William T. Sherman, speaking at an annual meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, concluded that the war’s penalties should be shared by both North and South, because of their mutual involvement in the institution of slavery.
“And I, born of Connecticut parents, bearing in affectionate remembrance the virtues of my honored ancestors, and yielding to no man in admiration of the intelligence, refinement, industry, and thrift of the people of New England, do honestly believe that they, in common with all the great North, who shared in the original causes, and enjoyed a large part of the profits resulting from cotton and slave labor, should be charitable and liberal in the final distribution of the natural penalties. [Applause.] If slavery then was the real cause of our civil war, or even the pretext for it, and if children must inherit the sins of their fathers even unto the third or fourth generation, then none of us who trace our origin back to the earlier days of this Republic can escape this mathematical and philosophical conclusion, or in the language of Dr. Draper: ‘Guilty then, both of us, in the sight of God. Let us not vex each other with mutual crimination, but bear our punishment with humility.'”