Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/319

Rh resulted from ill-advised engagements fought in deference to public clamor.

Sherman was, not without reason, the most emphatic in his strictures against newspapers. Early in his career. Northern journals kept harping on his "insanity", and so desperate were the general's feelings because of this abuse that he, like Grant, contemplated resignation. A Cincinnati editor, when asked why he repeated the slanders against Sherman, declared that it was a news item of the day and that he had to keep up with the times.

Sherman had only disdain for the "cheap flattery of the press", which aspirants for public applause could secure by favors shown, at public cost, to correspondents. In his various campaigns the general did what he could to eliminate that class of men "who will not fight, but who follow our army to pick up news for sale, and who are more used to bolster up idle and worthless officers than to notice the hard-working and meritorious whose modesty is equal to their courage". This puffing of some officers and pulling down of others plays into the hands of the enemy, he said, by sowing dissension, and "encourages discontent among the officers who find themselves abused by men seemingly under the influence of officers high in command".

In an indignant letter to his brother, Sherman declared:

Again he exclaimed:

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 our secret combinations and movements against our enemy? The press. … 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? … 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 … whereby we could turn … all the strategic points on the main river, and the busy agents of the press