Posted on 11/15/2017 6:05:25 AM PST by Bull Snipe
Major General William T. Sherman and four Corps of the Union Army departed the city of Atlanta and began what is known as the March to the Sea. General Shermans objective in few words was to make Georgia howl. To this end he was very successful. During the march across Georgia, Shermans army inflicted 100 million dollars worth of damage on the Confederate State. This included destruction of 300 miles of rail road, miles of telegraph wire, numerous bridges & trestles. His forces confiscated or destroyed 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, 13,000 cattle, 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder. One Union soldier, in his memoires of the march, said that it was the only time he ever gained weigh on a campaign. In a letter dated 24 Dec 1865 to Secretary of War Stanton; Sherman states We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience.
They were Yankee soldiers and they were not kindly army guys handing out gum and candy to the kids in Afghanistan. They were an invading force sent to conquer and occupy.
It removed the ability of Georgia to support the Confederate war effort by destroying transportation and means of manufacture, seizing supplies that might have gone to the rebel armies, and cutting the South part of Georgia off from the northern Confederacy. All legitimate war aims.
Im sure the slaves on all those farms and plantations were chanting oh thank you massa Sherman for letting us all starve this winter
How many starved? Round numbers are fine as long as you include sources.
Weasel words to justify the attack prior to the fact. Everyone in the whole nation knew that wasn't going to happen, so the orders were in fact attack orders.
This is in line with the letter that he directed Seward sent to Governor Pickens of South Carolina on the 8th of April.
The orders given to the ships do in fact contradict the claims that Lincoln made to Governor Pickens of South Carolina. He said no attempt would be made to throw in men or arms.
That was a blatant lie. The men and arms were sent before the Picken's letter, and the fort was going to have men and arms put into it even if the Confederates didn't resist.
Lincoln lied, because the ships left before his letter did.
it was not 8 or 9 ships. It was the USS Pawnee, USS Pocahontas, USRC Harriet Lane. (a total of 20 guns between them) In addition to the government ships the commercial ship Baltic and one other commercial ship were rented for the operation. USS Powhatan was suppose to be in the
“fleet” but was sent to Florida at the time.
I deliberately used the word "taxes" because ignorant people grasp the concept of "taxes" better than "tariffs." In fact, the distinction between the Federal government taking your money through tariffs, or taking it through taxes, is usually lost on the people who are losing the money.
You could also call it "stealing" and you wouldn't be far from the truth.
The point was and is, the Southerners were paying 75% of the bills for the Federal government. And then the Federal Government was spending almost all of the money in the North.
But they had slavery. If you are going to make the claim that the war was fought to stop slavery, you are going to have to address the fact that these five Union states all had slavery.
My point of course is that the Federal government at that time did not give a flying f*** about slavery, and only went to war to stop Independence for the Southern states.
You may want to read the Secession Ordnances from the first 7 states to leave the Union.
I will do so if you can explain to me how the Secession Ordinances were the cause of the North sending armies into the South. I do not give a f*** why the South decided to leave the Union. The only issue that matters is why did the Union murder 750,000 people to stop them from leaving?
Why did the North invade the South?
You forgot the Powhatan. The Powhatan was the command ship for which the rest of them awaited off the coast of South Carolina to show up and initiate the attack against the Confederates. You also forget that the Baltic carried the riflemen to be used in the attack and/or reinforce the Fort.
USS Powhatan was suppose to be in the fleet but was sent to Florida at the time.
Yet the other ships were not informed of this, and neither was the captain of the Powhatan until the last minute when he was relieved of command by secret orders from Abraham Lincoln who put David Porter in charge of that ship.
Had David Porter not showed up with his secret orders from the President, the Powhatan would have gone to Charleston as scheduled, all the ships would have attacked, and the Union would have been regarded as having initiated the bloodshed.
With the Powhatan sent to Pensacola, and oddly enough, deliberately disguising itself to be unrecognizable to anyone who might see it, and flying a British flag on it's way there, there never was going to be an attack by those Union ships, because their orders were to take their direction from Captain Mercer of the Powhatan.
But the Confederates did not know about the secret hand carried orders from Lincoln. They *DID* know about the official orders through the regular chain of command that said those ships were coming to attack them.
They were American soldiers.
I believe they were closer to 20, and he wrote out and gave them their freedom papers before the war even ended. They stayed and fought with him afterward.
He treated them like men and respected colleagues, and not at all in the manner people today view him.
Thanks for the information.
Why did the North invade the South. That is what happens when you start a war.
in the seven secession ordnances, tariffs are mentioned as a reason only once. While you may view it as a major cause of secession, the legislatures of the states that seceded did not.
USS Powhatan was suppose to be in the
fleet but was sent to Florida at the time.
Didn’t for get her, she was not outside of Charleston harbor.
Never once claimed that the war was fought about slavery. Secession of seven states was about slavery. That did not necessarily have to lead to war. Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware were the only states remaining in the Union where slavery was legal. DC is not a state. Per Scott V. Sanford, the United States Government has no authority to interfere with slavery in any state where it is legal.
Lincoln badgered, cajoled, and even tried bribery to get the four slave holding states in the Union to end the institution. He was only partially successful.
BS diogenes, it was about slavery but those that like to defend the CSA like to make it about anything but abolition. Slavery was / is abhorrent and it needed to go. Unfortunately it is back in places that Hillary turned over to Muslim extremist...
That is dodging the question. All of Lincoln's cabinet but one told him that if he sent those ships, it would cause a war. Lincoln at that point had the power over "war", or "no war", and he chose "war."
When he had made the decision to send those ships, He effectively made the decision to send soldiers to fight the South.
Why did he do this? His cabinet told him the Fort was useless and if they succeeded in resupplying it, they would have a garrison sitting around doing nothing for six months when they would need to supply it again. It would become an embarrassment.
So why did Lincoln deliberately trigger a war over something that stands useless to this very day? They only garrisoned it after the war because to leave it abandoned would highlight the false claim that it was somehow important to the Union.
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Lincoln did not care about Sumter. He had another plan to start the war in Pensacola if it failed to began at Sumter.
Lincoln started the war because an Independent South represented a grave commercial threat to his backers in the North East. These people, whom we would later come to know as "Robber Barons" of the "Gilded Age", and who we currently know as the "Establishment", are the ones who benefited from Lincoln's deliberate launch of a war against Southern Independence. (Not a war against slavery.)
Yes, we are still fighting with these people of Influence in Washington and New York, as has been recently demonstrated by their efforts to destroy the conservative Senatorial candidate from Alabama.
Notice it's not the "Kansas City Post" that came up with these 11th hour accusations that could potentially cause the Democrats to acquire 1/100th of the power of the Senate?
It's about power. It has always been about power.
Still a stranger to the truth, huh? In the last discussion before sending the fleet, every member of the cabinet but one supported the decision to send supplies to Sumter. Seward was the lone hold-out. One cabinet member was absent.
Let me see if I can get my point across. The reasons why the South left are immaterial to my point. The North did not attack the South because the South believed in slavery.
The North attacked the South because an Independent South represented a FINANCIAL THREAT to New York and Washington DC.
The Reasons why the South left don't matter. Only the reasons why the Union invaded matter. There would have been no war had the Union chosen to keep it's soldiers home. It chose to send them to invade other people.
Why did the Union invade?
But the Union did not fire the first shot, South Carolina did. Nor did Lincoln want to give the border states that had a lot of sympathy any more fuel to join the CSA. Lincoln did not want this war, a lot of Southerners did.
There would not have been a call for 75,000 volunteers if the South had not fired on Fort Sumter.
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