Replies

Sherman burned my hometown of Jackson Mississippi in 1863 before the South was finished.

It was his nature and I don't think he was thinking humane when he did it.

He wanted to win at all costs and if you expect folks down here to applaud that then you should rethink that. We can still see evidence of his handiwork.

The ends justifies the means can be a slippery slope and not in any war that I am aware of has the United States embarked on as great a proportional personal path of destruction simply to destroy personal property with no military purpose. Most of the rural South was already strapped.

In Vietnam we refused to bomb the dikes in North Vietnam or the supply ships in Haiphong harbour.

In WWII, we did not run pell mell through the countryside purposely trying to burn foodstuffs and housing so folks would be destitute and desperate and in reality....punished....in fact we avoided that and don't try to claim Southerners were as prepared as Japanese to wage a fight to the last woman and child between Atlanta and Charleston.....that is simply not even remotely plausible.

With very few exceptions, the US military outside of Union campaigns in the South has never engaged in scorched earth against a civilian population.

One may justify that any way they like but what it boils down to is perspective. I am Southern....and am a part of 8 generations as such now from Mississippi and from my end I see no nobility in Sherman's military actions against unarmed civilians no matter how you slice it. It is not much different than what the British did to the Boars in Southern Africa with their camps.....unable to subdue a formidable enemy in the field and so one resorts to attacking the civilian's homefrotn to weaken the enemy politically and starve him out.

It all depends on perspective I assume. I am proud of my Southern ancestry and thank God almost daily to have been born a part of it. Were I am ambivalent about my Southern heritage perhaps I would applaud Sherman's actions but I'm not and I'm sure not going to oorah over it.

His post war conciliation is another matter.

This sort of thinking is just like those here who consider the Radical Republicans of that era to be the best governments we've ever had and that the South deserved worse and that they are the equivalent of today's cultural conservatives...which is bollocks...they are the equivalent of today's Pelosis, Hillaries, and Schumers in my opinion. Small minded vindicative people for whom big government is a cure all. (not you personally, let me clarify that)

I think it is perfectly reasonable that one who is a Union leaning sympathizer would be more fond of Sherman than say myself. The Union army learned well from this and later employed similar tactics against some Plains tribes.

He wanted to win at all costs

It's called "Total War"". I studied the concept while in college a few *ahem* decades ago in ROTC, and when I came into the Air Force, I studied it in detail and saw how it was applied over the previous 100 years, and learned how to apply the doctrine using the weapons we had at the time.

and if you expect folks down here to applaud that then you should rethink that.

He wasn't there to win friends, he was there to break the will of the South and win the war as quickly as possible.

We can still see evidence of his handiwork.

I can still find evidence of Hurricane Camille. Neither one of those proves anything other than whatever evidence remains was apparently not worth rebuilding in the first place, or was preserved for one reason or another.

I went up and down his and others' campaign trails when I was a kid with my grandfather and with my own son (camping and driving several of the trails). The "handiwork" we came across was for the most part, deliberately preservered.

not in any war that I am aware of has the United States embarked on as great a proportional personal path of destruction simply to destroy personal property with no military purpose.

The Germans, Japanese, and American Indians would love to have a word with you, but in all honesty, what you call "personal property" can have great military value. I think you would be shocked at what the US military considers to have military value, whether it was the Civil War, WWII, or Iraq.

I think you would be utterly shocked at the targets we considered in a worst-case scenario in Europe against the Soviets in the '70s and '80s, as well as targets in North Korea (and worst case South Korea if we were pushed down the peninsula) from that time period up through the 1990s.

It's only been in the past 15-20 years that the military has reached a level of precision that we can wage total war while minimizing civilian involvement.

Remember "Shock and Awe" - that's just the 2003 version of Sherman's March and all other examples of Total War that we've seen since then.

Most of the rural South was already strapped.

The people who ran the South were not strapped - far from it. They wanted war, and the day President Davis ordered General Beauregard to open fire, they got it.

It's unfortunate that the poor and middle class of the South suffered the most, but that always seems to be the case in civil wars - the people who can least afford to lose everything quite commonly do. The people calling the shots did not have the poor Southerner in mind when they ramped up the rhetoric. They were concerned with lining their pockets under the guise of states' rights (and did a damn good job of fooling your typical Southerner into falling for it).

In Vietnam we refused to bomb the dikes in North Vietnam or the supply ships in Haiphong harbour.

We did some things that would shock the hell out of you.

WWII, we did not run pell mell through the countryside purposely trying to burn foodstuffs and housing so folks would be destitute and desperate

Those Germans in and around Dresden who survived February 13-15, 1945, would laugh in your face.

I think it is perfectly reasonable that one who is a Union leaning sympathizer would be more fond of Sherman than say myself.

As I said, my family were devout Christians, and there was only one side for them to join.

There were some in my family who wanted to stay out of it - there was one letter from a mother to her son saying, in effect "our family came here 100s of years ago, we were here before the United States was a country, and we'll be here long after. There's no reason for you to enlist".

Understand this - I don't like war, I don't like many of the things we as a nation have done in wartime (notably the issue of American Indians, which both you and I have touched upon), but with few exceptions, they were ultimately justified, whether it's Sherman breaking the will of the South, or the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombs in Japan.

Since this is slightly seperate from our discussion, I'd like to ask a few questions.

Let's pretend that Sherman did not do what he did, and that as a result, Lincoln did not win re-election (Northern voters having lost the will to continue the fight, or rather believing the war to be unwinnable).

What do you think the result would have been?

Keep in mind the Mexicans were still pissed off over the Mexican War in the 1840s, and Spain still had eyes for various parts of the Americans.

Also keep in mind that France and England were seriously considering joining one side or the other. With a divided nation, do you think they would let such an opportunity pass? The English have long memories, and the French were heavily involved with Mexico.

The North would not have lifted a finger if Mexico/Spain/France had decided to reclaim parts of the South, and I'm not so sure that Canada would have gained independence from England in the late 1860s with a divided United States.

Putting aside the fact that the South would have been extremely vulnerable militarily, economically the South had no chance. If you don't have industry, you're not going to have much power at that time - you are going to end up with a lower class of free citizens who are out of work and angry (something that has happened throughout history).

The potential for a civil war within the South could have easily came about as a result of a lower class of freed citizens who saw the slaves as economic competition. 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.

Then there is slavery - there were plenty of devout Christian groups who were working to free the slaves, and had the War ended in a draw, I think you would have seen those Christians stir up enough slaves, that you would have had a revolt.

Could you imagine what mass uprisings, I'm talking on the state level or larger, would have been like in the South? It might have taken years, but those Christian groups were very committed to freedom for their fellow Christians, at the risk of their own lives. When you study these people and these groups, these were people who were driven by a higher calling, and this would have been their modern day crusades.