Posted on 05/02/2017 5:06:54 PM PDT by BenLurkin
...Civil War historians argue opposite sides of the debate.
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After World War II, the Nuremberg Charter defined war crimes as violations of the laws or customs of war. It lists several categories of offenses....
Murder or ill-treatment of civilians: Union artillery had barely gotten into range of Atlanta when, on July 19, 1864, Sherman ordered a bombardment of the city’s buildings: “No consideration must be paid to the fact they are occupied by families, but the place must be cannonaded.” The Yankee guns fired their first shells on July 20, and within a few days, Confederate newspapers began reporting casualties. One shell wounded a woman and killed the child she was carrying in her arms. In my book, I have concluded that the victims were the wife and child of John M. Weaver, an engineer who lived on Walton Street.
Sherman maintained a perverse determination to shell Atlanta, denying that innocent civilians still lived there. “You may fire from 10 to 15 shots from every gun you have in position into Atlanta that will reach any of its houses,” he ordered his artillery on Aug. 1. “Fire slowly and with deliberation between 4 p.m. and dark.”
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On Sept. 4, just days after his troops entered Atlanta, Sherman dictated his Special Field Orders 67: “The City of Atlanta being exclusively required for warlike purposes, will at once be vacated by all except the Armies of the United States.” Civilians wishing to go south would be taken to Confederate lines under truce flags; the Rebels would then have to transport them on to Macon. The displaced could take some possessions, but most of their property, not to mention their homes, would be left behind.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlantaforward.blog.ajc.com ...
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.
By his own admission he was.
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.
He ordered fire into areas that were undoubtedly being used as military positions by the enemy - just like we always run into in the middle east. I think the treatment of Atlanta has been exaggerated.
There were no laws of war. There were no rules for guerrilla war in particular, and there was a lot of it in the Civil War.
Well, WE always knew that, but the left just goes right ahead and does it anyway.
I would think more would be inclined to ascribe the war criminal appellation to General Grant than General Sherman.
Probably more like IEDs than landmines. Another Civil War military invention that is alive and well in the modern day.
By the time Sherman became eminent the South was out of chances to win, the only question was just how many would die before the inevitable.
The post-war constitution of Missouri deprived the right to vote for anyone who as much wrote a letter to someone in Confederate territory—and of course, a lot of Missouri men fought for the south.
Wasn’t it Sherman who advised the Kaiser in the Franco Prussian war? His advice was, let it be known if the populace resists with violence you will burn down their houses. (He did mention to let the people leave first.). If there is no resistance leave them alone.
I have no doubt he felt guilt. But as war criminals go he wouldn’t make the list. Too many were much better at it.
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