"I take issue with the concept that incinerating hundreds of thousands with one bomb was more "humane" or "moral" than incinerating hundreds of thousands with an entire fleet of bombers. But maybe that's just me."
One must wonder what Sherman would have thought more humane..
"One must wonder what Sherman would have thought more humane.."
Or Scipio Africanus.Or even Ghenghis Khan, for that matter.
I do not discount that such inhumanity is innate to warfare. To deny that is ridiculous in the face of the evidence. However, the scale of the suffering delivered dwarfs anything Sherman, Scipio or Ghengis was ever capable of because of the reach and destructiveness of modern weaponry.
In the case of Sherman, while the infrastructure of the South was systematicaaly destroyed, you won't find Sherman's troops going out of their way to deliberately target civilians, unlike, say, Bomber Harris or Curtis LeMay.