William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

William Tecumseh Sherman shares blunt, gritty war talk that reveals his hardened mindset.

66 quotes

1. You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! ... You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth - right at your doors!

2. I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash - and it may be well that we become so hardened.

3. Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.

4. Hold the fort! I am coming!

5. I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting - its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

6. War is Hell.

7. I can make this march, and I will make Georgia howl!

8. I hereby state, and mean all I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for President; that if nominated by either party I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve.

9. I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.

10. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know 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. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling.

11. 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.

12. 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. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or title of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. 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 into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

13. An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every change in the rules which impairs this principle weakens the army.

14. Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

15. Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and defeat.

16. Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other always.

17. I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

18. I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco.

19. I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.

20. I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank that I want.

21. I make up my mind from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't ask for their vote or solicit their opinions.

22. I think I understand what military fame is: to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.

23. I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.

24. If forced to choose between the White House and the penitentiary for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

25. If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

26. If you get blown up I don't care!

27. My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

28. The carping and bickering of political factions in the nation's capitol reminds me of two pelicans quarreling over a dead fish.

29. The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.

30. The scenes on this field would cure anyone of war.

31. This war differs from other wars in this particular: We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make young and old, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

32. Vox populi, vox humbug!

33. War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

34. War is, at its best, barbarism.

35. Profile at Comprehensive American Civil War site with forums

36. Profile at The American Experience (PBS)

37. U.S. Army Center of Military History

38. Works by William Tecumseh Sherman at Project Gutenberg

39. General William Tecumseh Sherman in Georgia

40. William Tecumseh Sherman in California

41. California military history

42. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman online

43. Digitized collection of letters between William Sherman and his brother Senator John Sherman

44. Sherman Thackara Collection of Letters at the Digital Library @ Villanova University

45. William T. Sherman's First Campaign of Destruction' Article by Buck T. Foster in Military History Quarterly

46. Profile at Find a Grave

47. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.

48. The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.

49. War is at best barbarism.

50. You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.

51. We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.

52. War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

53. You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm.

54. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

55. To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march.

56. I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

57. Oh, it is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization.

58. A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.

59. I'm a damned sight smarter than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell.

60. After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.

61. We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.

62. The way to success is strategically along the way of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance.

63. If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

64. The young bloods of the South; sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard players and sportsmen, men who never did any work and never will. War suits them.. They are splendid riders, first rate shots and utterly reckless. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.

65. Grant stood by me when I was crazy...

66. He belonged to that army known as invincible in peace, invisible in war.