A LETTER FROM GEN. SHERMAN.

Evening Post, Issue 102, 7 June 1865, Page 2

A LETTER FROM GEN. S HERMAN.

The following letter from Gen. Sherman has just been published in the New York papers. As will be seen it is dated June of last year, and was, consequently, written before the march through Georgia bad taken place: — Head-quarters Military Division of the Mississippi, in the Field, near Marietta, Georgia, 30th June, 1864. Mrs. Anna Gilman. Bowcn, Baltimore, Maryland. Dear Madam— Your welcome letter of

the 18th of June came to m; here amid the sound of battle, and, as you say, little did I dream, when I knew you playing as a school-girl on Sullivan's Island beach, that I should control a vast army, pointing, like the swarm of Alaric, towards the plains of the South. Why, oh why, is this ? If I know my own heart, it beats as warmly as ever toward those kind and generous families that greeted us with such warm hospitalit}' in days long past, but I still present in memory; and to-day, were Frank and Mrs. Porcher, and Eliza Gilman, and Mary Lamb and Margaret Blake, the Barksdales, the Qnashin*, the Pryors, indeed any and all of our cherished circle, their children, or even their children's children, to come to me as of old, the stern feelings of duty and conviction would mcli as snow before the genial sun, and I believe [ would sttip my own children that they might be sheltered ; and yet they call me barbarian, Vandal, and monster, and all the epithets that language can invent that are significant of malignity and hate. All I pretend to say, on earth as in heaven, man must submit to some arbiter. He must not throw off his allegiance to his government or his G"d without just reason and cause. The South had no cause — not even a pretext. Indeed, by her unjustifiable course she has thrown away the proud history of the past, and laid open her fair country to the tread of devastating war. She bantered and bullied us to the conflict. Had we declined battle, America would have sunk back, coward and craven, meriting the contempt of all mankind. As a nation, we were forced to accept battle, and that once begun, it has gone on till the war has assumed proportions at which even we, in the hurly burly, sometimes stand aghast. I would not subjugate the South in the sense so offensively assumed, but I would make every citizen of the land obey the common law, submit to the same that we do — no worse, no better -our equals and not our superiors. I know, and you know, that there were young men in our da) r , now no longer young, but who control their fellows, who assumed to the gentlemen of the South a superiority of courage and manhood, and boasting! y defied us of Northern birth to arms. God knows how reluctantly we accepted the issue, but once the issue joined, like in other ages, the Northern race, though slow to anger, once aroused, are m/»r<s terrible than the more inflammable oi the South. Even yet my heart bleeds when I see the carnage of battle, the desolation ot homes, the bitter anguish of families ; but the very moment the men of the South say that instead oi appealing to war they should have appealed to reason, to oar Congress, to our courts, to religion, and to the experience of history — then we will say, peace, peace ! go back to your point of error, and resume your places as American citizens with all their proud heritages. Whether I shall live to s^e this period is problematical, but you may, and may tell your mothers and sisters that I never forget one land-look or greeting, or ever wish to efface its remembrance; but in putting on the armour of war I did it that our common country should not perish in infamy and dishonour. lam married, have a wife and six children living in Lancaster, Ohio. My course has been an eventful one. But I hope, when the clouds of anger and passion are dispersed, and truth emerges bright and clear, you and all who knew me in early years will not blush that we were once dear friends. Tell Kliza for me that 1 hope she may live to realise the doctrine of " secession " as monstrous in our civil code as disobedience was in the divine law. And should the fortunes of war ever bring you or your sisters, or any of our old clique, under the shelter of my authority, I do not believe they will have cause to regret it. Give my love to your children, and the assurance of my respects to your honoured husband. — Truly, W. T. Shebman.