the north felt no longer existed for the south because of the war.   

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[i] Trudeau, Noah.  Southern Storm: Sherman’s March To The Sea.  New York: Harper Perennial, p x.

[ii] Sherman, William.  Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T Sherman.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, p 643.

[iii] Ibid, p 642.