I condemn Sherman not for being a general in the war but for the way he waged war. You can’t deny that Sherman burned his way through the South destroying everything in his path with little to no opposition. He may not have ordered the plundering but he stood by and let his men rape, loot, and kill defenseless women and children. This is no myth. If you think this behavior is “heroic” shame on you. Your original post was uncalled for and is akin to the Westborough Baptist church demonstrating at a veteran’s funeral.
That can be easily denied, since he ordered the burning of precisely one city - Atlanta - and before he did that he took six weeks to make sure it was evacuated and he also made provision that the churches and hospitals (some still standing today) would be spared.
with little to no opposition.
Once John Bell Hood turned tail and ran, Sherman encountered zero opposition.
He may not have ordered the plundering but he stood by and let his men rape, loot, and kill defenseless women and children.
This simply did not happen. Contemporary reports from the time in Southern newspapers, as well as accounts from private journals and letters - of both Southerners and Union troops - describe plenty of looting (this was the purpose of the exercise, just like JEB Stuart and other of Lee's officers in Pennsylvania), but nothing regarding the rape and murder of defenseless women and children.
This is no myth.
Oh, that part is most certainly a myth. While individual Confederate and Union soldiers committed all sorts of individual crimes against civilians throughout all the theaters of the war, Sherman's March was described by both sides as an orderly and organized affair which accomplished its main purpose: to seize as much provisions and livestock as the army could carry without slowing its march to Savannah, while making sure all the rail connections in their rear were either secured or cut.
If you think this behavior is “heroic” shame on you.
Were the actions of Confederate looters in Pennsylvania under Lee's command "heroic"? Did their actions, ordered by him, make him not a "heroic" commander?
The fact is, armies need food and transportation for themselves and they need to deny the enemy food and transportation.
Sherman's March affected less than 10% of the Georgia population and took less than 5% of the state's crop yield that year.
What the March proved was that support for the Confederacy in the South was a mile wide and an inch deep.
Your original post was uncalled for and is akin to the Westborough Baptist church demonstrating at a veteran’s funeral.
What a strange statement.
My original post was completely uncontroversial. What about it could possibly be compared to the rantings of proud Mississippian Fred Phelps?
Also, Wheeler did advance before Savannah.
Yes it is a myth. Sherman sure did destroy a lot of stuff... railroads, cotton gins, factories, anything that might have military value. And his foragers sure made off with a lot of food and livestock (and I'm sure silver tea sets and other things of value.) That's what armies living off the land do and what Lee did in his northern campaigns. Sherman also did burn the homes of known rebel leaders or places where he encountered organized resistance, and he did hang a few bushwhackers his men caught.
But Shelby Foote looked for years for evidence of the Southern lore he was raised with of vast raping and killing of women and children that the Lost Cause Sherman myth insists upon, and he could find no evidence for any of it.
Sherman was very effective in breaking both the ability and the will of the Confederates, but he was not the mass murdering Gengis Kahn that the Lost Causers Myth crowd invoke.
Sherman probably saved tens of thousands of lives both North and South by bring that war of attrition to a conclusion a year or so before it would have ended otherwise.