Surely you have something better than that? Based on that it appears that Sherman's army foraged liberally, something that has never been denied, and either took livestock with them or disposed of them to keep them from aiding the confederate war effort. All armies of the time lived off the land, Lee did it in Pennsylvania and Sherman did it in Georgia.
I see that you can't tell the difference between wholesale plundering/destruction and living off the land. I'm sure the Federal troops needed those books, coffee mills, pottery, etc., that they took. Certainly they needed to burn down houses to keep warm. </sarcasm>
If Lee had done the equivalent on the way to Gettysburg then where were all the Northern burned farms, ravaged countrysides, and roadsides strewn with dead "horses, cows, sheep, hogs, chicken, corn, wheat, cotton, books, paper, broken vessels, coffee mills, and fragments of nearly every species of property"? We in the South would never heard the end of it if such had happened.
I've quoted to you before a comment by a Union resident of Pennsylvania of the time that "no wanton destruction of private property was made [during Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania]. This is freely admitted."
Yeah, burning houses and demolishing property is "foraging liberally"... nice euphemism, Non-Sequitur.
Never am I as ashamed to be Yankee-born-and-raised as to see these apologists for the invasion of the southern states.
General Hunter in his recent raid to Lynchburg, caused wide-spread ruin wherever he passed. I followed him about sixty miles, and language would fail me to describe the terrible desolation which marked his path. Dwelling-houses and other buildings were almost universally burned; fences, implements of husbandry, and everything available for the sustenance of human life, so far as he could do so, were everywhere destroyed. We found many, very many, families of helpless women and children who had been suddenly turned out of doors, and their houses and contents condemned to the flames; and in some cases where they had rescued some extra clothing, the soldiers had torn the garments into narrow strips, and strewn them upon the ground for us to witness when we arrived in pursuit.
General Hunter has been much censured by the voice of humanity everywhere, and he richly deserves it all; yet he has caused scarcely one-tenth part of the devastation which has been committed immediately in sight of the headquarters of General Meade and General Grant, in Eastern Virginia.
And from a Confederate private in Early's army about the destruction by Hunter:
We had seen a thousand ruined homes in Clark, Jefferson, and Frederick counties - barns and houses burned and private property destroyed
The Confederacy Compared to Nazi Germany
by Lewis RegensteinTo the Greenville, (NC) East Carolinian
To the editor:
Peter Kalajian's article comparing the Confederacy to Nazi Germany and its battle flag to the swastika is highly offensive, especially to those of us who are Jewish, & shows he knows little about either the Confederacy or the Nazis.
Some 3,500 to 5,000 Jews fought honorably and loyally for the Confederacy, including its Secretary of War & later State, Judah Benjamin ("See Robert Rosen's The Jewish Confederates and Mel Young's Last Order of the Lost Cause). My great grandfather also served, as did his four brothers, their uncle, his three sons, and some two-dozen other members of my Mother's extended family (The Moses’ of South Carolina and Georgia). Half a dozen of them fell in battle, largely teenagers, including the first and last Confederate Jews to die in battle.
We know first hand, from their letters, diaries, and memoirs, that they were not fighting for slavery, but rather to defend themselves and their comrades, their families, homes, and country from an invading army that was trying to kill them, burn their homes and cities, and destroy everything they had.
If you want to talk about Nazi-like behavior, consider the actions of the leading Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, whose war crimes included the following actions:
Ordering the expulsion on 24 hours notice of all Jews "as a class" from the territory under his control (General Order # 11, 17 December, 1862), and forbidding Jews to travel on trains (November, 1862);
Ordering the destruction of an entire agricultural area to deny the enemy support (the Shenandoah Valley, 5 August, 1864).
Leading the mass murder, a virtual genocide, of Native People, mainly helpless old men, women, and children in their villages, to make land available for the western railroads (the eradication of the Plains Indians, 1865-66). What we euphemistically call "the Indian Wars" was carried out by many of the same Union officers who led the war against the South -- Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, Custer, and other leading commanders.
Overseeing the complete destruction of defenseless Southern cities, and conducting such warfare against unarmed women and children (e.g., the razing of Meridien, and other cities in Mississippi, spring, 1863).
Contrast these well-documented atrocities (and many others too numerous to list) with the gentlemanly policies and behavior of the Confederate forces. My ancestor Major Raphael Moses, General James Longstreet’s chief commissary officer, was forbidden by General Robert E. Lee from even entering private homes in their raids into the North, such as the famous incursion into Pennsylvania. Moses was forced to obtain his supplies from businesses and farms, and he always paid for what he requisitioned, albeit in Confederate tender.
Moses always endured in good humor the harsh verbal abuse he received from the local women, who, he noted, always insisted on receiving in the end the exact amount owed.
Moses and his Confederate colleagues never engaged in the type of warfare waged by the Union forces, especially that of General William T. Sherman on his infamous "March to the Sea" through Georgia and the Carolinas, in which his troops routinely burned, looted, and destroyed libraries, courthouses, churches, homes, and cities full of defenseless civilians, including my hometown of Atlanta.
It was not the South but rather our enemies that engaged in genocide. While our ancestors may have lost the War, they never lost their honor, or engaged in anything that could justify their being compared to Nazi’s. It was the other side that did that.
Sincerely yours, Lewis Regenstein Atlanta, GA
October 15, 2004