David Boyd was with Sherman when the read the news [of South Carolina's secession], recalling he "burst out crying like a child, and pacing the room in that nervous way of his, he turned to me & exclaimed: 'Boyd, you people of the South don't know what you are doing! You think you can tear to pieces this great union without war! But I tell you there will be blood-shed - and plenty of it.' Sherman's agony was real. Secession cut him to the depths of his nationalistic soul: what he had been avoiding all his life had come to pass. It made no sense. 'The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth....You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war."
- From Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O'Connell
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