Posted on 07/18/2004 8:40:59 PM PDT by canalabamian
Not only was William Tecumseh Sherman guilty of many of the crimes that some apologists portray as "tall tales," but also his specter seems to haunt the scandal-ridden halls of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Sherman had a relatively poor record battling armies. His lack of preparation nearly destroyed Union forces at Shiloh. He was repulsed at Chickasaw Bluffs, losing an early opportunity to capture Vicksburg, Miss. The result was a bloody campaign that dragged on for months. He was blocked by Gen. Pat Cleburne at the Battle of Chattanooga and needed to be bailed out by Gen. George Thomas' Army of the Cumberland. His troops were crushed by rebel forces in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
But Sherman knew how to make war against civilians. After the capture of Atlanta, he engaged in policies similar to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia by expelling citizens from their homes. "You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war," he told the fleeing population. Today, Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for similar actions in Kosovo.
An article on Sherman in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last spring asserted that Sherman attacked acceptable military targets "by the standards of war at the time." This seems to assume that human rights were invented with the creation of the United Nations. But Gen. Grant did not burn Virginia to the ground. Gen. Lee did not burn Maryland or Pennsylvania when he invaded. Both sought to destroy each other's armies instead of making war against women and children, as Sherman did.
After promising to "make Georgia . . . howl," Sherman continued such policies in the Carolinas. Not only did he preside over the burning of Columbia, but he also executed several prisoners of war in retaliation for the ambush of one of his notorious foraging parties. While Andersonville's camp commander, Henry Wirz, was found guilty of conspiracy to impair the health and destroy the life of prisoners and executed, nothing like that happened to Sherman.
According to an article by Maj. William W. Bennett, Special Forces, U.S. Army, Sherman turned his attention to a new soft target after the Civil War: Native Americans. Rather than engage Indian fighters, Sherman again preferred a strategy of killing noncombatants. After an ambush of a military detachment by Red Cloud's tribe, Sherman said, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children."
Bennett notes that Sherman carried out his campaign with brutal efficiency. On the banks of the Washita River, Gen. George Armstrong Custer massacred a village of the friendly Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, who had located to a reservation. Sherman was quoted as saying, "The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or maintained as a species of paupers. Their attempts at civilization are simply ridiculous."
Such slaughter was backed by the extermination of the buffalo as a means of depriving the men, women and children with a source of food. Many Native Americans not killed by Sherman's troopers were forced onto reservations or exiled to Florida to face swamps and disease.
Now we have learned about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Such events may seem unrelated, were it not for reports that Sherman's policies are still taught to West Point cadets as an example of how to break an enemy's will to fight.
Are we therefore shocked by the acts of barbarity against Iraqi detainees? As long as we honor Sherman, teach his tactics and revise history to excuse his actions, we can expect more examples of torture and savagery against noncombatants we encounter in other countries.
John Tures is an assistant professor of political science at LaGrange College who was born in Wisconsin, opposes the 1956 Georgia flag and still has a low opinion of Sherman.
Get with the flow here. You are missing the conversation, as usual.
Get him started on Lawrence, Kansas some time.
I understood perfectly what you were implying.
"The April 1865 book. Is the author Winik?"
Doh! Yep, its by Winik. A bit dry, but chock full of facts that are rarely mentioned today concerning those thirty days in April 1865. I think Lee probably did more to save the Union in that month than anybody else.
Acting just like a liberal....you toss an insult and gut an entire group of people for what *some* did. Not every southerner was a slave owner, not every southerner supported slavery.
Just like every Yankee didn't support emancipation or going to war over what they saw was a war over slavery.
The one thing Sherman had above all other potential commanders was the complete trust of Ulysses Grant. Thomas was, in many ways, the better commander but he and Grant did not get along.
Obviously, you didn't.
I think Lee probably did more to save the Union in that month than anybody else..
I agree. Jefferson Davis wanted Lee to start a guerilla war... Lee refused. He gave his word of honor to Grant. He knew that he had been beaten and there was no dishonor in defeat.
Lee's example did much to help heal the wounds. He was a true gentleman.
If their sole reason for leaving was to preserve what was Constitutionally guaranteed, and the incoming administration and congress were supporting, why not?
That certainly doesn't explain the next wave of states to secede.
Great question. My guess is that the war would have gone on even longer and probably devolved into guerilla warfare had Sherman not acted as he did.
Another poster asked what would have happened had we gone into Iraq the way Sherman went through Georgia. I think Iraqi society would have been so stunned, the guerillas would not have organized quite so quickly after the main hostilies were over. Fact is, war is fought at several different levels. The Iraqis, despite the defeat of their armies, obviously don't consider themselves as beaten.
Mao won too. I cant see this defending of Sherman
Why not be a man about it and ping stand watie to your post? If he thinks I misunderstood then I'll apologize to you.
hehehehe ;-)
I thought this deserved a "duh." Even my liberal history professor decried Sherman's scorched-Earth, murderous, total war tactics.
He was an evil man.
The war was over in south and not in the other examples cited.
Btw, I had relatives who fought on the UNION side and I still feel this way.
Without the issue of slavery the war would not have happened.
Nope. Bottom line is that 300,000+ of the South's finest died in vain fighting to perpetuate an abomination.
I notice that you fly the Tennessee state flag on your profile page. That leads me to conclude that you are either a Northern government school graduate who somehow took a wrong turn and ended up below the Mason-Dixon Line, or you are simply a self-loathing Southerner, a walking oxymoron (emphasis on the latter two syllables.)
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