Meeting General Sherman
Cheraw, South Carolina
March 5, 1865

Lt. Edwin Lybarger was in Cheraw, South Carolina at the mansion of the Woodard family, appropriated as headquarters for the 43rd Ohio regiment, when General William Sherman unexpectedly arrived and made himself at home. Edwin recorded the conversation when it happened, but edited it before self-publishing his March to the Sea diary as "Leaves from my Diary" in the early 1900s.

Original diary page, 1865

March 5, 1865

At a Mr. Woodards in Cheraw [South Carolina], where I had the pleasure of hearing the colloquial powers of General Sherman. He conversed for half an hour in a very free and easy manner, but showing in every thing he said, his implacable hatred to the Rebels. He said among other things that he did not want the South to come back in the Union, for we could drive them out and people the country with a better rase [race]. That all the men, women and children in Charleston ought to have been killed and the city destroyed when they fired on Sumpter and [there] would have had no war and that he should pursue his vocation with perseverance while the war lasted. The 17th Corps crossed the Great Pedee River and camped on the east bank.