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To: ejonesie22; donmeaker
ejonesie: "You must have missed the Sherman's March thing.
It was in all the papers.
Turned Atalanta into kindling."

No, didn't miss it.
Sherman's March is listed as Number 8 of the "top ten" worst atrocities of the US Civil War.
This particular site claims 1,000 civilians may have died, but the fact is there are no contemporary records (i.e., news reports, legal actions) to confirm anything remotely close to that number.
Further, much of the Atlanta destruction blamed on Sherman was actually caused by Confederate General Hood's orders to burn anything of military value there.

The report also claims Sherman's troops raped or murdered many slaves (not white women), and that Sherman himself saw and did not stop that.
I've never seen such charges analyzed (who, what, when, where, why, etc.) or confirmed.

The same report lists the Number One Civil War atrocity as Camp Sumter, Andersonville Prison, Georgia, where the death toll of Union POWs was 13,000 of 45,000 held there -- about 30%.

But notice that overall, most of those "top ten" atrocities, while real and tragic, involved only a few dozen people at most, are few in number, and pale in comparison to other notorious war crimes -- the WWI "Rape of Belgium" and WWII's Holocaust, come to mind.

ejonesie: "Ironically its’ spirit is being reborn in the desire of all Americans to throw off the shackles of an ever more burdensome Federal Government."

And of course, that is the Big Lie being told by today's pro-Confederates.
It's the opposite of historical truth, it's infuriating nonsense, and cannot possibly lead to political success today.

The historical truth of 1860 was that the "ever more burdensome government" of that day was the Slave Power, which by 1860 had all but made slavery constitutionally legal in not just the South, but in every state.

With the Compromise of 1850 making the Federal Government responsible for enforcing Fugitive Slave Laws, and the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scot decision letting slave-holders take their "property" to any state, it was the Slave Power which oppressed the consciences and fears of most Northerners.

And when it began declaring secession in late 1860 the Slave Power's reasons had nothing to do with real oppressions (i.e., as spelled out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence), but rather with their fears about what might happen in the future under a "Black Republican" President Lincoln.

So, all claims that the North was somehow "oppressing" the South in 1860 are total distortions, and cannot, must not become the basis for some New Conservative mythology justifying... what?
Another insane attack on some future Fort Sumter?

ejonesie: "It may even be folks coming out of the South that strike first again, this time to defend the USA, if it ever rises to that level..."

(sigh...)

138 posted on 08/30/2013 9:25:55 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 136 | View Replies ]


To: BroJoeK
The real question will be, while you guys up north are busy still trying to write the history of 150 years ago to your favor are you going to stay so blind, so dedicated to being “right” that you will let the nation fail because you don't want to be equated with some “pro confederates”...

"Sigh" if you want be we are going down a road that is fundamentally chaining the entire nation. Is your bias against the South going to paralyze you from saving the whole?

140 posted on 08/30/2013 10:39:46 AM PDT by ejonesie22 (8/30/10, the day Truth won.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 138 | View Replies ]

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