William Tecumseh Sherman on Georgia (U.S. state)

“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.”

“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.”

“By the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be... Allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes at Atlanta.”

“Still on the whole the campaign is the best, cleanest and most satisfactory of the war. I have received the most fulsome praise of all men from the President down, but I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told of so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.”