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.
You cannot win a war if your enemy still has the will and the means to fight. Sherman targetted these two things until the South could no longer go on.
Wise indeed. Men like Jackson put men like Sherman to shame.
In a war? Yes.
No and yes. I think. Smart bombing is ok as long as it is truly smart.
Good to have you on record against raping and pillaging.
In a war? Yes.
We have the luxury of debating methods after-the-fact. Yet, I would still argue that Stalin's motives went a lot further than the mere defeat of Germany. The Katyn Massacre and his failure to act in support of the Warsaw Uprising are but 2 examples.
I'll leave the examples of Tamerlane & Ghengis Khan alone, since they are not modern examples.
And being a 'practical person', Rape & Murder committed by our infantry is not conducive to the maintenance of good order & discipline in the ranks....
Another screw up on Sherman's part. If he had handled this the way lee did, then the south would not STILL be bitter after 150 years. I regret this element of the war. Most southerners are glad to be part of the US, but at the same time resent the raping of Cola, SC.
(Chuckles)Yeah, I'm sure the world is relieved about that!
Lol. :) I think we are in basic agreement. Nice freeping with you.
I agree...
Which is why we...we? Heck no the liberals need to stop obsessing about southern slavery, how Lincoln was Moses to black people,etc. That stuff happened two hundred years ago, and more people are dying and being enslaved by muslims, comunism, Chicoms,etc.
'To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.' - Jefferson in 1820.
And, 'The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a coordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.'
Like Sherman and Grant? Or you must mean Seward and Lincoln.
Right... Got it.
Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, London, and Tokyo were NOT industrial targets.
The 'victorious allies' efforts to hamstring Germany and its industries after WW1 gave Hitler his entry to power and led to everything that followed.
And, note, after WW2 we jumped through fiscal and diplomatic hoops to reestablish our enemies' ability to recover and thrive. Best that can be said for Southern "reconstruction" is....not close.
Sherman is hated by Southerners because he did what the Union armies could not - he broke the back of the South by attacking their strongholds - their businesses and their aristocracy. The Civil War would have dragged on for a much longer period of time without the strategies of Sherman. As long as the plantation owners of the South weren't effected by the war, they would continue to encourage others to do their fighting. As soon as Sherman made it clear that their involvement was no longer indirect, and that their businesses would be negatively impacted by continuing to support the War, the tide turned.
Sherman will forever be hated by the South because he forced the civilians of the South to feel the consequences of the war. Sounds like a winning battle plan to me.
Victor Davis Hanson has a wonderful book, "Ripples of Battle" which highlights Shiloh. It's a great, objective history lesson.
No, but I plan to get around to it in the next couple of weeks.
"Gotta tell you however, the South cannot put forth any suggestion of 'war crimes' with any validity, given its position regarding the enslavement of human beings for material profit."
"So, where there was slavery, there could be no war crimes?
Big logical fallacy."
Nope, just that the South complaining about "war crimes" is hypocritical. Slavery was a crime against Humanity.
And the beginning of the concept 'Crimes against Humanity" in my opinion.
Best quote I've ever read related to the Civil War was attributed to General James Longstreet, circa July 1863:
"We should have freed the slaves, then fired on Ft Sumtner".
He was so right it hurts.
Let me know when you do... I'd like to know how you liked it.
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, , Ghana, Nepal.
Nothing probably
Did you know that W.T. Sherman was the first president of L.S.U.??? The school was known at that time by the nickname of "'Ol War Skull."
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