Sadly, this is all too true.
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It is also irrelevant. Any state that sells human beings as slaves DESERVES to meet its Sherman.
In defense of the southerners, fewer than 30 percent owned even one slave. They saw slavery as a system of stable labor by which the slave gave up participation in the private market for a lifetime of support. Southerners like John C. Calhoun thought slavery more humane than the "wage slavery" of the northern factories. Everyone is a "slave" to some extent -- a slave to something. Few people are so "free" that they can move anywhere they wish at any time for any reason. In the 1850s, it was illegal to work a slave on Sundays. How many "wage slaves" today are required to work on Sunday? Still that does not excuse slavery. But we should not judge the 1850s by the PC ideology of the 2000s.
You argue like a Democrat. Try decaf, and/or clue.
You are welcome to claim him as your hero.
LOUISIANA MEETS SHERMAN, 1860.
As the building of his house progressed, Sherman confided to [his wife's brother] Tom that moving to Louisiana would
be a trial to Ellen -- far, far harder than San Francisco or Leavenworth. ... I have no doubt one of our first troubles will be that Ellen's servants will all quit, after we have gone into debt to get them here. And then she will have to wait on herself -- or "buy a nigger." What will you think of that -- our buying niggers -- but it is inevitable. Niggers wont work unless they are owned. And white servants are not to be found in this Parish. Everybody owns their own servants.... You must be careful in your black Republican speeches not to be down on us too hard, for your own sister may be found by necessity to traffic in Human flesh.
William Sherman to Thomas Ewing Jr., Seminary of Learning, June 21, 1860, box 154, Thomas Ewing Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
SHERMAN ON RACE AND POLITICS
I see my name occasionally alluded to in conversation with some popular office. You may tell all that I would rather serve 4 years in the Sing Sing Penitentiary than in Washington & believe I could come out a better man. If that aint emphatic enough use stronger expressions and I will endorse them. Let those who love niggers better than whites follow me, and we will see who loves his Country best -- A nigger as such is a most excellent fellow, but he is not fit to marry, to associate, or vote with me, or mine.
William Sherman to William M. McPherson, Goldsboro (N.C.), March 24, 1865, Huntington Manuscripts, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
SHERMAN ON STANTON AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE
No amount of retraction or pusillanimous excusing will do. Mr Stanton must publicly confess himself a common libeller or -- but I wont threaten.... He seeks your life and reputaton as well as mine.... He want the vast patronage of the military governorships of the South, and the votes of the Free Negro... for political Capital, and whoever stands in his way must die.
William Sherman to Ulysses S. Grant, camp opposite Richmond, May 10, 1865, reel 9, cont. 16, William Sherman Papers, Library of Congress.
SHERMAN DURING HIS STAY IN THE SOUTHWEST
Sante Fe is the oldest town in the United States except St Augustine, but the People with a few exceptions are greasers of the commonest sort....
William Sherman to Ellen Sherman, Santa Fe (N. Mex. Terr.), June 7, 1868, roll 3, Sherman Family Papers.
SHERMAN ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
Three days after Canby's Death, Sherman names as his successor Colonel Jefferson C. Davis of the the Twenty-third Indiana, the same Jeff Davis who twice on the march to Savannah had taken up pontoon bridges and abvandoned feeling slaves to the tender mercies of Wheeler's cavalry. Characterizing his soldiers as "cowardly beef eaters," Davis relentlessly pursued the Modocs, apprehending Jack on June 3. "Davis should have killed every Modoc before taking him if possible, Sherman advised Sheridan after the capture; "then there would have been no complications."
SOURCE: Stanley P. Hirshson, The White Tecumseh: A Biography of General William T. Sherman, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997, p. 72, 298, 315, 336, 352.