The December 10, 1864 issue of Harper’s Weekly (at Son of the South was impressed by General Sherman’s operations in Georgia. Here’s an excerpt:
SHERMAN’S MARCH.
THE campaign of General SHERMAN is striking and daring, but not more so than his advance from Chattanooga, of which it is a continuation. At Atlanta, with a slender line of railroad nearly two hundred miles long, exposed to the forays of the rebel cavalry, his position was uncertain. The advantages were not balanced by the risks. He has therefore made it useless for either party, and destroying as he goes, he carries a line of fire straight across the surface of the rebel section, cutting a terrible swath to the sea.
General SHERMAN does not play at war. ” War is cruelty,” he says, ” and you can not refine it,” and he believes that they who have brought war upon the country will justly feel its sharpest edge. Yet he only is wise who sees in SHERMAN’S flashing sword the true olive branch. When the deluded Southern people feel that the Government is strong enough to pierce their section where it will; that the national armies can march and countermarch at their pleasure; that the shrewdest plans of their own Generals are outwitted and baffled; and those Generals perceive that they have lost their supreme military advantage of interior lines, a moral victory is won. …
“How Sherman’s boys fixed the railroad” (Library of Congress)
