Beschreibung:

SHERMAN, WILLIAM TECUMSEH, Major General. Autograph letter signed ("W.T. Sherman") TO ADMIRAL JOHN A. DAHLGREN in Washington; Headquarters...In the Field, Goldsboro, N.C., 5 April 1865. 3 pages, 4to, on Sherman's military imprinted stationery. FOUR DAYS BEFORE APPOMATTOX, SHERMAN LOOKS BACK ON HIS CAROLINAS CAMPAIGN "Dear Admiral, I was in hopes when we reached a Port [after his inland campaigns in the Carolinas] I would find you, but the wind and waves of fortune carried me beyond your jurisdiction and landed me in Admiral [D.D.] Porter's Dominions.... But I hear you are relieved at your own request and gone home. I should have much liked to have seen you and talked over the symptoms which our Patient [the city of] Charleston exhibited as I touched one by one her vital chords with my blunt Army. [While Sherman's army never occupied South Carolina's capital in his march north from Savannah to Goldsboro, most of Charleston's lines of supply and communication were cut.] You see I was right in not wasting time on Fort Moultrie [north of Charleston harbor], and had Admrl. Porter wanted...I could have taken Wilmington, Fort Fisher and all without a blow. There was no power even [Robert E.] Lee & [Joseph E.] Johnston combined that could prevent me reaching Fayetteville N.C....No enemy could remain down in the Right of Cape Fear River. I told Admiral Porter that he had stolen my thunder. But on the whole we all have reasons to be satisfied....The majesty of our Govt. is beginning to be felt and Generals will pause when they think of Charleston ere they dare raise their hand in anger against the Emblem of our Nationality. "I cannot even go to Charleston to weep over its Ruins - where many a happy day of my early life was spent - nor do I feel inclined to go, but its lesson will stand long after you and I are gone, eloquent in its sadness." Sherman closes by expressing a wish that "you may soon realize another hope which I know you cherish, to go to that other proud but doomed city [Richmond] , and remove their all that is left to Earth of your son Ulric. May he rest soon in Peace...." [Col. Ulric Dahlgren, the Admiral's son, had been killed in action during the Kilpatrich-Dahlgren raid on Richmond, in March 1864.] Charleston, capital of the first state to pass a secession resolution in 1861 and where armed hostilities broke out over Fort Sumter, was widely regarded as the city where the rebellion originated. Sherman's march from Savannah to Fayette and on to Goldsboro forced the Confederates to evacuate Charleston; the campaign is considered a classic one. "the Grand Army of the West had marched 425 miles in fifty days...and [it] must be reckoned a much greater achievement than the more famous march through Georgia, which by comparison was a mere pleasure trip. As a triumph of physical endurance and mechanical skill on the part of the army and inflexible resolutin in the general, it stands unrivalled in the history of modern war; and has as direct an influence upon the final issue of the campaign round Richmond as if it had conducted within sound of Lee's guns" (Wood and Edmunds, The Civil War in the United States, p.465-66). (2)