THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA: Civilians were Sherman's targets

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. 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.

You made a passing comparison, then went on to this

Whether or not Lincoln wanted war, Davis clearly was willing to risk war to get what he wanted

Two things about that.....one, the evidence is clear that Davis did everything he could to avoid war, while protecting the Confederate states, the same oath that Lincoln took. Second, there was no threat to the Union. There is no evidence that Davis wanted to risk anything for his own gain.

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

There was nothing foolhardy or reckless about secession. Only the Union could bring war, and they did, and Lincoln was the reckless factor in the equation.

If he held the line, he was convinced that cooler heads would prevail.

His biographers would like you to believe that. All of his advisers and he himself knew full well that sending troops to Charleston would cause a firefight. It was his intent from the start to do just that. Then he would call the troops, set up the blockade, the rest of the Southern states would secede, and Lincoln would have the fight he wanted.

Everything he did was consistent with just that.

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.

So, it looks as if you want to mix in a few diversions and red herrings. OK.

I did not mention a secret plot, but you will admit that Lincoln was holding meetings at the White House in late March of 1861 asking his cabinet to develop action plans for the Navy at South Carolina and Florida, while requiring secrecy among his people.

Secret plot? It might seem so.

The mercenary motive? Are you referring to his intent to preserve the tariff revenue? Abolitionist movement a positive?

Not staying on point is a favorite confusion tactic of yours, X.

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 Davis(my addition) were acting in a similar fashion.

Perhaps the secessionists didn't know that or perhaps they were too blinded by emotion

Another fallacious argument....you are trying to frame the secession with a false choice. In all the papers and decrees of the time, they all knew the potential consequences of the hotheads in the Republican party. But the secessionists deliberately and carefully drew up their papers, gathered their citizens, voted, and decreed secession.

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.

That was not the issue, and you know that. The citizens of the seceding states were convinced that they would not be guaranteed the protections of the Constitution as was the case at the time. They could not depend on the Executive carrying out the Constitutional protections. So, it was time to leave.

Tearing up the union and firing on the flag were a major provocation to people in the Northern states, Lincoln among them.

It was clearly pointed out to you that the Union remained intact. Lincoln set the stage for firing on Sumter, which caused great verbal and written outrage. However, armed conflict resulting in death did not occur until Lincoln ordered troops to march through Baltimore.

Provocation? You are leaving out Lincoln's threat in his speeches that the Union was divided, and that it could not remain that way. You are leaving out the provocation to all Southern people of open Northern sympathy with John Brown. The new Morrill tariff was provocation. Lincoln's election was provocation. Anderson's move to Sumter = provocation. How about the Star of the West?

The only thing the South did that was provocation was to set up an 18% tariff in the face of over 40% at Northern ports.

And for many, unilateral secession was seen as a denial of the possibility of enduring republican government.

How so when there were 27 states still in the Union of republican governments, and that the new seven had adopted a republican government. No, secession was a denial to the Republican party the source of its revenue.

Reducing everything to material motives is an oversimplification that adds nothing to the discussion.

Are you denying the fact that any government acts in its own self interest? And that among these self interests, that material motives are trivial oversimplifications? History would not agree with you. Abraham Lincoln, April, 1861 "And if I let them go, what would become of my tariffs?"

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.

He acted totally the opposite as Buchanan, who was following the Constitution.

And in conflict with Buchanan's attorney general, his own cabinet, many influential Congressmen, and the US military. In fact, the only support he had was from several New England and mid-western governors who realized the effect that Southern free trade with Europe would have on their economies. They are the ones that promised what Lincoln considered sufficient military troops to put down the secession. He acted against the advice of the keepers of the Constitution, and acted in accordance with the keepers of the coin.

If you want your own country the least you owe your current one is to work within its institutions for your goals.

Yes, and after that fails, you resort to second best.......the Peace Commissioners.....there in Washington, waiting for over a month to get to see Lincoln.

If you have the power of the President, and you are facing a peaceful separation of a few states, then you listen, and attempt to understand the nature of their grievances, and you work together toward common interests, there, don't you?

Only a cowboy would sent federal ships to Charleston.

"Whatever...."

Is that a synonym for 'nevermind'?

To put your misguided concepts of slavery in Perspective, you should read Hugh Thomas's impressive history, "The Slave Trade" (published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster). It is one of those books that shift your whole perspective on the past.

Thomas covers the Atlantic slave trade from 1440 to 1870. It was a literally filthy business from first to last. More than 11,000,000 Africans were brought to the New World, while countless others-probably about 2,000,000 - died of miserable conditions in the overcrowded ships en route.

What is least known is that fewer than 5 per cent-about 500,000 - of these Africans were brought to this country. Some 4,000,000 were carried to Brazil by the Portuguese, 2,500,000 to Spanish possessions, 2,000,000 to the British West Indies, and 1,600,000 to the French West Indies.

All this puts something of a damper on the assumption that slavery was a sin specific or "peculiar" to the American South. The slaves had been Africans who were sold to European merchants by other Africans who had enslaved them in the first place. Several of Africa's proudest empires were built on the sale of slaves. For centuries Africa's chief export was human beings. When Congresswoman Maxine Waters speaks of "my African ancestors' struggle for freedom," she doesn't know what she's talking about. Slavery was an African institution long before it spread to the South, and there was no abolition movement to trouble it. When Europe banned the slave trade, African economies reeled.

So it's rather comical for American blacks to sentimentalize Africa and stress that they are "African Americans" while cursing the Confederacy as a symbol of slavery. Africa has a much better claim to be such a symbol. Slavery still exists there, in Sudan and Mauritania and probably elsewhere.

As Christians, white Europeans always had a bad conscience about slavery. They wrestled with the question of whether Africans had immortal souls and natural rights. Even Southerners who justified slavery as a positive good felt that it needed justification.

Pagans had no such qualms. They no more felt they needed to justify owning slaves than owning cattle. Slavery was a fact of life, and slaves could be killed, mutilated, and even eaten without compunction.

In the Arab world African slaves were highly prized as eunuchs. They were used as guardians of harems and as civil servants, some of whom amassed considerable power. But many young African men died in the process because of inept or infected castration. The prevalence of eunuchs probably explains why African slavery didn't leave the Arab world with a race problem. Given this history, it's ironic that so many American blacks adopt Arab names to spite the white man and to achieve a supposedly independent "identity."

Thomas indirectly punctures another cherished American notion: that Abraham Lincoln "ended slavery." Lincoln is mentioned only three times, very briefly, in the entire book. Against the huge backdrop of the slave trade, he was only a local, marginal, and rather tardy figure. By 1850 it was clear that slavery was doomed throughout the Christian world. But just as we exaggerate our role in fostering slavery, we exaggerate our role in destroying it. We Americans tend to be self-important even in our self-flagellations.

The slave trade was so vast that a European might speculate in it, and profit by it, without ever seeing a single slave. Such distinguished authors as John Locke, Edward Gibbon, and Voltaire drew income from it. Voltaire was especially hypocritical. He took the self-serving view that it was less immoral for a European to buy Africans than it was for other Africans to sell them; and after denouncing the slave trade for years, he "accepted delightedly" when a merchant offered to name a slave ship after him.

Thomas tells the whole story without much moralizing. He knows the facts speak for themselves, in all their horror and pathos: people stolen from their homes, robbed of their freedom and even their identities, often dying namelessly amid unspeakable squalor, with no families or friends to mourn or memorialize their passing. The ones who survived to be slaves in the New World, though unenviable, were relatively lucky.

I'm not going to reargue this for the umpteenth time. Neither of us will convince the other. You simply deny my assertions and accuse me of dragging in "red herrings" or "diversions," and that really doesn't advance the argument. We approach this from very different points of view. You may feel free to label opposing arguments "red herrings" if they don't fit into your own picture of how things were, but it's not likely that those who disagree and proceed from different assumptions would agree with you. What is "on point" and what is "irrelevant" will vary depending on how one conceives of the rights and wrongs of a given event. Much of what you drag in to your posts, strikes me as being unnecessary distractions as well.

When I asked if you expected people to believe "that abolition was seriously considered as a positive option by secessionists at that time" I was referring to a "red herring" of your own: "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?" What is that in reference to? What were you trying to say? Isn't it a little hard to figure out? As though Lincoln "endorsed legalized slavery," rather than simply accepted it legal where it existed? As if Confederates didn't also "endorse legalized slavery?" What is your point? That Confederates were willing and eager to accept gradual and compensated emancipation as the price of union? We know that's not true. So before you accuse others of dragging in irrelevancies, make sure you've got all your own ducks in a row and loose ends tied up.

You've drunk the Kool Aid and accepted the Confederate view of the world. That includes a pretty cartoonish or melodramatic picture of Lincoln as a villainous and mercenary schemer, but excludes any speculation on what Davis's motives may have been that might put them in an unattractive light. It's your right to think as you see fit, but don't expect that everyone's going to accept your reading of things.

We know now that Lincoln overestimated the strength of unionist sentiment in the South, especially in the states that had just rejected secession. He thought that firmness and time would resolve things peacefully. Thus it looks as though he had no reason to take actions that he thought would provoke the Upper South to join the rebellion. What would have been the logic of such a strategy? The facts and accounts that I've seen and trust point out Lincoln's miscalculation and even blindness, but don't support your interpretation.

Davis, by contrast, had everything to gain -- at least in the short run -- by provoking a fight that would rally other slaveowning states to the Confederate banner. I don't assert that that was his motivation, just that it's plausible. Toombs and others apparently thought that firing on the fort would be disastrous in the long run, and they were right. Your portrait of a desperate President provoking a crisis to get what he wanted applies just as much or just as little to Davis as to Lincoln.

And we do know that Davis must have been conscious of the advantages of starting a war for improving his shaky position. Virginian Roger Pryor's speech at Charleston was reported in the Mercury and other papers:

“Do not distrust Virginia,” he continued; “as sure as tomorrow's sun will rise upon us, just so sure will Virginia be a member of this Southern Confederation. [Applause.] And I will tell you, gentlemen, what will put her in the Southern Confederacy in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock—STRIKE A BLOW! [Tremendous applause.] The very moment that blood is shed, old Virginia will make common cause with her sisters of the South. [Applause.] It is impossible she should do otherwise.”

Edmund Ruffin of Virginia made similar comments: The first drop of blood spilled on the soil of South Carolina will bring Virginia and every Southern State to her side. And Davis actually heard such talk first hand. Former Senator Clemmons of Alabama relates:

In 1861, shortly after the Confederate Government was put in operation, I was in the city of Montgomery. One day (April 11, 1861) I stepped into the office of the Secretary of War, General Walker, and found there, engaged in a very excited discussion, Mr. Jefferson Davis (the President), Mr. Memminger (Secretary of the Treasury), Mr. Benjamin (Attorney-General), Mr. Gilchrist, a member of our Legislature from Loundes county, and a number of other prominent gentlemen. They were discussing the propriety of immediately opening fire on Fort Sumter, to which General Walker, the Secretary of War, appeared to be opposed. Mr. Gilchrist said to him, 'Sir, unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days!'

So Davis had to be aware of the advantages of beginning a war. Of course if you want to have a cardboard Davis, wholly noble and too good for the world, to play off against a pasteboard villainous Lincoln, you won't care, but disentangling the motives of either man is a complicated and risky proceeding.

Constituted and legitimate governments have to be tough at times, because they deal with tough opponents like foreign aggressors, criminals, and pirates. They are watchdogs that can become attack dogs under some circumstances. When governments really are oppressive and constitutional and democratic channels for change don't exist armed rebellion is justifiable. But when this isn't the case, one expects that political groups that wish to change things or form their own country will act within existing and accepted channels. We'd naturally expect our elected leaders to show strength and firmness in a crisis to prevent things from falling apart. It's up to those who want change to take a more conciliatory line, if it's possible. If they force themselves into untenable positions their actions are less excusable than those of legitimately elected officials.

Was Lincoln a "cowboy"? It's hard to think of anyone less like one, though it might be comforting for President Bush to see the same kinds of insults that he's had to face thrown at Abraham Lincoln. It may be that he was careless in not seeing how the Confederates would respond to his action but that's not quite the same thing as reckless endangerment or deliberate provocation. Seward, by contrast, who advocated provoking a war on Britain or another power to distract attention from the secession crisis fits the "cowboy" mold. So does Beauregard, itching for battle. And so too do many of the Southern fire-eaters, who showed far more ferocity than most Northern Republicans did in 1861.

Do you really think that if Massachusans or Texans or Californians declared that they had left the union, confiscated government property, repudiated debts, and fired on US troops, that war might not be the most likely result? Do you really think that, having done all this, the demand "Talk to our peace commissioner in Washington" would be well received? At the same time when you were sending secession commissioners into other states to encourage them to join your revolt? That just isn't the way things work in the real world. You can complain or rage that things don't work the way you think they should, that "state's rights" aren't absolute, and look for villains, or you can recognize a tragic situation -- in many ways the product of the secessionists' own rash actions -- and try to understand why things happened as they did, and why some reckless actions naturally produce strong reactions.

You've also swallowed the lie that possible or eventual future threats to slavery constituted threats to liberty, hook, line and sinker. I guess you have to think that way to believe as you do. But it looks a bit ridiculous now to maintain that having a government that questioned the wisdom and justice of expanding the institution of slavery constituted a threat to the South that couldn't be managed within the existing Constitutional structure. Was it not more an opportunity than a threat to plan for the eventual abolition of a heinous institution? Of course, it was hard to see that at the time, with tempers flaring, but with 140 years of hindsight, it ought to be clear that staying in the Union was in the best interest of the South -- and the North, East and West as well. It was not only the prudent, but also the just thing to do. Of course, Southerners and slaveowners were free to act foolishly and rashly if they wanted to, but they couldn't expect others to simply give them whatever they wanted regardless of how they behaved.

Does anyone really argue that [little South Carolina was a threat to the Union]?

Implicitly. Didn't Abe "save the Union" (from SC's "attacks")?

Wasn't the argument more that the federal government had a right to maintain its installations in the Southern states until matters had been resolved?

Had cooler heads prevailed, the disposition of US Property remaining in CSA regions could have been resolved by treaty between the two countries.

And a duty to maintain order lest the country be torn apart by conflicts between unionists and secessionists at the grass roots in many states?...Once the Confederates issued a call for a large army and fired on the fort, a state of war was assumed to exist, all the more so since Confederate commissioners were trying to provoke secession in other states.

Contrary to keeping the country from being torn apart, Abe drove out the few remaining S.states after Sumter, by insisting that they be party to a Union war on the CSA minus VA TN and NC, which stood between - in other words, by insisting on unconditional Union, which the Founders never insisted on. Abe's duty was to protect the states from "invasion". It looked like the opposite was about to happen to VA, NC, & TN.

Article VII:
"The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same. "

The Union was safe (from South Carolina's "attacks") as long as 9 states stayed in it. There were more than 9 Northern states.

When people say "Lincoln saved the union," they mean at least two things by it: first that he kept the union intact, and second that he protected it against a variety of threats of subversion, sedition, and dissolution. Whatever threats there were went far beyond South Carolina, first to secesssionists in many states, and second to the new Confederate government, and then, perhaps, to foreign governments that would eventually exploit America's collapse. To be sure these forces were linked: South Carolina started a process of dissolution that grew and intensified. But you're distorting the situation to try to make it look ridiculous, like a member of a 20th century totalitarian party who scoffs at the idea that he and his comrades were ever regarded as a threat by anyone, and conveniently ignores the international movement and foreign powers that supported his own faction.

You don't get beyond the "give us what we want and you'll have peace" perspective. But as a rule, unless there is some explicit constitutional provision for dissolving the union, governments don't simply give in to breakaway factions, and negotiate with them as independent governments. It just doesn't happen in the real world. Conceivably, a government might simply give in -- if it was a very weak government, or that was riddled with secessionist sympathizers, as Buchanan's was. But that can't be counted on. That doesn't mean that tyranny prevails, just that dissolving a federal union generally requires a process at the federal level, not a state procedure followed by negotiations between two or more sovereign nations. The "supremacy clause" of the Constitution clearly supports this, and outweighs other, marginally relevant or irrelvant passages relation to the adoption of the Constitution.

One reason why, with all his many faults, the reputation of Martin Luther King waxed, as that of Davis and other Confederate leaders waned, is that he understood how one achieves change in constitutional republics or democracies by appealing to the majority's "better angels" and moral sense and working within the established system, rather than by demonizing opposing forces and trying to throw off all ties at once. Neoconfederates sit around moaning, "It didn't work. It didn't work. Why didn't it work? Who can we blame for the fact that it didn't work?" The more I look into the matter the more it looks like the goal, the means employed, the leaders, and their strategy were all deeply flawed. And there was a lot of real thirst for war among Southern militants. It's not strange or striking or unexpected that secession brought war and defeat. It's not primarily Lincoln's unfairness or villainy or deviousness that caused war. The strange thing is that people put so much energy -- even now -- into trying to prove that secession could have, would have, or should have worked, when the lesson of history is that the course the secessionists and Confederates pursued was so likely to fail.

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