oh, the unelected, colluding press !!! been there, done that!!!

In 1984, Joseph H. Ewing opened a folder of letters addressed to his great-grandfather and grandfather in an almost illegible scrawl. The letters had lain in a locked trunk for 40 years and in a bank safe-deposit box for 30 more, and all Mr. Ewing knew was that they had been written by William Tecumseh Sherman.

As he began reading, Mr. Ewing, a retired Army historian who lives in Wheaton, Md., realized that the family archive was an unexpected source of new details about a military leader whose friends thought he was irrational and whose enemies thought he was insane.

The letters, often written late at night in his tent, followed Sherman through some of the Civil War's bloodiest battles, including the devastating Union sweep through Georgia in 1864 that he directed. Sherman had been reared by Mr. Ewing's great-grandfather after his own father died, so the correspondence has the emotion of a son's letters home.

Sherman never had a kind word for war correspondents or newspaper editors, and among the Ewing letters is an 11-page denunciation of the press. Mr. Ewing said it was the longest and most revealing piece Sherman ever wrote on the subject, and some historians who have seen the letters say Sherman's anger reminds them of Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who complained about news coverage in Vietnam and later sued CBS for libel.

To Sherman, journalists were ''spies'' whose dispatches were ''false, false as hell.'' Still, Sherman was dismayed that they provided the enemy with detailed information on his battle plans.

Mr. Ewing said many of Sherman's complaints stemmed from technology that was just becoming widespread in the Civil War. The newly invented telegraph made it possible for war correspondents' dispatches about preparations for a battle to appear in Northern newspapers before the fighting began. Sherman often complained that the papers were then sent to Confederate operatives before he had a chance to attack.

To halt this flow of information, Sherman banned reporters from traveling with his troops.

"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

If I killed them all, there would be news from Hell before breakfast."

-- William Tecumseh Sherman


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