William Tecumseh Sherman Short Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

View all William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

I can make this march, and I will make Georgia howl!

William Tecumseh Sherman

The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.

William Tecumseh Sherman

There is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.

William Tecumseh Sherman

The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.

A reference to war correspondents

William Tecumseh Sherman

We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash — and it may be well that we become so hardened.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.

William Tecumseh Sherman

We do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and, if it involves the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.

William Tecumseh Sherman

If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.

William Tecumseh Sherman