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.
Nonsense is also known as a Wampus SC post. Ships are flagged by country. New Bedford was the home port for many ships, but they weren't flagged there. And since the Wanderer never went to New Bedford then why would it be homeported there? It was built for a southerner, sold to still more southeners, left on it's slave importing voyage from a southern port and returned to a southern port with its illegal cargo destined for southern buyers.
that's ONE reason that i do NOT favor throwing people off FR for any other reason than obscene/vulgar language. WP damaged his cause more, by posting HATEFILLED, ignorant, self-serving, scalawag LIES, that inflamed the readers who are even southern NEUTRALS, than anything you/i/anyone on the dixie_list could do.
btw, when we manage to fire up the majority of the black CSA desendents, such that they are even half as fierce for the TRUE CAUSE as their ancestors were,that actually wore the GRAY, damnyankees watch out!!!!
every day that passes, more black men/women & other minorities cleave to the Cross of St Andrew & decide that they favor dixie LIBERTY!
free dixie,sw
you KNOW i did NOT say that ONE was derivative & the other book was NOT.
i'm 1500 MILES from my library AND that of the college & thus cannot access MUCH of the original records.
YOU,otoh, are at home & can look up the ORIGIONAL SOURCE DOCUMENT & see which book is correct, if either is. (i can't tell you the number of times that i've had to do just that AND found that the ORIGIONAL source document supports NEITHER author's premises!)
free dixie,sw
OK, I will when you will. When you post the source information from your alleged book (author would be nice, too) then I'll post the source documentation from The Slaveship Wanderer. I can wait.
1.ALL or VIRTUALLY ALL of the US-flagged slavers were from the NORTH & the VAST MAJORITY of ALL SLAVE SHIPS, that brought slaves to the Americas, were specifically from New England.
2.you are desperately trying to run away from that UNcomfortable FACT!
3. your readers are, on the whole, NOT as dumb as you think they are AND
4. they KNOW that you are "speaking with forked tongue".
other than that, you're doing a really good job for the damnyankees.
free dixie,sw
But that's not what you said. What you said, and I quote (with your peculiar punctuation intact) was, "FIRST, EVERY slave ship that was American-owned was from NEW ENGLAND." Now you are saying 'virtually all'. Are you retracting your original statement?
i'd bet YOU KNOW about & have probably read WHITE OVER BLACK, as it is a classic in the field.
but for those who don't know about the book, here's the data: WHITE OVER BLACK,Professor Winthrop D. Jordan, published 1967, UNC Press.
a softbound copy (REprinted 2003) is 24.95 from the UNC, Chapel Hill, bookstore OR it is available through Inter-library loan.
free dixie,sw
can YOU find INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE from an ORIGIONAL SOURCE DOCUMENT that DISproves HIS statement?????? i think NOT!
that is the POINT!
free dixie,sw
First you say "EVERY slave ship that was American-owned was from NEW ENGLAND" Then you say "ALL or VIRTUALLY ALL of the US-flagged slavers were from the NORTH & the VAST MAJORITY of ALL SLAVE SHIPS, that brought slaves to the Americas, were specifically from New England" So which one is it?
Not knowing what his ORIGINAL SOURCE DOCUMENT was it's hard to say. I don't own the book, have never read the book, and have no idea if your quote is accurate or not, since you yourself admit (or claim) to be hundreds of miles away from the book itself. So I'll wait for you.
this is not, as you KNOW, my field of expertise. (for readers only, as N-S KNOWS this: i'm NOT a trained HISTORIAN, but rather a political science/public policy "wonk". my earned degrees are in Public Policy & Political Science. my historical expertise, such as it is, is in the history of TWBTS Trans-Mississippi Theatre, as i've studied that for >25 years.)
free dixie,sw
So are you retracting your statement or not? Did every single slave ship come from New England, as you claimed? Or was it virtually all? Some? A few?
given your firmly-established reputation for LYING, i don't even believe that "the wanderer" was dixie owned,flagged and/or crewed, absent INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE to the contrary.
free dixie,sw
So let me turn it around. You were lying when your said that you had information indicating that the Wanderer was New Bedford flagged and New England owned and crewed. You've been lying since. But where is that different than any of your other posts?
i quoted Professor Winthrop. nothing more,nothing less.
free dixie,sw
for our readers: N-S is the Minister of Damnyankee Propaganda on FR. TRUST HIM to be nothing more or less than an APOLOGIST for the WORST of the damnyankee excesses, before, during & after TWBTS.
that's what the job of a PROPAGANDIST is.
according to him, NOTHING BAD was EVER done by ANY of the hateFILLED,self-serving, money-hungry,racist/nativist, arrogant,self-righteous damnyankees AND nothing GOOD was EVER done by ANY southerner,during the 19th century OR since.
free dixie,sw
Wish? No, I'm saying it. Take the information on the two websites I provided and show where those sites are lying. And provide evidence. You have no problems at all calling other people liars. Prove me wrong.
note where i am & what i'm doing.
given the health status of my much beloved duckie, i won't rush to do your bidding.
free dixie,sw
fyi, i have NO reason to think the USN site is wrong.
UNLIKE many of the damnyankees here, i TRUST the historical accuracy of the US Government's own historiographers.
free dixie,sw
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