Although Sherman loved southern culture, he deplored secession as a treasonous act and threatened to resign if Louisiana seceded. One professor remembered that when Sherman read of Louisiana’s secession proclamation in a local newspaper, “he cried like a child, exclaiming, ‘My God, you Southern people don’t know what you are doing! . . . There can be no peaceable secession. Secession means war.’”77 Sherman foresaw that northern determination and technical superiority would annihilate the South and he felt duty-bound to resign a position he adored.
