Sherman, William Tecumseh | "he should be double ironed & put under Guard"

Sherman, William Tecumseh

Autograph letter signed ("W. T. Sherman Maj. Gen. Comdg.") as commander of the Army of the Tennessee, to Brigadier General Hugh Thompson Reid ("the Commanding Officer at Columbus, Kentucky"), expressing his frustration

2 pages (247 x 195 mm) on a sheet of ruled paper, "Hd. Qrs. Dept. of the Tenn.," Vicksburg, 2 February 1864; torn and repaired at left margin. Matted, framed, and glazed.

Sherman vents his blistering anger at the failure of a cavalry group to move as commanded. "Gen. Tuttle is just arrived and tells me that it was rumored in Memphis that the cavalry of Gen. A. J. Smith's command which should have reached Memphis on the Riverroad weeks ago, had returned to Union City unable to pass the Ohio. 

"I hope for the sake of common decency this is not true. If knowing that the movements of the armies at Chattanooga, at Mobile and Vicksburg depended on a simultaneous movement of cavalry, the officer commanding that cavalry has turned back from any cause, he should be double ironed & put under Guard. Death would be a mild punishment for him. … It is a disgrace to the cavalry arm of the service that they can't cross a creek. Let them keep more to the Eastward about Paris & come along down by Purdy. … Of course the use of that cavalry is lost to us in this movement and now they shall keep out & learn the country & how to cross a creek, and to travel without wagon a distance of over two hundred miles.

"If the officers of that cavalry can't bring it through, detail some good volunteers to do it."