would be
"statesmanship" anyway, even if it was not "war." Sherman was not
a man to be "left out," no matter what might happen.

SHERMAN'S PURPOSE IN MARCHING TO THE SEA

But Sherman's good fortune was almost equal to his strategy and
his skill in marching an army. Although, as fate would have it,
he did not have a chance to assist in the capture of Lee, Thomas
had failed to obey his instructions to pursue Hood into the Gulf
states, whereby the fragments of that "broken and dispirited" army,
as Thomas well called it, were gathered together, under their old,
able commander, General Johnston, and appeared in Sherman's front
to oppose his northward march, and finally to capitulate to him at
"Bennett's House" in North Carolina. The remnant of that army
which Sherman had disdained to pursue into Alabama or Mississippi
had traveled a thousand miles to surrender to him! No story of
fiction could be more romantic than that fact of real war history.

It was not necessary for Sherman to produce his letter of November
6, 1864; but I have quoted from it here very largely to show that
there was no possible contingency which his far-reaching mind had
not foreseen and provided for.

Sherman's plan was so firmly fixed in his own mind, almost from
the very start, that he was determined to adhere to it in spite of
all possible opposition, even including the adverse opinions and
advice of General Grant. Hence, as was his habit in such cases,
he invented every imaginable reason, without regard to their logical
or illogical character, to convince others of the soundness of his
conclusion. But the logic of the real reasons which convinced his
own mind is, when the chaff is all winnowed away, as clear and
bright as the golden grain.

In view of the great strategical project which Sherman had mapped
out for himself and which required a formidable army, and of his
responsibility for what might be the result of operations against
Hood in Tennessee, it was a difficult and delicate question to
decide what force he should take with him, and what send back. My
own belief always has been, and is now, that in view of his exact
knowledge of Thomas's character and habits of thought and action,
Sherman ought to have sent back another corps of veteran troops,
or else have waited to see that Thomas was actually prepared to
cope with Hood, preferably the latter, before going so far away
that he could not rend