July 24, 1862 (Friday): "In haste, but in kindness.."

                                                 
                                                  General William T. Sherman

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE TENNESSEE, Memphis, Tenn., July 24, 1862.

SAMUEL SAWYER, Esq., Union Appeal:
    DEAR SIR: It is well I should come to an understanding at once with the press as well as the people of Memphis, which I am ordered to command, which means control for the interest, welfare, and glory of the whole Government of the United States.
    Personalities in a newspaper are wrong and criminal. Thus, though you meant to be complimentary in your sketch of my career, you make more than a dozen mistakes of facts, which I need not correct as I don't desire my biography till I am dead. It is enough for the world to know that I live and am a soldier, bound to obey the orders of my superiors, the laws of my country, and to venerate its Constitution; that when discretion is given me I should exercise it and account for it to my superiors.
    I regard your article headed "City Council, General Sherman, and Colonel Slack" as highly indiscreet. Of course no person who can jeopardize the safety of Memphis can remain here, much less exercise public authority, but I must take time and be satisfied that injustice be not done.
    If the parties named be the men you describe, the fact should not be published to put them on their guard and encourage their escape. The evidence should be carefully collected, authenticated, and then placed in my hands.
    But your statement of facts is entirely qualified in my mind and loses its force by your negligence of very simple facts within your reach as to myself. I had been in the army six years in 1846; am not related at all to any member of Lucas, Turner & Co.; was associated with them six years instead of two; am not colonel of the Fifteenth Infantry, but of the Thirteenth.
    Your correction this morning, as to the acknowledged error as to General Denver, is still erroneous.
General M. L. Smith did not belong to my command a Shiloh at all, but was transferred to me just before reaching Corinth.
    I mention these facts in kindness, to show you how wrong it is to speak of persons.
    I will attend to the judge, mayor, board of aldermen, and policemen all in good time.
    Use your influence to re-establish system, order, government. You may rest easy that no military commander is going to neglect internal safety as well as to guard against external danger, but to do right requires time, and move patience than I usually possess is necessary. If I find the press of Memphis actuated by high principle and a sole devotion to their country I will be their best friend; but if I find them personal, abusive, dealing in innuendoes and hints at a blind venture, and looking to their selfish aggrandizement and fame, then they had better look out, for I regard such as greater enemies to their country and mankind than the men who, from a mistaken sense of State pride, have taken muskets and fight us about as hard as we care about.
    In haste, but in kindness, yours, &c.,


W. T. SHERMAN,
Major-General.

Official Records, Series I., Vol. 17, Part 2, Page 116.

Sherman had no fondness for the press, no doubt from experience.  Earlier in the war numerous papers, many in the North, found fault with his conduct and printed rumors as to his emotional stability.  It is notable Sherman here is much kinder to a newspaperman from the South than he normally would be with those of the North.