You mean like he did at Atlanta when innocent civilians pled before his general Bill Sherman not to loot and burn their city?
Surely you know the history better than you let on.
It was at this juncture that members of the Atlanta clergy and others approached Sherman about these issues. He wrote his "you cannot qualify war in any harsher terms than I will," letter in response to their entreaties. He asked them to stop their resistance to the national government.
They declined. And the war continued.
There were men -and women- who were not willing to see the American experiment fail. They were willing to apply the pressure needed to keep it going. At rock bottom, that is the issue that galls you.
You would try and deny the Union any right to defend itself. Sorry, it didn't, and doesn't work that way.
It's all boo hoo hoo from the neo-rebs. "Mean old Sherman kicked our butts!"
I can't help but chuckle when I hear Studs Terkel's narration of Sherman's words on Ken Burns' "The Civil War" (paraphrasing):
"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I am in favor of giving them all they want."
Poor little rebels, spanked like children when compared to the atrocities visited on loyal Union men and Union POW's by the traitorous slave power.
Walt