When the defeated won’t surrender this happens. It was ever so...Aleppo just now, Grozny, before that.
History is lies men have agreed on.
Probably not an exact quote but Napoleon said something like that. I agree tho I do enjoy studying history.
Seriously?
Of all the generals that I have read about Sherman seems to have understood the true nature of mankind and war best.
His desire to prosecute the war as aggressively as he did ultimately brought the war to an end sooner than it would have been if a loser like McClelland had been in his shoes.
No such thing as a war criminal.
Here’s the thing; he was tasked with winning. You win by killing the enemy and taking away his support base. News flash! That involves killing. Lots of killing.
If I recall correctly, they burned down buildings and crops but didn’t kill the people if nobody was shooting at them. (I’m sure there were exceptions as you can’t control the discipline and quality of that many people who are pressed into service. But did Sherman give orders to kill women and children and non-combatants? If he did, it is news to me.)
Yes. By the standards of the time. Sherman knew it and knew he would hang if the North lost and he was brought to justice.
I subscribe to the belief that war crimes only exist and apply in the eyes of the victors to those they have vanquished.
In the matter of Sherman being a war criminal, as described, in what technically was and is a civil war as opposed to one governed by international treaties what is the standard for determining standing?
Secondly, no such statutes existed in the mid 19th century so the point is an intellectual argument that really has no bearing.
If political correctness has taught us nothing it has shown that it is impossible to ascribe current cultural norms and acceptance to historical facts.
If you want to try Sherman for war crimes, I have a charge that might stick--but it is "ex-post-facto."
I have read that Sherman forced Confederate PoWs to remove landmines emplaced by Confederate forces. Under the modern Geneva Conventions, this is specifically forbidden. But land mines were a new "infernal" weapon in that era. No one had codified the rules on them.
By liberals standards, yes, he was a war criminal.
But Lincoln is the real monster.
https://www.amazon.com/War-Crimes-Against-Southern-Civilians/dp/158980466X
“Of all the enormities committed by Americans in the nineteenth century—including slavery and the Indian wars—the worst was the invasion of the South, which destroyed some twenty billion dollars of private and public property and resulted in the deaths of some two million people, most of whom were civilians—both white and black.”
—David Aiken, editor of A City Laid Waste: The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia
Finally, here is the first book-length survey of the Union’s “hard war” against the people of the Confederacy—one that included the shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering, and murder.
In a series of compelling chapters, Cisco chronicles the St. Louis massacre, where Federal authorities proceeded to impose a reign of terror and dictatorship in Missouri. He tells of the events leading to, and the suffering caused by, the Federal decree that forced twenty thousand Missouri civilians into exile. The arrests of civilians, the suppression of civil liberties, theft, and murder to “restore the union” in Tennessee are also examined.
Women and children were robbed, brutalized, and left homeless in Sherman’s infamous raid through Georgia. In South Carolina, homes, farms, churches, and whole towns disappeared in flames. Civilians received no mercy at the hands of the Union invaders.
Thoroughly researched from sources including letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts of the time, Walter Brian Cisco’s exhaustive book notably pays careful attention to the suffering of African-American victims of Federal brutality, revealing that wherever Federal troops encountered Southern blacks, whether free or slave, they were robbed, brutalized, belittled, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, and sometimes raped or killed by their blue-clad “liberators.”
Apologists for Lincoln’s hard war continue to downplay the suffering endured and the damage done, blame the victims, or call some of the above incidents “accidents” or “mistakes.” Many also cling to the Lincolnian myth that only by the most horrendous of wars could the slaves be freed, ignoring the fact that the rest of the Western world managed to bring an end to the institution without bloodshed. This book serves to set the record straight and to show that the war on Southern civilians was not justified, despite the convictions by many that such a war was necessary to save the union.
Walter Brian Cisco’s first book, States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, a biography of the little-known general, was a 1992 selection of the History Book Club. He is also the author of Taking a Stand: Portraits from the Southern Secession Movement, Henry Timrod: A Biography, and Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior, Conservative Statesman, considered the definitive biography of Hampton and the 2006 winner of the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award. He lives in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Best general of the Civil War. Huge effect on the enemy, very little loss within his own forces. He knew his business.
The case for reparations is clear.
If so then war itself is a crime, and everyone involved a criminal.
Did Sherman fit the definition of a war criminal? Yes. Is he a war criminal? No. Only the losers can be war criminals.
No
No.
Sherman was both a war criminal and a war hero—and neither a war criminal nor a war hero.
In one sense—dispassionate theoretical evaluation—Sherman doubtless committed acts that—to the modern sensibility as well as that of his contemporaries—would be considered "war crimes".
In another sense—practicing the art of warfare—Sherman was simply a high-ranking soldier following the orders of his commander in chief—orders that specifically requested the "scorched earth" tactics that he employed.
Like any prominent historical figure—especially an American—Sherman is hard to pigeonhole, IMHO...
Yes.
Compared to ‘Spoons’ Butler (sometimes called ‘Beast’ Butler), Sherman was an angel. He didn’t steal for personal enrichment and he didn’t authorize his troops to rape the women.