Sherman's Quarrel with the Press.
On the 28th of December, 1862, Sherman fought the battle of Chickasaw Bayou, one of our first fruitless attempts to capture Vicksburg. Grant designed to co-operate by an attack from the rear, but his long supply-line extended to Columbus, Kentucky, though he might have established a nearer base at Memphis. Van Dorn cut his communications at Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Grant was compelled to fall back.
Sherman's attack proved a serious disaster. Our forces were flung upon an almost impregnable bluff, where we lost about two thousand five hundred men, and were then compelled to retreat.
In the old quarrel between Sherman and the Press, as usual, there was blame upon both sides. Some of the correspondents had treated him unjustly; and he had not learned the quiet patience and faith in the future which Grant exhibited under similar circumstances. At times he manifested much irritation and morbid sensitiveness.
An Army Correspondent Court-martialed.
A well-known correspondent, Mr. Thomas W. Knox, was present at the battle, and placed his report of it, duly sealed, and addressed to a private citizen, in the military mail at Sherman's head-quarters. One "Colonel" A. H. Markland, of Kentucky, United States Postal Agent, on mere surmise about its contents, took the letter from the mail and permitted it to be opened. He insisted afterward that he did this by Sherman's express command. Sherman denied giving any such order, but said he was satisfied with Markland's course.
Markland should have been arrested for robbing the Government mails, which he was sworn to protect. There was no reasonable pretext for asserting that the letter would give information to the enemy; therefore it did not imperil the public interest. If General Sherman deemed it unjust to himself individually, he had his remedy, like any other citizen or soldier, in the courts of the country and the justice of the people.
The purloined dispatch was left for four or five days lying about Sherman's head-quarters, open to the inspection of officers. Finally, upon Knox's written request, it was returned to him, though a map which it contained was kept—as he rather pungently suggested, probably for the information of the military authorities!
Knox's letter had treated the generalship of the battle very tenderly. But after this proceeding he immediately forwarded a second account, which expressed his views on the subject in very plain English. Its return in print caused great excitement at head-quarters. Knox was arrested, and tried before a military tribunal on these charges:—
- Giving information to the enemy.
- Being a spy.
- Violating the fifty-seventh Article of War, which forbids the writing of letters for publication from any United States army without submitting them to the commanding general for approval.