My brother lives in Georgia and reports that Sherman continues to be despised.
Nobody remembers Peabody...
War criminal
Stripped their path of anvils too.
The lore is that they often fired them high into the air over swamps or marshes.
My Great grandmother was on a flatcar evacuating Atlanta ahead of Sherman.
We'll sing another song,
Sing it like we sang it then 50,000 strong,
Sang it as we marched along from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia."
Prayers for Uncle Billy
Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along
Sing it as we used to sing it, 50,000 strong
While we were marching through Georgia.
Chorus
Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea
While we were marching through Georgia.
Verse 2
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground
While we were marching through Georgia.
Verse 3
Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Verse 4
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.
Verse 5
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.
While I am not a Sherman supporter in any way it would do us well to remember that wars should be fought to win and apply some of those tactics/processes to the way we DON’T fight them today.
“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women”
William T. Sherman’s personal regiment was the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment - Southerners who remained loyal to the Union and the cause of the country.
One of Joe Johnston’s and John Bell Hood’s greatest fears as defenders of Atlanta was that Sherman would skirt the city and strike to the south, where the horrors of Andersonville would inspire the Yankees to an unmatched bloodlust.
And much of the conflagration that destroyed Atlanta started whenConfederate troops set fire to materiel and rolling stock.
Sherman certainly wasn’t blameless, but he was far from a butcher or madman. He waged the same kind of total war that Phil Sheridan unleashed in the Shenandoah Valley, and toward the same end: to deprive the Confederates of the infrastructure they needed to prosecute the war. In that, he was successful. However, the animus many in the South — especially Georgia — feel toward Sherman is perfectly understandable.
The odd thing about the fame of the March Across Georgia is that all parties involved agreed that Sherman’s men were MUCH harsher marching across South Carolina than across Georgia.
Yet you almost never hear a word about that campaign.
While our present rules of engagement might indict Sherman as a war criminal, he never did anything remotely similar to what the Allies did in WWII. If Sherman is a war criminal, then so are MacArthur, Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower.
Quotes from Sherman
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_tecumseh_sherman.html
We could use him a president or House or Senate leader.
Say what you want about Sherman, but once he was turned loose, he ended the war pretty quick.
At the heart of this well-preserved antebellum city
The southern myth is that Sherman burned everything in his path. Yet here's a prewar state capital occupied by Sherman and it's still well-preserved today. Didn't even destroy the statehouse, much less the whole city.
The outrage over the burning of Columbia shows pretty clearly that burning cities was not a routine practice.