I’ll not make it an issue, but as one whose ancestor ascended Marye’s Heights with the Irish Brigade I see it as a symbol of a treason that cost 600,000 lives, the equivelant today is 6 million. If those in the South have ancestor’s whose martial valor is a source of pride,so be it. But secession brought death, famine, and long lived misery to the people of the Confederacy. Sherman’s regiments may have held the torches but the fire eaters lit the flame and their homes reaped the whirlwind.
And then you proceed to do just that.
Once the Confederacy was formed, by popular vote of the people, there was no treason issue....just separation.
You should be much more careful in referencing General William T. Sherman, because he embodied the evil spirit, the misdirected intellect, and the vile will that the North wanted to impose on the South.
Here is General Sherman for all to see as he was...........a man guilty of war crimes.
The young bloods of the South . . . [are] men who never did work and never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness and dangerous in every sense. . . . They hate Yankees per se, and don't bother their brains about the past, present or future. As long as they have good horses, plenty of forage, and an open country, they are happy. This is a larger class than most men suppose, and they are the most dangerous set of men that this war has turned loose upon the world. . . . These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.
Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, p. 526 (bracketed word added) http://books.google.com/books?id=_HM3v1 ... #PPA526,M1
I was satisfied, and have been all the time, that the problem of war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the south must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory.
--Letter of William Tecumseh Sherman to General Philip Sheridan, quoted in David Hanson, The Soul of Battle, p. 208 http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Battle-Ancie ... 116&sr=1-1
. . . I fear the world will jump to the wrong conclusion that because I am in Atlanta the work is done. Far from it. We must kill three hundred thousand I have told you so often, and the further they run the harder for us to get them.
--Letter of W. T. Sherman to his wife, Ibid.
This is the type of Field Commander that Lincoln let loose on the South. He is just as guilty as was Sherman.
If it’s not too personal - what division, brigade, regiment and company did your ancestor serve in? The Irish Brigade were fearfully awesome fighters.
You have a right to be proud.