“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

—  William T. Sherman

Retort to a lady of Confederate sympathies, who berated him for the wasting of Mississippi by the Army of the Tennessee during the Meridian Campaign ; cited in The Civil War Generation, Norman K. Risjord, Rowman & Littlefield (2002), p. 143 : ISBN 0742521699</small> , and in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo, Oxford University Press (2012), p. 439 : <small>ISBN 0199843295
1860s, 1864

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William T. Sherman44
American General, businessman, educator, and author. 1820–1891

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