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.
Yes, but under the doctrine that the enemy-of-my-enemy is my friend: The fact that those Poles were willing to kill German's meant that they were useful allies. Killing Poles was therefore counter to the Soviet Union's immediate goal of defeating the Nazis.
After all, we managed to overlook the communist threat in an effort to defeat the Germans, even though there was ample evidence of German-Soviet cooperation prior to 1941.
Lee grasped it. He grasped it as early as 1861. He knew that he could never win a war of attrition. He fought to win a stunning victory...to sap the North's will to continue the fight as quickly as possible.
He badly underestimated his opposition then.
Like I said in an earlier posts, a lot of Southern partisans seem to ignore the fact that if the CSA had won the Civil War, all that would have guaranteed are additional wars between the USA and the CSA.
A disunited USA would have not been able to help squash Germany in WWII and it certainly would not have been able to deal with the rise of communism around the globe.
America, and the world, are much better places with no independent CSA.
The "Lee was Blind" argument has fallen on hard times precisely because of this point. They are forced to fallback on the assertion that neither of these CSA cavalry commanders had Lee's confidence. I haven't seen any evidence to this effect put forward to support that assertion. Frankly, I just think that when your army is operating deep in enemy territory (Pennsylvania) the problems of gaining accurate intelligence becomes geometrically more difficult -- if only because it isn't safe for your horsemen to operate in one's & two's.
The overwhelming majority of Union soldiers didn't care one way or the other about the fate of slaves. They were fighting to preserve the Union from those who would illegally try to split it in two, and had you suggested that they were fighting to end slavery they most likely would have become quite indignant.
When your level of debate raises above cheap shots against the South, then maybe I will engage you in conversation about the Civil War. Until that time...please refrain from posting to me...
Dig is where? Tie your army to one spot and you give your opposition free run of the rest of your territory, unless he comes to you and surrounds you and waits for your surrender. Lee's only hope was to try and maneuver his enemy to a position where he could destroy the army. He was never able to accomplish that.
Certainly, but Stalin was looking to the long-term. He knew the war was in its final stage and that Soviet victory was inevitable by the time of the Warsaw uprising. Furthermore, he did not care about the fact that his decisions might lead to more Soviet casualties. He saw a potential threat to his post-war domination of Poland and decided to let the Germans eliminate the problem for him.
He saw the situation as part of a greater war- the war against class enemies of communism.
Replay WW1 with a USA/CSA split. Germany sends the Zimmerman telegram to Mexico promising the return of the American southwest to Mexico in return for support. Which way do the American Republics jump? Best Guess: CSA supports Britain & France, while USA (with it's large German immigrant population) lines up with the Kaiser. Perhaps a slice of Southern California (assuming California itself is not independent by this time) gets returned to Mexico in a USA effort to keep the backdoor heat on the CSA. What a mess!
OK, but do you hold your southron compatriots to the same standards?
He was exhbiting his ingrained post-Napoleanic view of war in making that determination. The Army of Northern Virginia won most of its battles. In many cases, in a decisive fashion. However, the only way the South could have won the Civil War was if Lincoln had lost the support of the North in his endeavour. Long, drawn-out trench warfare was the answer. Offensives into Pennsylvania were not.
My dispute with you has nothing to do with your problems with them. They are responsible for their own posts.
Roosevelt and Ilk were commie sympathsizers, no surprise here.
Henry Turtledove has a great series called the "Great War" which deals with such an alternate history.
The USA and the CSA would have been drawn into European balance of power politics as well as being sucked into European wars. Only, those wars would have an American front, with Billy Yank and Johnny Reb killing each other a few more times after 1864.
No. It's a good thing the CSA lost and was wiped off the map.
As you wish.
The New Deal has not worked out so well over the long run. However, at the time, Roosevelt's programs served to prevent a communist revolution during the Great Depression.
I don't know...Stalin had recently been raising H*ll with the Western Allies over the timing of the Normandy Invasion, so I don't know if he was certain of victory just yet. Poland was going to be physically controlled by Soviet forces regardless. The reconstituted Polish Home Army would have been nothing more to the Soviets (and probably a lot less) than the Free French Forces were to the Western effort -- a few extra divisions that YOU are forced to clothe, feed & arm -- and so definitely under your control.
And 2 Soviet Army Groups were effectively crippled in taking Berlin. Polish Light Infantry would have been extremely effective in that street fighting given the vendetta (the Polish Division operating in Italy eventually took Monte Cassino).
However, the only way the South could have won the Civil War was if Lincoln had lost the support of the North in his endeavour.
That is why Lee went North twice.
Long, drawn-out trench warfare was the answer.
Lee knew that he could not win that because he had neither the men nor the provisions for a long drawn out war.
Offensives into Pennsylvania were not.
The offensive into Pennsylvania was to sap the will of the North to wage war...plus to move the war out of Virginia and give the Shenandoah Valley a chance to raise and harvest a crop without interference. The move into Pennsylvania was needed to provision his army, which was short on necessary supplies.
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