Civil War quotes of the week:
” I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” – Union Major General William Techumseh Sherman, letter to Grant trying to persuade him to remove restraints on his troops’ behavior, October 9, 1864
“The destruction could hardly have been worse, if Atlanta had been a volcano in eruption and the molten lava had flowed in a stream sixty miles wide and five times as long.” – Union soldier, recalling Sherman’s March to the Sea
“One Michigan sergeant conceded getting swept up in the inflammatory madness, even though he knew it was unauthorized: “As I was about to fire one place a little girl about ten years old came to me and said, ‘Mr. Soldier you would not burn our house would you? If you did where would we live?’ She looked at me with such a pleading look that … I dropped the torch and walked away.” – New York Times
Yet, when Sherman entered the city, it was mostly intact. It was only later, when the troops started unauthorized burning, that the real destruction began.
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