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.
But you revere the memory of William Quantrill. To each their own scum, I guess.
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS worse than stand watie? Now there is a scary thought.
"And yet not a single, solitary hostile action had been taken by that 'big bunker full of cannons'. No threats had been made. Charleston hadn't been bombarded. Traffic in and out of the port had not been interfered with. But the matter was quite different on the other side. Ships had been fired on on at least two occasions. Contact with the North had been cut off. Ultimatums had been issued to surrender or be bombarded. Davis wasn't much interested in a peaceful solution at all."
Same for the missiles in Cuba. They were just sitting there. No open threats had been made, but tacit ones had been made at both places. We blockaded Cuba, just like SC did to Sumter, sometimes shooting across bows. "Contact" had not been broken off in either place. Negotiations and ultimatums had succeeded in preventing hostilities in Cuba, failed at Sumter. Lincoln wanted war more than Kruschev.
Davis was less fortunate than Kennedy.
"I'm really not that interested in this, but I do appreciate the effort you obviously put into the post."
You were interested enough to engage in denigrating the South and accusing the people of the period of "crimes against humanity".
You should spend time reading the history of the period before arriving at such negative and abusive conclusions.
"You were interested enough to engage in denigrating the South and accusing the people of the period of "crimes against humanity".
You should spend time reading the history of the period before arriving at such negative and abusive conclusions."
I "denigrated" some people of the South that died over a hundred years ago for their support of slavery.
Sorry, it was a crime against humanity. Get over it. Deal with it. And then let it go......
You really need to calm down, PR.
Sorry, you are completely and totally mistating my views.
I've always been of the opinion the single biggest error of the Confederacy was the refusal to outlaw slavery. Had they done so, they would have gotten what they wanted in 1862 or 1863.
Thankkfully, Jefferson Davis's delusions of grandeur prevented that from happening, thereby keeping North America from becoming "Europe lite".
BOTH sides have our separate heroes.
in point of fact, BOTH had as deficiencies as men/commanders. it just depends on which side you find yourself on, as to which you think was correct.
free dixie,sw
Mark this date down. We finally agree on something.
as my mother says reference to Little Thunder, "he was either a dashing southern partisan ranger & raider OR he was a merciless outlaw & a freebooter. it just depends on which side of the contest you happen to be on."
i can live with that!
free dixie,sw
Let's be honest, Pea. What you mean is that none of the other 15 slave countries had significant sections willing to turn to rebellion to protect their institution of slavery. And you also fail to mention that in none of those countries was slavery voluntarily ended by the slave owners. All 15 countries required government action to end it. Slavery was almost always ended over the opposition of the overwhelming majority of the slave owners themselves. And ending slavery was usually followed by some legislation meant to keep the former slaves in a condition as closely approximating slavery as possible.
Exactly. Good luck convincing "pea ridge" however....(grin)
I don't expect to.
That's quite a stretch. The international rights and wrongs of the missile crisis are less clear-cut than you make out. It might be politically incorrect to say so, but Kennedy's actions were more questionable in international law terms than Lincoln's and more reliant on the overriding demands of national survival, rather than existing rules and agreements.
The novel threat of nuclear weapons, which could wreak massive destruction before any response could be made, was far greater than any danger posed by one fort and its small garrison, and, according to Kennedy, justified a response that definitely would have been, at the very least, questionable in an earlier era.
A better analogy would be to Guantanamo, an existing military installation whose presence had been accepted by past governments. If Castro had fired upon Guantanamo it would more closely parallel the situation in 1861, and would have been a sufficiently cause for war.
Whether or not Lincoln wanted war, Davis clearly was willing to risk war to get what he wanted: solidification of his government's control and a larger Confederacy. So in the short run, he was very lucky indeed, though the war he got in the end wasn't the one he wanted or will willing to chance. In fairness to the man, though, he may have wanted to head off South Carolinians' acting on their own without Confederate authorization against the fort.
The truth is that no country in the western hemisphere engaged in a war to free slaves.
“That's quite a stretch” for you too, X.
Your focus on Davis is an ad hominem fallacy, or at best a red herring.
As of March 1861, Lincoln arrived in office with a sworn duty to uphold the Constitution, and an implicit duty to devote his resources and efforts to averting the pending crisis and approaching war.
This did not mean he had to agree to the other side's demands.
But it did mean he had to use whatever opportunities arose that offered even the slimmest chance at either some or all of the impending concerns, those being (a) the dissolution of the union and (b) the outbreak of a war.
He had many opportunities to do both.
One of the foremost among them being a meeting with the Southern Peace Commissioners.
He also had plenty of opportunities to lobby and negotiate with the governments of the other Southern states that were still in the union to keep them there.
That included Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Instead there was little more than inaction, and as a result, every single one of those governments, except two, voted to secede over the next several months.
After Lincoln arrived in Washington and, far from trying to avert the crisis that fell in his lap by employing his so-called "legendary" leadership skills, ………… he sat in his new office, and plotted (against the recommendations of this Cabinet) how to plunge the nation into a full fledged war.
The policies that resulted drove out 3 times as many states as they retained by threatening the citizens and moving them from either the fence or the moderate union column into the secession column.
To that end, the ensuing catastrophe rests squarely on Lincoln's shoulders in his unwillingness to employ the opportunities he had to avert the crisis and his reckless employment of policies that only exacerbated it.
Why did President Lincoln thwart peaceful efforts offered by both Southern as well as Northern legislators?
Why was it necessary to force the issue at Charleston against the will of his cabinet?
Why was he willing to endorse legalized slavery at the time of the inauguration, but was unwilling to endure the issue until gradual emancipation could be arranged?
"The aggressor in war is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary." Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England.
In January, 1861, seven states had seceded, leaving the Union with four times that number.
The Union had an operational government, federal facilities, a standing Army, a powerful Navy, and a Congress and President.
The seven seceded states had none of that.
Jefferson Davis was no threat to those things that defined the Union as a country.
What Davis and the seven states were doing was withdrawing. And with them remained the agricultural underpinning of the Union economy….cotton and tobacco.
“Preserving the union” was a euphemism for preserving the slave/Southern agriculture that paid the salaries of the Washington political elite.
Lincoln forced the issue for the money. Davis responded.
second, there were about the same number of slave owners in the NORTH as there was in the SOUTH &
third, about the same percentage of northerners owned slaves as southerners = 5-6% AND
didn't your mother tell you that you can't justify YOUR evil by pointing out that someone else is equally evil??????
in point of fact, chattel slavery was nothing more or less than a SIDE ISSUE in 1861.
according to the former chair of history at Grambling State Univ., there was "in 1860, NOT 10,000 people in the whole country who cared a damn about the plight of the slaves. they SHOULD HAVE. they did NOT!"
in other words, the "abolition of slavery crusade" was a SELF-serving, OUTRIGHT damnyankee LIE! nothing more. nothing less.
only the STUPID & the terminally IGNORANT believe that UTTER NONSENSE!
are YOU that IGNORANT & STUPID???
free dixie,sw
Nonsense. I was responding to an explicit comparison of Lincoln and Davis with Khrushchev and Kennedy, and for the comparison to fit, both sides have to be considered.
"The aggressor in war is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary." Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England.
When foolhardy people do something reckless it's natural for them to argue afterwards that a gun was somehow pointed at their heads, but it wasn't the case in 1861. Lincoln wanted to hold the line and maintain the idea that the union had not been broken and that federal authority still applied in all parts of the nation. To be convincing, he had to have some federal installation or ongoing execution of a function of the federal government in the rebellious states. Sumter was the remaining opportunity in his hands. If he held the line, he was convinced that cooler heads would prevail.
In retrospect, with the knowledge of the war and great casualties that followed, one can certainly argue that this wasn't the right decision. At the time, Lincoln assumed that a little firmness would make a peaceful resolution possible, and this was probably a serious miscalculation. The rest -- the secret plot, the mercenary motive, the suggestion that abolition was seriously considered as a positive option by secessionists at that time -- looks like little more than conjecture and conspiracy theories.
In times of crisis, national leaders do take firm stands on the assumption that if they back down, things will begin to collapse, and in this respect, Lincoln and Kennedy were acting in a similar fashion. That's only to be expected. Those who wish to change their form of government ought to take into account, whether they are dealing with a tyranny or with a representative government. In the first case, recourse to force is permissable, and in the second case not. You work within the established and recognized Constitutional channels to get things done. Those who don't are likely to make trouble for themselves and others and provoke a reaction. We know that now. Perhaps the secessionists didn't know that or perhaps they were too blinded by emotion. But we can't unlearn the lesson that you have to work through recognized constitutional and democratic channels if you want fundamental changes in our governance.
Those who care to study the matter also know that patriotism and reverence for the Constitution, the Union, and the flag were exceptionally important to 19th century Americans. Tearing up the union and firing on the flag were a major provocation to people in the Northern states, Lincoln among them. And for many, unilateral secession was seen as a denial of the possibility of enduring republican government. Reducing everything to material motives is an oversimplification that adds nothing to the discussion. If you think that historians have been too harsh on Confederates and secessionists, why make the same mistake about those who opposed them? If one can argue that slaveowners may have cared in some way for liberty, why is it so hard to accept that those who opposed them might also have loved freedom and had noble motives as well?
You apparently need Lincoln to be the great villain of American history. Those who don't have that urge will see that he acted more or less as one would expect an American President to do if confronted with a secessionist movement. The idea that an elected President could or should simply cave into the demands of the secessionist movement, or treat them as leaders of independent nations before the proper changes have been made by the Congress is an pipedream. If you want your own country the least you owe your current one is to work within its institutions for your goals.
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