Are you running for office?

Harry

Let me say I appreciate all the work you must have done to find all these quotes. I don’t know that anyone would argue Sherman was a great humanitarian, though – the arguments seem to revolve around (1) how severe was the destruction/civilian impact in Georgia, (2) was Sherman’s policy military necessity, and/or (3) did it shorten the War.

No question where you stand!

Here are some Sherman quotes:
 
“To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better. Satan and the rebellious saints of Heaven were allowed a continuous existence in hell merely to swell their punishment. To such as would rebel against a Government so mild and just as ours was in peace, a punishment equal would not be unjustified.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“There is a class of people [in the South], men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“The Government of the United States has in north Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war – to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything, because they cannot deny that war does exist there, and war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully too, and another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many many people, with less pertinacity than the South, have been wiped out of national existence. To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and forbearance; but to the petulant and persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“The United States has the right, and…the…power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain. We will remove and destroy every obstacle – if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“We are in our enemy’s country, and I act accordingly…the war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.”
– Union General William T. Sherman, writing to his wife in 1862
 
“The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”
– Union General William T. Sherman
 
“I profess to fight for but one single purpose, viz, to sustain a Government capable of vindicating it’s just and rightful authority, independent of niggers, cotton, money, or any earthly interest!”
– Union General William T. Sherman, Official Records, Vol XXX, pt. IV, p. 235