for dixie,sw
Stand Watie, while, in general terms, I am very much in agreement with you, you do realize that it was only the Germans who were prosecuted for war crimes, don't you? A truly independent international judiciary could have charged Curtis LeMay or Bomber Harris or almost any Russian general (or Stalin himself) with crimes of a similar nature.
I disagree with you on the overall principle of "war crimes" or that Sherman was doing something that outside of the "restrictions" of warfare. Even before the March to the Sea, at various times in the past and throughout various different civilizations and cultures, arson and attacks against the civil population had been used, sometimes to great effect (ie, the destruction of Carthage and Jerusalem by the Romans, the 30 Years and 100 Years Wars, the Wars of the Roses ... even to some extent the vicious war-within-a-war between the Patriots and Tories in our own Revolution). So there really wasn't anything unusual about this, except for the fact that there wasn't much resistance to it by the Confederate armies.
So, I don't think a Nuremburg reference is appropriate in this situation.