CAMP BEFORE VICKSBURG,
Feb. 18, 1863.
My Dear Brother:
. . . We have reproached the South for arbitrary conduct in
coercing their people — at last we find we must imitate their example. We have
denounced their tyranny in filling their armies with conscripts, and now we
must follow her example. We have denounced their tyranny in suppressing freedom
of speech and the press, and here too in time we must follow their example. The
longer it is deferred the worse it becomes. Who gave notice of McDowell's
movement on Manassas, and enabled Johnston so to reinforce Beauregard that our
army was defeated? The press. Who gave notice of the movement on Vicksburg? The
press. Who has prevented all secret combinations and movements against our
enemy? The press. . . .
In the South this powerful machine was at once scotched and
used by the rebel government, but at the North was allowed to go free. What are
the results? After arousing the passions of the people till the two great
sections hate each other with a hate hardly paralleled in history, it now
begins to stir up sedition at home, and even to encourage mutiny in our armies.
What has paralyzed the Army of the Potomac? Mutual jealousies kept alive by the press.
What has enabled the enemy to combine so as to hold Tennessee after we have
twice crossed it with victorious armies? What defeats and will continue to
defeat our best plans here and elsewhere? The press. I cannot pick up a paper
but tells of our situation here, in the mud, sickness, and digging a canal in
which we have little faith. But our officers attempt secretly to cut two other
channels — one into Yazoo by an old pass and one through Lake Providence into
Tensas, Black, Red, &c., whereby we could turn not only Vicksburg, Port
Hudson, but also Grand (Gulf), Natchez, Ellis Cliff, Fort Adams and all the strategic
points on the main river, and the busy agents of the press follow up and
proclaim to the world the whole thing, and instead of surprising our enemy we
find him felling trees and blocking passages that would without this have been
in our possession, and all the real effects of surprise are lost. I say with
the press unfettered as now we are defeated to the end of time. ‘Tis folly to
say the people must have news. Every soldier can and does write to his family
and friends, and all have ample opportunities for so doing, and this pretext
forms no good reason why agents of the press should reveal prematurely all our
plans and designs. We cannot prevent it. Clerks of steamboats, correspondents
in disguise or openly attend each army and detachment, and presto! appear in
Memphis and St. Louis minute accounts of our plans and designs. These reach
Vicksburg by telegraph from Hernando and Holly Springs before we know of it.
The only two really successful military strokes out here have succeeded because
of the absence of newspapers, or by throwing them off the trail. Halleck had to
make a simulated attack on Columbus to prevent the press giving notice of his
intended move against Forts Henry and Donelson. We succeeded in reaching the
Post of Arkansas before the correspondents could reach the papers.
Affectionately,
SHERMAN.
SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman letters: correspondence between
General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 191-3
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