To this Sherman replied at considerable length, in explicit and unmistakable terms. He had, he said, read their appeal carefully and he gave full credit to their statements of the distress that was about to be caused to the people of Atlanta. But there were greater issues involved than the personal comfort and welfare of these people. He said:
"I cannot revoke my order. I have to prepare for a future struggle in which millions, yea, hundreds of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only in Atlanta, but in all America. To have peace, the Rebel armies must be defeated. To defeat them, we must reach them in their recesses. My military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer of services to make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.
"War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Those who brought war on our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I had no hand in making this war, and I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. We don't want your negroes, or your houses, or your land, or anything that you have, but we do want, and will have, a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involves the destruction of your improvements we cannot help it.
"You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers. They live by falsehood and excitement, and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters the better for you. You began this war without one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your own armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi we fed thousands upon thousands of the families of Rebel soldiers, left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to you, you feel very differently--you deprecate its horrors. But you did not feel them when you were sending car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and were moulding shells and shot to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, and desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes under the government of their inheritance.