War & Peace Quote by Henry Villard

Sherman isn’t just being prickly here; he’s staking out a wartime theory of information control. Villard’s line works because it frames Sherman’s hostility to the press as something closer to doctrine than temperament: journalists are “a nuisance and a danger,” in that order, with “accordingly” landing like a gavel. The phrasing turns a personal dislike into policy, and the add-on clause, “then as throughout his great war career,” quietly insists this wasn’t an isolated mood at headquarters but a sustained worldview.

The subtext is a collision between two emerging powers in the Civil War: modern mass journalism and modern command. Reporters wanted proximity, detail, speed; generals wanted secrecy, discipline, and a single narrative that didn’t compromise operations or morale. Calling journalists a “danger” isn’t merely an insult, it’s an accusation of strategic liability: loose talk, leaked movements, sensationalized setbacks, and the kind of political blowback that could reshape orders from Washington. “Nuisance” captures the logistical reality too: bodies underfoot, questions at the wrong hour, extra mouths to manage in already strained supply lines.

Villard, himself a journalist, writes with a telling mix of restraint and indictment. He doesn’t argue with Sherman; he documents him, letting the general’s posture toward the press stand as a character sketch. The word “great” does double duty: it praises Sherman’s effectiveness while hinting at the hard edge that made that effectiveness possible. The context is a war where public opinion was a weapon, and Sherman treated the press like unexploded ordnance.