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 ...
We have long memories down here. Yankee cavalry burned the family farm in Tennessee. They were from Ohio and stole a heirloom family silver tea set. I remember my grandmother still being mad about it. It was her grandmother.
He also wanted to wipe out every man, woman, and child of the Sioux nation if necessary.
Well, considering he marched down the street past my house on the way to the mountain and railroad tracks past Marietta, but burned only the houses, towns, plantations and cities south and east of me, he wasn’t a war criminal in “my neighborhood” this side of Atlanta.
Those south and east of town might disagree.
Lee and Jackson were both better generals. Not too many folks study Sherman’s campaign on Atlanta with an eye towards duplicating and emulating his thinking and behavior on the battlefield.
Sherman let his men plunder rape and pillage.
Here is how it actually went down. They burned all manufacturing buildings. They burned anybodys homes who would dare to resist or confront them..take a shot at them or caught in the act of supporting the confederacy by sabotage. They lived off the land, that meant they took everything that could be used for the march, including food stuffs and horses and animals. They destroyed the rail roads-which were actually repaired by the rebels about as fast as they destroyed them.
The “Bummers” those not assigned to forage, where a problem. But then again, Joe Wheelers boys werent called Wheelers thieves for no reason. Joe Wheeler was the Rebel calvarey leader who was tasked with opposing Shermans march to the sea. Wheelers boys where particularly nasty against the southern rights supporters. If you resisted in letting them take what they wanted, they shot you.
History shows that when they arrived at the end of the march, that Savannah actually found out that Sherman wasnt so bad. Matter of fact, the north sent tons of supplies to the town to overcome the shortages created by the locust southern army eating up everything in site while they occupied the place.
Really? If so, then in 1945 the victorious allies murdered a whole bunch of German and Japanese military and political leaders, and wrongly imprisoned a whole lot more.
what happened to your family in Tennessee was an atrocity and must be condemned. Lines of control in a mostly immigrant roving army are almost non-existent. Unfortunately, these atrocities were endemic on both sides. These considerations were never assessed when it was started.
Sherman said “war is cruelty, you can not redefine it.”
His theory was that the worse it got for the south, the sooner they would lose their will to fight and the war would be over.
Keep in mind that he had taken over Grant’s role at this point in history. Grant went to look over the Army of the Potomac and decided he needed to stay there. Grant was locked into trench warfare. Yes eventually he extended the lines so much the confederates broke, but in the mean time, Sherman had numerous victories, gained hundreds of miles of territory and freed tens of thousands of slaves. You can argue Sherman did more to end the war than the Army of Potomac, at least according to my understanding of the CW.
If Sherman hadn’t taken Atlanta when he did, Lincoln wouldn’t have been reelected and an end to the war would have been negotiated. Both sides were sick of it by that point.
>>>If Sherman hadn’t taken Atlanta when he did, Lincoln wouldn’t have been reelected and an end to the war would have been negotiated. Both sides were sick of it by that point.<<<
And he would have lost to General Mcclellan a democrat. He was also responsible for not destroying the Army of Northern Virginia by being to timid after Antietam. The democrats have a long history of going for the anti-war candidate.
Do you write fiction? LOL
Indians were still taking (and giving up) Scalps. Was Crazy Horse too a War Criminal, since there was no need to completely slaughter the 7th Cav?
Were Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot war criminals... and the answer is NO by the standard of the Day. Now Obama IS a War Criminal on many counts, expecially arming Iran and ISIS.
Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler did a damn fine job of subjugating New Orleans and parts of Louisiana without all of the wanton acts of Sherman. But comparing Atlanta to New Orleans is like comparing apples to oranges.
No period after the S
Maybe I have completely missed the real story, but it always seemed to me that Sherman accomplished more with much less loss of life on both sides than any other leader in that war.
lolololololol! Oh thats is SOOOOOOO GOOD! An expert on the civil war! From the commune of VA no less.
You want to tell us how Joe Wheeler terrorized the citizens of Georgia. LOLOL
It was General Phillip Sheridan, who made a visit to to the Prussian General Staff, not as an advisor but as part of a military exchange. His advice was to wage total war against a civilian population. Not to kill them but to destroy all their property. He said an army should “leave them nothing but their eyes, to lament the war!” He knew something of this from his own campaign in the Shenandoah Valley.
In late 1864, Wheeler’s cavalry did not accompany Hood on his Franklin–Nashville Campaign back into Tennessee and was virtually the only effective Confederate force to oppose Sherman’s March to the Sea to Savannah.[12] However, his resistance to Sherman did little to comfort Georgia civilians, and lax discipline within his command caused great dissatisfaction. Robert Toombs was quoted as saying, “I hope to God he will never get back to Georgia.” Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill wrote that “the whole of Georgia is full of bitter complaints of Wheeler’s cavalry.”[13]
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