resulted from ill-advised engagements fought in deference to public clamor.
Sherman was, not without reason, the most emphatic in his strictures against newspapers. Early in his career. Northern journals kept harping on his "insanity", and so desperate were the general's feelings because of this abuse that he, like Grant, contemplated resignation. A Cincinnati editor, when asked why he repeated the slanders against Sherman, declared that it was a news item of the day and that he had to keep up with the times.[1]
Sherman had only disdain for the "cheap flattery of the press", which aspirants for public applause could secure by favors shown, at public cost, to correspondents. In his various campaigns the general did what he could to eliminate that class of men "who will not fight, but who follow our army to pick up news for sale, and who are more used to bolster up idle and worthless officers than to notice the hard-working and meritorious whose modesty is equal to their courage". This puffing of some officers and pulling down of others plays into the hands of the enemy, he said, by sowing dissension, and "encourages discontent among the officers who find themselves abused by men seemingly under the influence of officers high in command".[2]
In an indignant letter to his brother, Sherman declared:
To every army and almost every general a newspaper reporter goes along, filling up our transports, swelling our trains, reporting our progress, guessing at places, picking up dropped expressions, inciting jealousy and discontent, and doing infinite mischief. … The press has now killed McClellan, Buell, Fitz-John Porter, Sumner, Franklin, and Burnside. Add my name and I am not ashamed of the association.
Again he exclaimed:
