War is Still Hell
How General William Tecumseh Sherman Proved His Civil War Critics Wrong
If the Union general were alive today, he would hardly have to change one word of his “War is Hell” speech.
In September 1864, Sherman gave orders for the city of Atlanta to be evacuated and burned. Despite appeals from the citizens of Atlanta, including reminders that there were elderly and pregnant women whom it would be difficult and even perilous to move, Sherman’s decision was final.
He explained himself to the mayor and council members of the city.
Atlanta was about to be attacked. Sherman’s goal was not mayhem but timing. He wanted to put an end to an interminable and unacceptable level of bloodshed.
Before being appointed to a generalship by President Abraham Lincoln, Sherman was a San Francisco banker, and for a while, like the president, a lawyer. While a graduate of West Point, he was undistinguished until the Civil War when he became one of the ablest Union generals.
His march on Atlanta in May 1864, is generally regarded as the first example of the use of total war in the modern era. It led to the end of hostilies less than one year later on April 9, 1865.
The campaign involved a series of battles in which Sherman’s forces gradually closed in on Atlanta. Four months later, on September 2, 1864, Atlanta fell to Union forces under Sherman.
Below is a letter Sherman wrote to the town fathers of Atlanta who asked him to resist storming the city. They believed the incursion was unfair and would be devastating to innocent civilians. Sherman took the time to explain the rationale, and instructed them to stop wasting time and get about safeguarding the lives of their people.
General Sherman to the Mayor of Atlanta:
I give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the cause, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people have a deep interest.
To secure peace, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country.
To stop war, we must defeat the armies which are arrayed against the laws that all must respect and obey.
To defeat those armies, we must prepare to reach them using the arms and instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose.
Now, I know the vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of military operations from this quarter; and, therefore, deem it wise and prudent to prepare.
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into their country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
The use of Atlanta for warlike purposes in inconsistent with its character as a home for families.
I assert that our military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer to make their exodus as easy and comfortable as possible.
I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.
Instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may.
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.
You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better.
Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace.
Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow peace once more to settle over your old homes.
Yours in haste,
— W.T. Sherman, Major-General commanding
