During WWII, we bombed the crap out of the enemy’s cities. I have never, not once, heard one of the south’s defenders on this forum suggest that it was evil to do so. And yet, Sherman was evil?
Were large numbers of our soldiers in WW II thieves and rapists? Consider Sherman's treatment of Columbia, South Carolina. From page 61 of A City Laid Waste, by William Gilmore Simms (a leading author and journalist and eyewitness to the sacking of Columbia who collected more eyewitness accounts), published a few weeks after it happened, edited by David Aiken:
Hardly had the [Union] troops reached the head of Main street, when the work of pillage was begun. Stores were broken open in the presence of thousands within the first hour of their arrival. The contents, when too cumbersome for the plunderers, were cast into the streets. Gold and silver, jewels and liquors, were eagerly sought. No attempt was made to arrest the burglars. The officers, soldiers, all, seemed to consider it a matter of course. And wo to him who carried a watch with gold chain pendant; or who wore a choice hat, or overcoat, or boots, or shoes. He was stripped by ready experts in the twinkling of an eye. It is computed that, from first to last, twelve hundred watches were transferred from the pockets of their owners to those of the robbers. Purses shared the same fate; nor was Confederate currency repudiated.
Sherman's troops had marched into town in an orderly fashion. Then when they were dismissed, wholesale robbery and plunder began and lasted the rest of the day and night. From page 64:
Sherman, at the head of his cavalry, traversed the streets everywhere – so did his officers – yet they saw nothing to rebuke or restrain. Subsequently, these officers were everywhere on foot, yet beheld nothing which required the imposition of authority. Robbery was going on at every corner – in every house – yet there was no censure, no punishment.
Sherman traversed the streets everywhere, but no censure or ounishment of the wholesale robbery going on around him? It is not my understanding that such practices were widespread in the US Army in WW II. Occassional, yes, but not widespread and observed by senior officers who did nothing to stop the thievery.
Union Captain George Whitfield Pepper says the following about the amount of looting on Sherman's campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas [Source, Personal Recollections of Sherman's Campaigns: In Georgia and the Carolinas, by George Whitfield Pepper, published by Hugh Dunne of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1866]:
There are hundreds of these mounted men with the column, and they go everywhere. Some of them are loaded down with silverware, gold coin, and other valuables. I hazard nothing in saying that three-fifths (in value) of the personal property of the country we passed through was taken.
In his book, Pepper said he was on the way into Columbia the morning after it had been burned by Sherman's men and he was met by crowds of soldiers "waving gold watches, handfuls of gold, jewelry, and rebel shinplasters [rb: paper money] in the air, and boasting of having burned the town." [page 312-313]
Simms made the following comment about rape by Sherman's troops on page 90:
We have been told of successful outrages of this unmentionable character being practiced on women dwelling in the suburbs. Many are understood to have taken place in remote country settlements, and two cases are described where young negresses were brutally forced by the wretches and afterwards murdered -- one of them being thrust, when half dead, head down, into a mud puddle, and there held until she was suffocated. ... Regiments, in successive relays, subjected scores of these poor women [rb: black women in this case] to the torture of their embraces ...
Yes, IMO, Sherman and a proportion of his troops were indeed evil. It is no wonder my Georgia in-laws hated Sherman with a passion 100 years after Sherman's march through their farms.
"Befo' the wah we never had no good times. They took good care of us, though. As pa'taculah with slave as with the stock - that was their money, you know. And if we claimed bein' sick, they'd give us a dose of castah oil and tu'pentine. That was the principal medicine cullud folks had to take, and sometimes salts. But nevah no whiskey - that was not allowed. And if we was real sick, they had the Doctah fo' us.
"We had very bad eatin'. Bread, meat, water. And they fed it to us in a trough, jes' like the hogs. And ah went in may [sic] shirt till I was 16, nevah had no clothes. And the flo' in ouah cabin was dirt, and at night we'd jes' take a blanket and lay down on the flo'. The dog was supe'ior to us; they would take him in the house.
"Some of the people I belonged to was in the Klu Klux Klan. Tolah had fo' girls and fo' boys. Some of those boys belonged. And I used to see them turn out. They went 'round whippin' niggahs. They get young girls and strip 'em sta'k naked, and put 'em across barrels, and whip 'em till the blood run out of 'em, and then they would put salt in the raw pahts. And ah seen it, and it was as bloody aroun' em as if they'd stuck hogs.
"I sho' is glad I ain't no slave no moah. Ah thank God that ah lived to pas the yeahs until the day of 1937. Ah'm happy and satisfied now, and ah hopes ah see a million yeahs to come."
Source: The American Slave, Vol. 16: 97-101.