s state too hot for you to
live in. I know you. I know how you hide in areas, how you talk sedition
in private, how you have made money out of other men's misery. And, what
is more, I can prove that you have had traitorous dealings with the
Confederacy. General Sherman has been good enough to call himself a
friend of mine, and if he prosecutes you for your dealings in Memphis,
you will get a term in a Government prison, You ought to be hung. Colonel
Carvel has shown you the door. Now go."

And Mr, Hopper went.

CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE LETTERS OF MAJOR STEPHEN BRICE

Of the Staff of General Sherman on the March to the Sea, and on the March
from Savannah Northward.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI GOLDSBORO, N.C. MARCH
24, 1865

DEAR MOTHER: The South Carolina Campaign is a thing of the past. I pause
as I write these words--they seem so incredible to me. We have marched
the four hundred and twenty-five miles in fifty days, and the General
himself has said that it is the longest and most important march ever
made by an organized army in a civilized country. I know that you will
not be misled by the words "civilized country." Not until the history of
this campaign is written will the public realize the wide rivers and all
but impassable swamps we have crossed with our baggage trains and
artillery. The roads (by courtesy so called) were a sea of molasses and
every mile of them has had to be corduroyed. For fear of worrying you I
did not write you from Savannah how they laughed at us for starting at
that season of the year. They said we would not go ten miles, and I most
solemnly believe that no one but "Uncle Billy" and an army organized and
equipped by him could have gone ten miles. Nothing seems to stop him. You
have probably remarked in the tone of my letters ever since we left
Kingston for the sea, a growing admiration for "my General."

It seems very strange that this wonderful tactician can be the same man I
met that day going to the Arsenal in the streetcar, and again at Camp
Jackson. I am sure that history will give him a high place among the
commanders of the world. Certainly none was ever more tireless than he.
He never fights a battle when it can be avoided, and his march into
Columbia while threatening Charleston and Augusta was certainly a master
stroke of strategy.

I think his simplicity his most remarkable trait. You should see him as
he rides through the army, an erect figure