Posted on 12/05/2014 1:01:20 PM PST by aomagrat
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS-TV) -
At this time in December 150 years ago, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his army were advancing on Savannah, leaving a wake of destruction behind. But the true wrath of Sherman's army was being reserved for South Carolina.
"He wanted to cripple the Confederacy," said retired University of South Carolina journalism professor Patricia McNeely. Since the campus survived the burning of Columbia, the Horseshoe was an appropriate place for our interview.
"He wanted them to give up fighting. He wanted them to lose faith in their leadership in the Confederacy. But most people have overlooked this. Because, when, when Columbia was burned, he blamed it on General Wade Hampton and the Confederates leaving cotton burning in the streets."
McNeely's book, Sherman's Flame and Blame Campaign explains a strategy that she says previous historians overlooked.
"This is a flame and blame campaign that I have found," McNeely said. "Sherman was providing all this disinformation early and during the Civil War and did not admit until 1875 in his memoirs that he had blamed the Confederates, namely General Hampton. For these reasons, everybody believed what he had said, the disinformation that he had spread, the propaganda that he'd deliberately used so nobody actually went through and saw the pattern of the burning and blaming."
(Excerpt) Read more at wistv.com ...
The South was right.
I don’t consider Sherman’s March to be any different than the allies’ bombing of Germany and Japan in WW2. War is indeed hell.
That is conjecture...
The folks along Sherman’s route at the time were better armed relative to his army than they are today relative to a modern army.
Today’s civilian firearms are utterly ineffective against tanks and really any fighting vehicle. While any southerner probably had a rifle every bit as good as the best in Sherman’s army. Throughout the war the Union had few if any armament advantage qualitatively. Their advantage was in quantity, which of course has a quality all its own.
War is the remedy of the enemy, I say give him all he wants.
Well, the reason he didn’t burn Charleston is that he didn’t go there.
Some believe, not without evidence, that Columbia was burned because it was the city where secession started. Even without Sherman ordering it, many soldiers wanted revenge for the war.
War is hell. You have to know that going in and accept the consequences of losing the upper hand.
I thought the “army” in question was the looting and burning by protesters, not tanks, cannons, and bombers.
There will come a point where the folks will be tired of all this threatening and intimidation...when the looters become a bit too “brave” and cross the line, then there will be all hell to pay.
Civil war? I don’t think so, and if it is it won’t last long. Blustering before the cameras is a bit different than blustering before a gun barrel, a little more permanent than being on Youtube.
Liberals seem to wait until they have their opponents outnumbered, outsized, or outgunned before doing anything more than talking, or whining to “mommy government” to “fix it” for them.
It doesn’t surprise me that Sherman created his own propaganda in the field. Sherman hated journalists. Didn’t trust any of them, and didn’t want them anywhere near his campaigns. If they came to camp, he threw them out. He believed they undermined the Union Army’s efforts to win the war, basically helping the enemy with the information they published. Looks like he spun his own war disinformation to the public just like the drive-by media does today.
And the First Baptist Church here in Columbia where the S.C. Secession Convention took place is still standing, because its black groundskeeper misdirected Sherman’s men bent on destroying it.
I also find it difficult to believe that Sherman intentionally ordered the city of Columbia burned. It is contrary to his behavior upon the occupation of other cities during the campaign. True, he did order Atlanta burned, but only after evacuating the civilian population. If he was engaged routinely in acts of terrorism against the civilian populace, why then did he not burn Savannah or Charleston? Sherman was no angel, and he does bear some of the moral responsibility for the actions of his troops, but it does seem that the burning of Columbia was not part of a terror campaign.
You cannot be serious.
While in Georgia my Great Great Grandfather’s three year enlistment was up and “Unca Billy” came down and tried to get his unit to re-enlist. The unit politely refused and went home. They had had enough of those Southern boys.
Sorry if I misunderstood you.
I thought you were trying to say Georgians today could effectively resist a similar march by the US Army.
Which is of course nonsense on really high platform shoes.
Compare and contrast Sherman’s operation to General Lee’s invasion of the North prior to the Gettysburg battle.
I don’t have them right in front of me, but I believe he (Lee) gave strict specific orders not to mess with the civilians in the areas his Army moved through.
Consider what would be the outcome if the respective Generals had utilized the others tactics.
Sherman actually liked the South, having lived and served as Superintendent of a military academy in Louisiana prior to the war. He said he had enjoyed his time there, and had hoped to return to the South to live after the war. He wasn’t anti-slavery, but was against dissolution of the Union.
I live in Georgia, in one of the towns along Sherman’s route.
If Germany had never bombed Pearl Harbor we probably would not have involved ourselves until Europe had been totally dominated by Nazi Germany.
But, we’re Americans. We love a good fight and “Never Give Up”.
You know, I think our troops have figured out how to deal with that.
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