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 ...
this thread should be good.
Sherman won just like we defeated Germany and Japan.
Total war works, period.
Sherman ... war criminal general of the traitor Lincoln
Nah, the entire South was too busy defending Richmond to help themselves.
Back the way America used to fight wars.
Reparations are long overdue.
Reconstruction was far worse than Sherman ever thought about being. Politicians were involved, you understand.
now we see one of the left’s strategies’ roots. besides marxism. although lenin must’ve known it as he did it spectacularly.
War is hell.
Don’t get into one if you aren’t going to win it.
FUWTS
Yeah .....I think that war is over?
Since then we have turned Dresden Hamburg and Berlin to rubble and Hiroshima and Nagasaki into a glass floored parking lots.
We must count our blessings
Damnable war crimes.
“Total war works, period.”
Yep. Anyone who doesn’t like war really should start one.
'“We can make war so terrible and make [the South] so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.”'
I would venture to say that the folks along Sherman’s route are a little better armed today than they were then.
Like in the old cowboy movies, take out the leader(s) of the mob, and the rest will fizzle.
Allowing any form of mob rule is the first mistake being made...
As one who is not particularly sympathetic to the Confederate cause, I must say that Sherman was morally culpable in many respects for the actions of Union troops. I do not believe, however, that he intentionally ordered his troops to misbehave. There were certainly civilian casualties during the “March to the Sea”. It is also true that Sherman did not order his troops to commit acts of violence against civilians. He did not, however, maintain discipline enough to stop such violence.
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.
And the good news here in Atlanta is that Sherman is still dead. :-)
Total war works, period.
In war there is NO substitute for victory!
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