If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

Sherman’s quip is a hyperbolic expression of hostility toward the press, reflecting a belief that reporters distort events, pry into military affairs, and spread rumor faster than truth can catch up. The second clause—“we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast”—turns the joke back on itself: even if every reporter were eliminated, the human appetite for news (and the machinery of publicity) would reappear instantly, as if journalism were ineradicable. The line thus mixes contempt with a grudging acknowledgment of the press’s persistence and reach. It also exemplifies the post–Civil War tension between military leaders who prized operational secrecy and journalists who sought vivid, immediate accounts for a mass readership.