How General William T. Sherman Anticipated the Foxination of the Media Escapes Me.

[NNadir]

2. He was certainly an interesting figure. I have a fairly extensive Civil War library, and have been a CSPAN history...

...junkie, which always has a Civil War talk at 2:00 on Saturdays. (Many of the talks are available online.)

Some years back I read Marzalek's biography of Sherman, cover to cover. (I seldom read any book cover to cover. (It is interesting that Marzalek is the administrator of the US Grant papers at the University of Mississippi. For some time those papers were held in Illinois. Grant's rise to fame took place largely in Mississippi, so there's that.)

I never read Sherman's memoirs, although I have read Grant's in excerpts.

In many ways, I think Sherman was not necessarily a great tactician, but he was, famously, a strategic genius. Both Grant and Lincoln merely acquiesced to the March to the Sea, a point that Lincoln acknowledged when he wrote him a message after the capture of Savannah.

I think he was a little bit mad, but yes, I agree, his quotes are colorful. I have always enjoyed reading his responses to Hood's letter during the Siege of Atlanta, followed by his letter to the Mayor, after the capture when he ordered the city evacuated.

I often keep the bolded locution to the Mayor about the thunderstorm handy for theft, although seldom called upon to use it:

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

Letter of William T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun, E.E. Rawson, and S.C. Wells, September 12, 1864