Sherman’s famous words
Originally published June 2023 · pp. 26–27
Sherman’s famous words We’re all familiar with General Sherman’s famous remark on the hellish nature of war. On August 11, 1880, Cump was addressing a big crowd of G.A.R. veterans at the fairgrounds of Columbus, Ohio. It was an outdoor event, and it was raining. Sherman escorted President Hayes to the speaker’s stand; the
president delivered a short speech standing under an umbrella. The drenched veterans, however, wanted more. “Sherman! Speech! Uncle Billy!” they cried. The general stepped forth. “Fellow soldiers: My speech is not written,” he began; “I came as part escort to the President, and not for the purpose of speaking to you.” No matter; Cump held forth. The veterans’ reunion was being covered by a reporter for the Ohio State Journal. He must have gotten to writing quickly, for the Journal carried an article on the event the very next day, August 12. The correspondent had jotted down what he thought were the general’s words, for the Journal published what looked like Sherman’s prepared text. Included, of course, was this: “There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”1 There’s another Shermanism that’s harder to document. For three weeks after Confederates abandoned Atlanta,
Gen. John B. Hood’s Army of Tennessee lay encamped at Palmetto, twenty-five miles southwest of Atlanta. Even after the demoralizing loss of the city, Hood’s army remained strong. Returns for September 20 showed 47,431 officers and men present for duty.2 But what to do with it? Sherman’s much larger force rested comfortably in Atlanta’s fortifications and could not be assailed. For Hood to remain idle would further dishearten the men and provoke desertion. The only alternative—Hood’s strategic problem was that he had so few of them—was to launch an offensive campaign into north Georgia and perhaps lure the Yankees into an open-field fight. If they didn’t cooperate, Hood could move into north Alabama, maybe Tennessee. On September 22, Hood announced his idea for an advance in a telegram to General Bragg, President Davis’ advisor. Three days later, when the president visited the army at Palmetto, Hood and Davis discussed the forward movement. The president wired Bragg in Richmond and informed him of Hood’s proposed raid. Bragg objected, though, doubtless recalling his earlier failure in Kentucky: “Raids are injurious to our troops and unprofitable in results.” Undaunted, Davis then
Gen. William T. Sherman on horseback at Federal Fort No. 7 in Atlanta, Ga. (Library of Congress)
traveled to Montgomery and let Dick Taylor in on the plan. (Taylor didn’t like it either.)3 Hood got his army marching north on September 29. Sherman picked up quickly on the Rebels’ move and warned Federal garrison commanders at Rome and Allatoona. Sherman himself followed with several infantry corps. Because Hood’s troops had cut the telegraph, Sherman’s signalmen had to wig-wag the commander at Allatoona, Brig. Gen John M. Corse: “General Sherman says hold fast. We are coming.” …except that he wasn’t. When, on October 5, Confederate Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French’s division, 3,200 strong, attacked Corse’s garrison of 2,000, they were repulsed in a 3 1/2-hour fight.4 Sherman was at Kennesaw Mountain, fourteen miles away.5 As Sherman’s biographer John Marszalek writes, the general “supposedly signaled ‘Hold the fort! For I am coming’” (italics added). He notes also that Sherman never recalled sending such a message, though conceding, “he probably said something like that.6 Somehow the story got to a Northern hymn writer, Philip Bliss (1838–1876), who was a contemporary of fellow hymnwriter Ira Sankey and a friend of Chicago preacher D. L Moody. In 1870 he composed “Hold the Fort” with this chorus: “Hold the fort, for I am coming,/Jesus signals still,/ Wave the answer back to heaven,–/By thy grace, we will.” So by the composer’s magical hand, William T. Sherman metaphorically becomes, well, Jesus. Cump, ever the egotist, would be smiling. In 1887 he joked that even though he couldn’t remember saying “hold the fort,” he conceded, “It makes little difference and we had better allow Moody and Sanky’s hymn of ‘Hold the Fort, for I am Coming’ to stand uncontradicted.”7 Sherman even jumbled the famous hymn’s composer. It was Philip Bliss, not Sankey and Moody, who musically enshrined the conqueror of Atlanta. Music, though, can get you in trouble. I remember, a few decades ago, a Democratic presidential candidate coming to Georgia. At a campaign rally, his band director blundered
CivilWarNews.com by playing a tune he thought would play well with the local constituency: “While We Were Marching Through Georgia.” White Southerners took offense: we remembered this was an air centered on Sherman’s infamous march through our state. The bandleader was so informed, and the tune was dropped from the group’s repertoire. Endnotes 1. Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1932), 635-37. Stephen Davis, Into Tennessee and Failure: John Bell Hood (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2020), 30. Ibid., 44-47, 68-69. Brad Butkovich, The Battle of Allatoona Pass (Charleston: History Press, 2014), 95-132 passim. John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (New York: Free Press, 1993),
-
- Ibid., 291. 7. Ibid., 291-92. Stephen Davis of Atlanta has been a Civil Warrior since the fourth grade. At Margaret Mitchell Elementary, in the school auditorium hung the oil painting of Vivien Leigh as the imperious Scarlett O’Hara that Selznick commissioned for his famous film. Some years back, when visiting Sherman’s homeplace in Lancaster, Ohio, his host (Dave
Roth of Blue & Gray) introduced Steve as visiting from the city that Sherman burned. The horrified docent stammered, “Should I call the police?” Note: “Cump,” by the way, was Sherman’s nickname from boyhood. In the first edition of Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War (1986), the biographical entry for Sherman contains this slip: “Sherman, called ‘Chump’ by his friends….” The typo has been corrected, but we Southerners delight in the miscue.
Photographs from the Original Article
Captions and credits appear in the article text as originally printed.