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.
there are FEW fools on FR. why not head over to DU, where cretins/morons/idiots & lunatic damnyankee LIBs dwell.
they'll LIKE YOU!
free dixie,sw
btw, did you see the post from the damnyankee who in response to my question, "yes or no, do you believe that murdering southern civilians in mass during TWBTS was OK ?"
the damnyankee said that the MURDERED, UNarmed civilans "got what they richly deserved".
free dixie,sw
Yep, obviously he adores mass murderers, and probabbly is racist as well.
free dixie,sw
"check your mail.
there are FEW fools on FR. why not head over to DU, where cretins/morons/idiots & lunatic damnyankee LIBs dwell.
they'll LIKE YOU!
free dixie,sw"
I've asked you politely to stop posting to me, and you refuse, for whatever reason I don't care at this point.
I've now been forced to ask the host here at FR to block any "freepmail" from you to me.
Once more, please go away. I'm not interested in your comments, viewpoints, or ongoing communications to me.
Thanks in advance.
whether it is me or some other southerner, you will NOT get a "pass" on FR.
it's called FREEDOM OF SPEECH & of the PRESS. (btw, the founding fathers of this nation did NOT intend to protect POPULAR SPEECH by passing the 1st Amendment. they wouldn't have bothered to pass such an amendment to the Constitution, had that been their intent.)
free dixie,sw
Again, I would ask you just not post to me.
Thanks for the upteenth time.
ALL you have to do is either to:
LEAVE Free Republic, never to return OR
stop posting HATEFILLED, arrogantly UNTRUTHFUL nonsense/drivel/bilge about the southland, her HERO-MARTYRS, her sacred/blood-spattered battleflags,her memorials to our honored dead, etc,etc,etc.
otherwise, i'll keep challenging your UNtruthfulness.
free dixie,sw
Please stop posting to me, thanks in advance.
free dixie,sw
Please stop posting to me, I have no interest. Thanks in advance.
it goes without saying that HATERS & LIARS dispise everyone, who points out their hatefulness & lies.
free dixie,sw
Please don't post to me, I'm not interested. Thanks in advance.
I must say in my young mind it was hard to understand some of thing that were going on but getting tickets were common for tourist who travel through a town if you blinked you missed it as one travel by.
Now late in life after reading these harbor feeling was those tickets just a target at those from the north? So sorry my lack of understanding of this ungoing hate .....because it was things I was never taught! Still on some level.....I can appreciate an emphasis!
My parents nor family as well as community ever spend time in speaking ill of other states. My memory in school was the taught of LOVE of Country America and why we are so blessed!
Yes we did have lessons on Civil War but it was taught as a tragedy for a house divided not on love/hate!
May you allow the LOVE of the LORD to HEAL!
Well, you evidently learned your history of the War Between the States in your yankee history classes...but many of us southerners learned it from the knees of our great grandparents.
I would hope that you would not sing the peace songs of the liberals to us...when you do have any emotional or historical involvement in this debate.
You are an ass.
I did not know obeying the council of the Lord was a liberal prase!
John 13
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
2-when you do have any emotional or historical involvement in this debate.
To say I don't have any emotion on this is not so for I am very sensitive even at a young age in 1951 a feeling of uncertainty even those at the time I did not understand!
As a Wolverine or a Michigander! I never thought of myself as a Yankee because it was never mention it was only when I moved to NY and heard about a play Damn Yankee or the NY Yankee's!
Most of the History for Michigan was about Wyandotte & Iraquoi indians and the French.
"You sources for the present."
What does that mean?
Your sources for 692. You know, the "one source says" and the "it was reported" and the ever popular "evidence to support the claim". The sources for that.
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