The Forget Hell! crowd

Townhall.com ^ | February 27, 2006 | W. Thomas Smith, Jr.

[SuzyQ2]

I love history. I’m proud of my Southern heritage. But for me to be angry to the point of protesting a moment in Southern history that happened nearly a century-and-a-half ago would be just, well, nonsensical. And would in some ways tarnish that heritage.

[quadrant]

Take this from a man is a Southerner on both sides of the family ever since Europeans arrived in North America: honor the past but don't cling to it.
To do is as foolish as those folks who want to re-fight the Mexican-American War and set up some sort of independent Chicano state in the southwest.

[jerry639]

I live in IN and my father was born May, 1886.
My grandfather fought for the North and died at Andersonville.

[rustbucket]

The South would have been hemmed in by New Mexico on the west, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and on down the line to the East - there would have been no safety valve that the west provided in the 1860s through the 1900s when land was available for free in territories outside of the CSA.

The Arizona Territory, which consisted of the southern halves of Arizona and New Mexico, issued the equivalent of two "secession" declarations in early 1861. I'm not sure a territory can secede, but they sure didn't want to remain a part of the US. Northern New Mexico did want to stay in the US. But neither territory were states at this point in time.

As I remember, the first Arizona Territory declaration issued before Texas seceded. In it, the Arizona Territory withdrew from the US and proposed to join Texas if Texas went her way as an independent nation. The second declaration by the Arizona Territory issued after Texas joined the Confederacy. It proposed to leave the US and join the Confederate States of America.

Slavery wouldn't have been necessarily very economic in the Arizona Territory or West Texas. I'm guessing that slaves would have probably been employed in mines out west rather than in agriculture. IIRC, Spain had used native Indians and peons as virtual slaves in mines for some time.

[af_vet_rr]

I see you are a genealogist. So am I. Have you ever tried to trace families who lived in Sherman's path? His troops burned marriage records, land records, etc. We have more than one dead end in our genealogical research because of Sherman. Perhaps you can understand why I don't salute when I hear his name.

Records were burned in the course of events by both sides (with Confederates burning Confederate records deliberately in several major cases), but most of the dead ends I have run into as far as researching Confederate soldiers, come about for these reasons:

- Changing of units - Soldier goes into a hospital or to the rear or whatever as a member of one unit, comes out a member of another, because some unit was passing by and grabbed him.

- Lack of records in general - with so many movements and events happening so quickly, you had a lot of people who weren't tracked properly to begin with, and the lack of unit historians for so many units compounded this problem to no end.

- Union troops burning military facilities that had records, or burning the records themselves - of course some 20 year old in 1864 is not going to realize they are going to give a genealogist 140 years later fits because they wanted to stay warm or needed an easy way to start a campfire, or used them for toilet paper.

- Illiteracy - putting aside the obvious implications, i.e. that they weren't writing home very often, you had a lot of soldiers who couldn't read or write, which led to poor spellings either of their own doing, or from others who got their names wrong.

- Instances of Confederate leaders ordering records destroyed in the face of advancing Union soldiers - one brick wall that I worked on for a friend involved a General Simon Buckner destroying many records in and around Knoxville.

- One of the worst instances - General Ewell burning God knows how many documents of the Confederate government in Richmond before it's fall. The fires in Richmond in early April of 1865 destroyed a lot more than cotton and Tobacco, and while Union troops burned field records, many of the records Ewell had burned were much more important - almost the equivalent of the St. Louis fire in 1973.

This hurt my research more than anything else, because I can look at a personal letter and see a unit that a Confederate soldier was in, and have fairly tangible proof of who they were, where they were, etc., because that was how they got their mail - through their unit. I can't go back and piece together promotions, pay records, medical records, etc., unless they were captured and sent to Washington, or they were very localized (such as a small hospital out in the boonies that kept their own records, or banks in untouched towns, etc. and somebody had the wherewithall to hold onto them as keepsakes).

[AnAmericanMother]

I'm a genealogist too - and it wasn't just Sherman, guys . . . or even The Wah.

Here's the number one problem in the South: almost all courthouses were built of wood until the 1920s. My father's family's home county had the courthouse burn THREE times -- in 1875, 1899, and 1933 -- and Sherman had nothing to do with ANY of those fires! It sure did play hell with the records, though!

Many birth, death, and marriage records have been reconstructed from family Bibles, newspapers, and graveyards. But it's spotty, and frustrating.

[derllak]

"What's the point" is exactly what I was feeling. The civil war is over now and thank God our country has remained intact.
I know that Southerners are proud of their heritage, but so are the Northerners and that's fine. Doing something like this just opens old wounds. I for one am thankful that our country was remained intact after such a tragic event. Let's not make the same stupid mistake all over again. Get over it and thank GOD you live in such a wonderful country!

[rustbucket]

One of my wife's ancestors was known from friends to have died in Point Lookout prison for Confederates in Maryland, but the Union prison records don't show it. That large federal prison is known from Confederate diaries not to have kept very good death records. So the problem for genealogists exists on both sides.

Based on what I've seen in the Official Records, I'd bet that there are far more instances of Northern troops burning Southern towns and homes (and thus the various marriage, bible, and land records important to genealogists) than vice versa.

[Supernatural]

Find the song "Rebel" on the album "Quicksilver" by Quicksilver Messenger Service on the web if you can. Download it and listen to it.

"I am a good old rebel, that's exactly what I am

for your fame and fortune, I do not give a damn

300,000 yankees lying dead in the southern dust

We got 300,000 before they ever got next to us

They died of the southern fever, cold southern steeled shot

And I wish we'd got three million more that what we got

I can't take up my musket and fight'em down no more

But I ain't gonna love'm, that's for god damn sure

And I don't want no pardon for what I've done or am

And I will not be reconstructed and I do not give a damn"

I think you will like the song.

[stainlessbanner]

My warmest regards, sir!

Amazing to be so close to those that fought. I have met only a few folks such as yourself who are one generation removed from the conflict. I enjoy hearing their stories since they are so close to the source - it's important to preserve those accounts for our collective history.

[beagle9]

I think you might be (are) off base here. As someone who has been around awhile, the Sherman bashing is not based in reality. It has really become detached from reality since the 1970's or so. As a Southerner and Historian I think it does little good (and is counterproductive) to attack someone who does not deserve it. For example, there is not one credible case of a rape or molestation documented on Sherman's March-- pretty amazing considering what is going on in today's battlefields in Bosnia, Rwanda etc. . I think that speaks well for both 19th century morality and Americans in general. This was posted in the Lancaster (Ohio) Eagle Gazette in September of last year. Whether you believe it or not, it is accurate.


Professor Mark Grimsley, a history professor specializing in American military history at Ohio State University, said much of Sherman’s bad rap stems from a distortion of facts surrounding the “March to the Sea.”

“It is not true that they (Union soldiers) burned every town and every house in their path. It is not true they assaulted civilians. And it is not true that white women were raped or sexually assaulted,” said Grimsley, who won the Lincoln Prize for scholarly works about the Civil War for his book, “The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865.”

According to Grimsley, Sherman’s troops destroyed property within the bounds of military necessity.

“If you take Sherman’s march and put it in a broader context, it was a combination of severity and restraint aimed at public property such as railroads, warehouses and factories,” Grimsley said.

However, he did point out that some Union troops did engage in the destruction of civilian property once crossing into South Carolina.
“It’s true that he was dealing with volunteer officers and soldiers over which he had limited control. So when Union forces crossed into South Carolina, the first state to seceded, soldiers were very politically aware and knew these types of things,” Grimsley said.
“Now they were burning towns, burning houses and inflicting a lot more violence, but when Sherman’s army got to North Carolina, that kind of violence ceased.”

Grimsley believes the resentment toward Sherman’s march is more of a psychological issue than one of physical destruction.

“At the time of the war, soldiers are coming on to your property and ransacking your stores for food. And there are cases when soldiers would grab hold of hogs and cut the hams out of them while they were sill living,” Grimsley said. “And although people weren’t really hurt, they did feel violated. People were shocked and traumatized by this experience, and feel the need to keep alive (those) memories.”

[stainlessbanner]

Sherman’s troops destroyed property within the bounds of military necessity.

Ask a Native American how inbounds his actions were.

[rustbucket]

My condolences.

As far as I know, the only courthouse fires that effectively blocked our genealogy research were caused by Sherman's troops. That is not to say that some Southern courthouse fires might not have caused lost records for my family prior to the war, but if so, the fires didn't stop us from being able to trace most of my family branches into the 1700s.

However, genealogical research on my wife's ancestors is particularly difficult. All of them lived in Sherman's path. My Georgia in-laws hated Sherman with a passion. Their parents had seen Sherman's troops come onto their farms, and I suppose they had reason to hate him. That strong feeling passed down through the family for over 100 years.

[Nova]

On October 24, 1861, residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state.

http://www.wvculture.org/history/statehoo.html

[rustbucket]

According to Grimsley, Sherman’s troops destroyed property within the bounds of military necessity.

"If you take Sherman’s march and put it in a broader context, it was a combination of severity and restraint aimed at public property such as railroads, warehouses and factories," Grimsley said.

However, he did point out that some Union troops did engage in the destruction of civilian property once crossing into South Carolina.

Research in the old newspapers says otherwise. From The Augusta Chronicle [Georgia] as reported on the march through Georgia in an 1864 issue of the New Orleans Daily Picayune:

In their route they [Sherman's troops] destroyed, as far as possible, all mills, cribs, and carried off all stock, provisions, and negroes, and when their horses gave out they shot them. At Canton they killed over 100. ... All along their route the road was strewn with dead horses, Farmers having devoted a large share of their attention to syrup making, there is a large quantity of cotton ungathered in the field, which was left by Federals, but there is not a horse or ox in the country, hence the saving of corn will be a difficult matter. At Madison, they broke open Oglesby's office and carried off all his medicines.

On going to McCradle's place he [a Georgia legislator] found his fine house and ginhouse burned, every horse and mule gone, and in his lot 100 dead horses, that looked like good stock, that were evidently killed to deprive the planters of them.

...No farm on the road to the place, and as far as we hear from toward Atlanta, escaped their brutal ravages. They ravaged the country below there to the Oconee River. The roads were strewn with the debris of their progress. Dead horses, cows, sheep, hogs, chicken, corn, wheat, cotton, books, paper, broken vessels, coffee mills, and fragments of nearly every species of property strewed the wayside.

...They gutted every store, and plundered more or less of everything. ... Many families have not a pound of meat or peck of meal or flour

[Leatherneck_MT]

"Get over it and thank GOD you live in such a wonderful country!"

Nah, that's what ya'll don't seem to understand. When Lee surrendered, he surrendered the Sword of the South.

Not it's soul.

[lentulusgracchus]

I have found it ironic that some who say the bombings were necessary, don't feel the same about Sherman's campaigns, but hypocrisy is a wonderful thing.

Well, the atom bombings were necessary, I don't think we disagree about that. The rest of my post you replied to pointed to some of the extreme nastiness that would have been entailed in a fullscale invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

And it's possible to argue (from a strictly Yankee POV, always stipulating -- the Southern one being always that Sherman had no business down there, nor Lincoln either) that Sherman's Georgia campaign was necessary, without stipulating to all the notorious frills. It might have been necessary, from a military standpoint, not to leave behind intact railway facilities and equipment, or usable stores of cotton. But the salt and the silverware, and Mrs. McGillicuddy's cow......that was all over-the-top, and administered vindictively. That was what was remembered. My dad told me that Sherman's route was still visible on aerial photographs taken in the 1930's, the damage from the sown salt was that severe.

I differ somewhat from the other posters here. I do remember hearing hard things said about Billy Sherman back in the 1950's and 1960's, when I was living in Louisiana.

As a final thought, it would have been smarter if Sherman had issued Union scrip for the crops and foodstuffs he destroyed. That would have observed at least the punctilio of conscription, and would shrewdly have offered the affected civilians something to look to the Union Government for, if its authority were to be reestablished in the South.

[lentulusgracchus]

On October 24, 1861, residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state.

Without sanction in the law or the Constitution either of the United States, to which they pretended they owed allegiance (they did not, their State having seceded, and having carried them with it inseparably), or of the State of Virginia.

The only sanction they had was that of a military despot who broke every law he ever found inconvenient to his purpose, and then complained rhetorically that he had kept "all the laws but one". Which wasn't true.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Remember one thing, my fellow southerners. The closest our USA ever came to getting it's ass kicked, was when it went to war against itself.

[lentulusgracchus]

....while Union troops burned field records, many of the records Ewell had burned were much more important - almost the equivalent of the St. Louis fire in 1973.

One can imagine what Thad Stevens and Ben Butler would have used Ewell's records for, if they'd got their hands on them after the war.

Maybe better they were lost, as Ewell and Buckner intended.

[wardaddy]

You know you pretend to be polite and thoughtful but in reality you're not much different than Espinola or Mortin Sult or Wlat or any of the other South bashers. (I could be wrong...I don't really know you)

It appears you believe that ends justify the means period and nothing else matters....especially if you see the conflict in racial terms.

It was perfectly ok for Sherman's large army to ravage any civilian populace they saw fight from Mississippi to Georgia to South Carolina simply because it was over slavery in your view. Perhaps, Sherman should have just embarked on killing all white slave owners and their families left at home. That would have been total war which you claim to have studied.

Next you claim to come from a Christian family that believes in Total War and that according to you I reckon there were no Christians in the South then (maybe not now either by your definition). Correct me if I'm wrong the tradition of slavery had cooexisted with Christianity for centuries throughout the world including your precious North for a time and hence where do you get off thinking your fancy pants Unionist ancestors had some sort of monopoly on Christianity?

So lets see ...according to your world view of history:

Sherman: perfectly justifiable period what he did since he was fighting evil....John Brown with a real Army...woulda been fine with you right.

Total War: no problem if the enemy is nasty white cracker women, kids and the infirm down South....after all....they weren't Christian.

Christianiy: Only your side had that going for them...lol ...I think it was a shame to see two Christian sides killing the hell out of each other


Save your hypotheticals. The argument is whether or not Sherman was right? I think not. I think he let his personality, resentment and anger rule his judgement....much like is claimed Forrest did at Ft Pillow btw.

If Sherman was so right and justified then why is there not a pattern of the exact behavior by us in other conflicts?

Why not go into parts of Iraq and just burn everything to the ground and put women and children in the refugee line?

Why did we argue with the rightfully angrier Brits over destroying too much of German civilian population and infrastructure with air power in WWII...I mean after all, it was Total War right?


Sherman did what he did because he could and history's judgement is mixed. Only zealots applaud what he did and not often for the military strategy but because they share his vitriol.

You almost had me fooledm but your posting is just more self righteous indignation sanctimony we've come to know and learn here from South bashers...albeit more softly worded and subtle. Is sanctimony a genetic cultural trait with South bashers....

and btw....why do you think that because I support my Southern heritage that by default I would have preferred in the long run to be independent?

Is your view so myopic that you can't separate pride in Southern heritage from also being a stalwart American 140 years later?

Look at the voting maps and military rolls and tell me where the strongest patriotism lies in this country. Just look.

But don't expect us to just roll over and swallow revisionist crap like Sherman was right to pillage my ancestry. No Southerner worth a damn should roll over for that tripe.