General Sherman served in the Union Army between 1861 and 1865, leading many important battles such as Vicksburg, Atlanta, and the March to the Sea. Although not particularly enlightened in general, he was outspoken about his views against slavery, as is evident in this excerpt. Unfortunately, his social conscience didn’t extend to Native Americans, whom he called “savages.” His view on the Native genocide was enthusiastic support.
Excerpt from ‘Old Shady, with a Moral”
364 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.
concluded fact. I saw the whole process of emancipation from
beginning to end. I have attended the auction sales of slaves in
the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, of which Colonel
Mudge, of Illinois, was the proprietor and landlord. I have seen
old men, women, and children put up at auction and sold like
animals; the father to one, mother to another, children to a third,
and so on. I have seen young girls in new calico dresses in
spected by men buyers as critically as would be a horse by a pur
chaser?eyes, hair, teeth, limbs, muscles, etc., etc.?and have seen
spirited bidding for a wench of handsome form and figure by men
of respectable standing. Such things were then common?not
so now ; and say what we may, we are more the creatures of habit
than of original thought.
My firm belief is that domestic slavery at the South before the
war was not cruel and inhuman. As a rule the family servants
were treated as well as the average hired servants of to-day?but
the ” field hands ” were regarded and treated as animals ; and it
is one of the most extraordinary anomalies in political history,
that the owners of these slaves, who were not one -twentieth of
the whole population, should have ruled their fellow citizens with
despotic severity. They controlled the fashions of their neighbors,
dictated to the counties or parishes and States, and were even ar
rogant to the United States of America in Congress assembled.
Looking back on the condition of facts in 1861, we are simply
amazed that such things could be.