150 years on, Sherman's March to Sea still vivid

Pioneer Press ^ | 11-15-14 | Christopher Sullivan

[TurboZamboni]

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — At the heart of this well-preserved antebellum city, sunbeams stream through the arched windows of a grand public meeting room that mirrors the whole Civil War — including its death throes, unfolding 150 years ago this week when Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman launched his scorching March to the Sea.

The first major objective along Sherman's route, Milledgeville was Georgia's capital at the time, and this room was the legislative chamber. Crossing its gleaming floor, Amy Wright couldn't help recalling family stories of the hated "foragers" who swept through then. "They were just called 'Sherman's men,'" she said in a hushed voice.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

But then there were States not in this Union, were there not?

Announcing that you're now a foreign country doesn't make it so.

[BroJoeK]

Georgia Girl 2: "The average southerner didn’t own slaves because they were too expensive.
The majority of slaves were owned by a very finite number of people.
Northerners also owned slaves including officers in the Union army."

Here are some actual statistics:

In Mississippi and South Carolina nearly half of all white families owned slaves.
In Georgia, Alabama & Louisiana it was around one third of white families owning slaves.
In Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky it was around one in four white families.
In Arkansas about one in five.
In Missouri, Maryland and Delaware one in eight, or less.

Notice that these ratios track pretty well the sequence in which states joined the Confederacy.
In the Deep South, slave-owning was almost mandatory for anybody who wanted to "be somebody", and the vast majority of whites had close relatives -- brothers, counsins, uncles, etc. -- who owned slaves, so none could imagine life without them.

By 1860, Northern ownership of slaves was very rare indeed -- though they did still exist in some states, in small numbers.
But typical would be a private citizen from Illinois named Ulysses S. Grant, who inherited a slave from his southern father-in-law in Missouri, a slave Grant freed in 1859, before gaining renown during the Civil War.

Georgia Girl 2: "The slavery issue and abolition were pushed to gin up northern support for a war agains’t the seceding states.
Most Northerners were not that interested in the issue and most did not support a war."

The truth is the vast majority (90%+?) of Northerners cared nothing about slavery, in the South.
They did not object, so long as Southerners kept their slaves at home.
But what Northerners feared and strongly opposed was slavers bringing their "property" into free states or territories.
Southerners knew they must constantly expand slavery, or it would begin to die out, and hence their constant efforts to work the Federal Government to pro-slavery laws.
In this regard, we can review examples of the 1850 Missouri Compromise and 1857 Dred Scott decision if you wish.
But the immediate issue in 1860 was slavery in the territories -- that's what split the dominant Democrat party in half and elected minority Republicans, including Lincoln.

Finally, certainly in late 1860 most Northerners did not want war with the South, but over the following months and years northern opinion changed drastically, fully supporting the war to preserve the Union.
Indeed Northerners supported the war to a larger extent than many Unionist Southerners in places like western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, northern Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas.
Unionist sentiment was so strong in such slave-states as Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri that none of them ever voted to secede, and all supplied more Union troops than Confederates by factors of two-to-one or more.

So, the dominant view among Northerners was that the Union had been attacked & invaded by secessionists forces which must therefore be defeated, and while they were at it destroy that "peculiar institution", slavery.

[RegulatorCountry]

“Lost Causer,” lol? I enjoy history and genealogy. That’s my interest. Yours is obviously political. I find that tedious and I find you tedious.

Have a good evening.

[RegulatorCountry]

The distinction between State and state is obviously lost upon you.

And again, have a good night.

[BroJoeK]

SamAdams76: "By the 1860s, the industrialists of the North were already amassing huge fortunes, such as the Vanderbilts, who were building a railroad empire."

Not disputing most of your facts & interpretations, which are spot on.

But up through 1860, the world looked very different, beginning with the fact that slaves represented the second largest investment value in the United States -- second only to the land itself, and indeed of far more value than all the northern industrial assets combined.
And the numbers of wealthy slave-owners in 1860 was far larger than the tiny number of wealthy northern industrialists.

Yes, today's Lost Causers do their best to minimize the impact of slavery, through statistical manipulations, but the fact is that nearly half of Deep-South families owned slaves, almost a third in the Upper South, all of whom eventually declared their secession.

Secessionists declared slavery to be the greatest invention for increasing wealth ever devised, and it resulted in average Southerners slightly more prosperous than their Northern cousins, while many large plantation owners were better off than all but the very most prosperous Northern industrialists.

Indeed, it's totally accurate & fair to say that secession and war were caused directly by Southern fears of anti-slavery policies from newly elected President Lincoln and his "Black Republicans".

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "I disagree that northern invasion and conquest of the South was simply retaliation for southern raids into the North.
The invasion and conquest of the South wasn’t always pretty or polite, but it was necessary.
I just don’t think we should try to pretty it up into just fighting back against the aggressors."

Sure, agreed, but remember the subject of this thread is how uniquely evil & monstrous was Uncle Billy Sherman in Georgia.
I'm only here to argue that there was nothing "unique" about it, that Sherman did nothing more on a larger scale than what Confederates had done on smaller scales for years before that.

So your reminders that "90%" of the fighting was done in the South, and therefore logically 90% of the atrocities committed by Union forces is simply not fair.
The truth is that there was a, let's call it Civil War "culture", which dictated what they considered right & proper for armies to do, and what wasn't.
That "culture" was constantly pushed towards "less civilized" throughout the war, and leaders in that direction were inevitably Confederates!

And if you ask why that was, the answer is: because they had no choice, they had to loot militarily valuable supplies or die, since the Confederate economy was just not robust enough to support a large military long-term.

[BroJoeK]

Georgia Girl 2: "So ask yourself who really won?
The slaves are up North now. LOL!"

I agree that Marse O in the Big House makes us all feel more than a little down-trodden.
But I also live way out in the country, far from big cities and maddening crowds, and so only ever feel "oppressed" when I turn on the news... ;-)

As for who won that war, well the same could be said for the Second World War, after which our enemies -- less their insane leaders -- have made very nice lives for themselves.
So yes, they won, in a sense, and that was certainly our long-term goal at the time.

[Vermont Lt]

Losing sucks.

I live in an area that still hates Mohawks.

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "You left a couple out. Lincoln declared a blockade of southern ports on April 19.
Since a blockade was considered an act of war, it gave a not too bad rationale for the CSA declaring war on the USA a couple weeks later."

Sure, blockade gave them another excuse to do what they had already been doing since December 1860: provoke the United States into war.

But I don't include it because my standard is: "all this happened before a single Confederate soldier was killed in battle with any Union force, and before any Union Army invaded a single Confederate state."
Lincoln's declarations, by themselves, did not kill any Confederates.

[Vermont Lt]

And thank LBJ for that.

[Vermont Lt]

Not for nothin, but the north didn’t really invade. We never left the country.

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "It wasn't the Progressive Era that brought a big increase in federal spending as a percentage of GDP. It was WWI.
In fact, by this metric spending generally declined from 1900 to 1916."

Look more carefully, you'll notice that Federal spending was already rising before WWI, and never went back to that 3% level afterwards.
Republican spending in the 1920s was generally that 3% plus national debt payments, but the Great Depression made both Republicans and Democrats crazy, and so spending rose to 5% and then 10% even before Second World War spending kicked in.
After WWII, Eisenhower set Federal spending around 15%, of which 10% or more was military, but ever since, military has fallen (about 3% today) and non-military risen to over 20% of GDP.

But again, my point is: Southerners loved "Big Government" under their Democrat heroes like Wilson and FDR, and even voted for Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, before finally figuring out that Liberal Democrats really weren't so interested in them...

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "Good image and a good find. Sure looks like a post-Civil War “Fedzilla” to me ;’)"

Of course, meaning: NOT!

My argument for the "Progressive" Woodrow Wilson is based on the following:

1. 15th and 16th Amendments go into effect, along with Federal Reserve under Wilson, freeing Washington from state controls and providing unlimited funds for whatever political imaginations can come up with.

2. Your chart doesn't show it, but Federal spending rose from 2.1% in 1916 to 3.9% in 1917, to 17% and 24% in following years.
   I am suggesting that increase in 1917 was less about the war, and more about domestic politics.
   Indeed, if I'm wrong about this, then Wilson doesn't really have much of substance with which to claim the title "Progressive".

Indeed, what do we call a "progressive" who can't spend a lot of money? Answer: conservative.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Look away, look away, look away, dixieland.

[Georgia Girl 2]

“But I also live way out in the country, far from big cities and maddening crowds, and so only ever feel “oppressed” when I turn on the news... ;-)”

Well that and if you ever get caught with my conceal carry weapon with its 30 round mag or if you ever fire off a round practicing on your “rural” property. LOL!

[Georgia Girl 2]

We love Mohawks down here in the South. LOL!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The distinction between State and state is obviously lost upon you.

Oh, do elucidate this poor benighted soul.

[Sherman Logan]

Let’s see, Wilson was elected in 1912/

Federal spending in 1860 was 1.4% of GDP. By 1916 it had ridden all the way to 2.1%. Then spike drastically in the next couple of years.

You might want to check into history of what else was going on in those years

[Vermont Lt]

The haircut or the indigenous savages?

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "Federal spending in 1860 was 1.4% of GDP. By 1916 it had ridden all the way to 2.1%."

I actually have a spreadsheet put together from some of these sites, so I know you can select numbers to "prove" just about anything.

But the base-line has to be President Washington in 1792, and that was 2.3% of GDP.
From there excluding war payment years spending went down as low as 1.4% in 1796 and as high as 3.9% in 1816.
Yes, different time periods had somewhat different averages, but overall the numbers never changed much, excluding war payment years, before 1917.
For example: Wilson in 1916 spent 2.1% of GDP, virtually the same as President Washington in 1792.

Then in 1917 it rose to 3.9% -- was that strictly the First World War, or was it also some effect from the new amendments and Federal Reserve?
Please consider, if it was strictly war spending, then Wilson loses all practical claim to being a "big government Progressive", and that would fly in the face of some of what we think we know about Wilson.

But even if we dethrone Wilson from the chair of "Progressive", the numbers still support, with no ambiguity, the claims of "Big Government" New Deal Franklin Roosevelt, and the election results from 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 show that FDR had no stronger support anywhere than in the Solid South.
So my point remains valid -- that the Solid South loved, loved Democrat Big Government just so long as they believed they would be prime beneficiaries from redistributionist largess.

Finally, by the election of 1964 Southerners realized that Democrats did not have their best interests at heart, and switched, for the first time, supporting Republican Barry Goldwater.

I remember it well...