Posted on 04/25/2007 10:11:37 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth. "We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington. The symposium will be the largest event of its kind this year honoring Lee, who was born Jan. 19, 1807.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Since Lee, Longstreet, and others turned a blind eye to the abduction of free blacks in Pennsylvania and their return to slavery I'd be careful of what I was asking for.
If it was all of that, especially the murder and rape part, you should have no trouble providing some documentation, or first hand accounts, etc, (aside from Margaret Mitchell's chick fiction book.) If all that happened, it should be easy for you to find.
And the loser writes the myths, as someone else said.
But the funny thing about books and history. Someone may come along one day and write a new chapter or Two.
Indeed they are. And as modern historians are beginning to document, southron tales of woe concerning Sherman's Georgia campaign have been badly overstated.
“Yes. Have you ever read about the type of treatment slaves were subjected to behind rebel lines?”
Reading Mandingo again? This is totally beside the point at the moment. You’re touting “freedom” behind Federal lines and we both know what the “freedom” entailed! In many cases, it was far WORSE than anything they’d experienced on the homeplace.
In his book, “Citizen Sherman”(http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/felcit.html), author Michael Fellman describes correspondence between General Sherman’s Staff Engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, and himself, where in the engineer advised that the constant artillery shelling of Atlanta was of no military significance, since the Confederate armies had left the city. He asked Sherman to cease the punitive bombardment of the city after finding remains of dead women and children in the rubble. Sherman is quoted as telling him the dead bodies were “a beautiful sight” and “commenced the destruction of 90 percent of all the buildings in Atlanta. After that, the remaining 2,000 residents were evicted from their homes just as winter was approaching.”
In October of 1864 Sherman ordered the murder of randomly chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks. He wrote to General Louis D. Watkins:
“Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses . . ., kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon . . .” (See John Bennett Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137).
From The Augusta Chronicle [Georgia] as reported 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.”
In describing his movement in Georgia, in his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more in looted materials during his “march to the sea.”
Following their ransacking of Georgia, Union troops entered South Carolina. From author William Gilmore Simms:
“Day by day brought to the people of Columbia tidings of atrocities committed. Long trains of fugitives seeking refuge from their pursuers; village after village-one sending up its signal flames to the other, presaging for it the same fate.where mules and horses were not choice, they were shot down; young colts, however fine the stock, had their throats cut; the roads were covered with butchered cattle, hogs, mules and the costliest furniture; horses were ridden into houses. People were forced from their beds, to permit the search after hidden treasure.”
The Union Army entered Columbia, South Carolina in an orderly manner with Sherman and his officers in their usual habitual control. But shortly after the officers withdrew, drinking and looting began.
According to eyewitness William Gilmore Simms, those who took part in the looting of valuables claimed that they were entitled to any personal items of the citizens as spoils of war. Simms description of the looting of the city was fully supported by other reports as well as correspondence from Union soldiers. From a letter Union Lieutenant Thomas Myers wrote from Camden, S.C. after the burning of Columbia.
“My dear wife.we have had a glorious time in this State. Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day. Gold watches, silver pitchers, cups, spoons, forks, etc are as common as blackberries. The terms of plunder are as follows: Each company is required to exhibit the results of its operations at any given place, -one-fifth and first choice falls to the share of the commander-in-chief and staff, one-fifth to the corps commanders and staff, one-fifth to field officers of regiments, and two-fifths to the company.” Then Lieutenant Myers makes this statement:
“Officers are not allowed to join these expeditions without disguising themselves as privates.” And, finally, this telling comment:” General Sherman has silver and gold enough to start a bank. His share in gold watches alone at Columbia was two hundred and seventy-five.”
According to the records, one-third of Columbia, SC, was destroyed in the fire of February 17, 1865. Over thirty eight square blocks, including all of city’s business district and much residential area, was reduced to rubble and ashes.
And most of us understand what slavery entailed as well. Considering hundreds of thousands of slaves voted with their feet and went to Union lines then obviously Yankee freedom couldn't have been worse than rebel bondage. No matter how you try to spin otherwise.
“Considering hundreds of thousands of slaves voted with their feet”
Lets not stretch what’s not quite there!
Very interesting, but where are the rapes and murders?
No stretch to it.
Nearly 100,000 Union Soldiers during the war were x-slaves from confederate states. Those were just the men who elected to join the army.
That hundreds of thousands of slaves crossed the lines when they could is no exaggeration.
“That hundreds of thousands of slaves crossed the lines when they could is no exaggeration.”
Vs how many that stayed? And your little article doesn’t address the fact that how many of that 94,000 voluntarily joined the Union army. It’s also interesting to note that the links on the page go nowhere.
I suggest that a whole lot more than those forced to support the confederate army.
Southern resentment of the North does to this day exist. Just as Northern satisfaction in our humiliation still does. The scar that war left on this country will never heal.
In his book, “Citizen Sherman”, author Michael Fellman describes correspondence between General Sherman’s Staff Engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, and himself, where in the engineer advised that the constant artillery shelling of Atlanta was of no military significance, since the Confederate armies had left the city. He asked Sherman to cease the punitive bombardment of the city after finding remains of dead women and children in the rubble.
False. What Fellman quotes Poe as saying is:
For example, O. M. Poe, Sherman's bright young chief engineer, was deeply troubled by the fact that women and children had been killed during the shelling of Atlanta while rebel soldiers had been safely stored away, as the Union army knew, in thick walled forts. "You know I was opposed to shelling the place, for it did no good at all, and only brought harm to unoffending people," Poe wrote his wife shortly after Atlanta fell. "Shelling did not get us into town a single second sooner than we would have got in anyhow." pg. 184
The problem is, Pea, is that nowhere in the book does Fellman claim or imply that Poe asked Sherman to end the bombardment, or that Poe carried on any conversation with Sherman about the bombardment at any time. And be honest, it's easy to say in retrospect that the bombardment did not cause the fall of Atlanta a moment faster than otherwise but impossible to know ahead of time what the effect will be.
Sherman is quoted as telling him the dead bodies were “a beautiful sight” ...
Again, completely false. Fellman quotes Thomas as saying the shells will 'burst beautifully' on Atlanta. Sounds hard hearted and blood-thirsty, doesn't it? Let's look at the quote in context:
General Sherman:
The 41/2-inch guns have been firing every five minutes since 5 p.m. I will order them to increase. The battery on Willams' front has been ordered ready as soon as possible and will fire when completed. The shells of the 41/2-inch guns burst beautifully.
Geo. H. Thomas
Major-General
Now look at Sherman's response:
Major General Thomas:
I have your last dispatch. I hear the guns and the shells also. The enemy's battery of 32-pounders rifled are firing on us here from the White Hall fort to draw off or divert our fire. Keep up a steady, persistent fire on Atlanta with the 41/2-inch guns and the 20 pounder Parrots, and order them to pay no attention to the side firign by which the enemy may tempt to divert their attention. I think those guns will make Atlanta of less value to tehm as a large machine-shop and depot of supplies. The inhabitants have, of course, got out.
W.T. Sherman,
Major-General
O.R. Series I, Volume 38 (Part V), pg. 448
Sherman is attacking a fortified city containing an enemy army and loaded with manufacturing and support facilities for the rebel army. Judging from his letter to Thomas he apparently believes that the possibility of civilian casualties is low. In fact, according to this website the total number of civilians killed was about 20. Other sources say 30. By any measure it was a small number, and hardly evidence that Sherman targeted civilians.
...and “commenced the destruction of 90 percent of all the buildings in Atlanta. After that, the remaining 2,000 residents were evicted from their homes just as winter was approaching."
Let's look at that percentage, shall we? From a website reviewing the recent Sherman show on the HistoryChannel:
"One of the more provocative moments in "Sherman's March" comes when a Mississippi historian claims the burning of Atlanta is something of a myth. "It wasn't the total destruction people usually think of," says Sherman biographer John Marszalek, a retired history professor at Mississippi State University, who estimates only 30 percent of the city was burned. The exact dimensions of Atlanta's destruction have been a sensitive topic for more than 140 years. Stephen Davis, an Atlanta historian who has written widely about Sherman's campaign, points to a state of Georgia survey conducted a month after the fact that found at least 60 percent of the city laid to waste. Other estimates were lower. Not all of the damage can be blamed on Sherman, says Gordon Jones, senior military historian at the Atlanta History Center. Confederate soldiers had stripped some buildings to make fortifications and fuel campfires. And when the Southerners evacuated the city, they blew up munitions so they wouldn't fall into enemy hands, setting off the conflagration depicted in "Gone With the Wind." "To say that Sherman burned Atlanta without qualification is stretching the point," Jones concludes. Sherman himself was given to hyperbole and may have been responsible for some of the exaggeration. In his memoirs, he described leaving Atlanta and turning back to see it "smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high into the air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city."
I should also point out that Fellman related that your Captain Poe fully supported Sherman's expulsion of the civilian population...on humanitarian grounds.
In October of 1864 Sherman ordered the murder of randomly chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks.
Again, look at the quote in full:
Brigadier General Watkins:
Cannot you send over to Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?
W.T. Sheman
Major-General
OR, Series I, Volume 39 (Part III), p. 494
Far from talking about confederate soldiers, Sherman is talking about responses to partiasan attacks on the Union supply lines.
From The Augusta Chronicle [Georgia] as reported in an 1864 issue of the New Orleans Daily Picayune...
The article talks of food and forage taken, slaves freed, economic targets destroyed. And?
In describing his movement in Georgia, in his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more in looted materials during his “march to the sea.”
I've read Sherman's memoirs and cannot find that quote anywhere? Can you point it out to me? If it's easier for you here's an online copy.
As with any human condition, those most fit and ambitious crossed the lines and a very high percentage volunteered for the military. As to my knowledge, no slaves were ever impressed against their will into the Union Army -- the draft did not include free blacks in the pool of eligible men.
Many, perhaps a majority of whites in some Union states, and a sizable percentage in the Regular US Army establishment, opposed Blacks being in uniform, and especially ex-slaves who were considered to be even inferior and less capable than free blacks.
Add on to that the official Confederate government policy to either summarily execute or to sell black soldiers into slavery if captured. And in many cases, the confederates followed through on those policies.
To imply that escaped slaves somehow served against their will is very disparaging against those men who volunteered to fight for their own freedom. It is a insult to their memory.
Don't let your overblown "Southern Pride" allow you to stoop to disparaging other brave men who did what they felt they had to do.
So as long as John Bell Hood decided to hide behind the skirts of women and the cribs of children, Sherman was not allowed to shoot back at him? That's BS and you damn well know it.
You're sounding like the Islamonazis who think they can shoot from a Mosque as much as they want, but no one should violate their sanctuary by returning fire.
If Hood felt the City of Atlanta was worth fighting for, he should have done what Sherman did after he took it --- send the civilians away.
“Don’t let your overblown “Southern Pride” allow you to stoop to disparaging other brave men who did what they felt they had to do.”
Drawing conclusions of facts not in evidence. You didn’t address the conscription of blacks into the Union army much less the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of their “liberators”. There’s two sides to the story and I find it objectionable for one to glorify the one without giving the facts of the WHOLE story and sit in 21st century judgement on a time and people far removed without nod to their thoughts and actions at the time.
3% of 3 million is considered a sizeable percentage?
“My dear wife.we have had a glorious time in this State. Unrestricted license to burn and plunder was the order of the day. Gold watches, silver pitchers, cups, spoons, forks, etc are as common as blackberries. The terms of plunder are as follows: Each company is required to exhibit the results of its operations at any given place, -one-fifth and first choice falls to the share of the commander-in-chief and staff, one-fifth to the corps commanders and staff, one-fifth to field officers of regiments, and two-fifths to the company.”
Kind of interesting with the big cuts to the officers and particularly to Sherman himself in medieval fashion.
It seems like what Sherman did was similar to traditional warfare of medieval and ancient times, when it was common to rape, loot, burn, destroy, and often kill civilians.
I agree with the analogy that the other poster made to the use of the atom bomb against Japan. The fire bombing of cities in Germany and Japan would I am sure have been considered an atrocity if the other side had won.
I saw on the history channel how the Confederate cavalry couldn’t take on Sherman’s main force, so they attacked the “foraging” parties, which they sometimes overwhelmed, and often executed as criminals, with some justification, rather than taking as prisoners.
The activities of Quantrell’s raiders were notorious, including killing all the men and teenage boys in Lawrence, Kansas, an abolitionist stronghold. The Confederates took a fort in Tennessee garisioned by Tennessee unionists from the mountains and black Union soldiers and massacred the defenders, as traitors to the Confederacy.
I am sure you could list a lot of other atrocities on both sides, but as Sherman said, “war is hell.”
I agree that what Sherman did was effective, but it also created bitterness that exists to this day. You burn someone’s house, steal his food and valuables, shoot his livestock, and maybe rape his wife, and he won’t forget it. Probably his great great grandchildren will stil be mad about it. People in Europe are still mad about things that happened 800 years ago.
Try reading before you respond. I said that there was no conscription of blacks into the Union army. They were all volunteers. If you have any evidence of impressment of slaves into uniformed arms by the US Army, please post it.
3% of 3 million is considered a sizable percentage?
Well, if you care to count it that way, there were 8 million whites in the confederate states, and only 900,000, or 11%, served in the confederate army. And that 900,000 even includes thousands from the border states that were not part of the confederacy, so maybe we could say only one in 10 of white confederate citizens served. But that is a stupid way to count.
Since half of that 3 million slaves in the confederacy were female, we have 1.5 million males, but following normal statistics, half of those males were either not military age or otherwise ineligible for military duty, so we are now down to 750,000 eligible men. Next consider that many places in the South were not liberated until the very end of the war --- (Ever hear of June Teenth?) and the slaves in those areas never had even had an opportunity to join the Army, so just for arguments sake, subtract a conservative number of 20% of eligible slaves which leaves us with 600,000 men eligible and able to be recruited.
100,000 volunteers out of 600,000 (16%) looks impressive to me. That is a far higher enlistment rate than we have had in other wars.
(Right now, I believe that less than 1% of the US population is in military service.)
Here's a fact that will twist you into knots. By the beginning of 1865, there were more blacks on duty in the Union Army, both from slaves states and northern freemen --- 180,000 total --- than there were soldiers remaining in the entire Confederate Army due to attrition and high rates of desertion.
“I said that there was no conscription of blacks into the Union army. They were all volunteers. If you have any evidence of impressment of slaves into uniformed arms by the US Army, please post it.”
that will have to wait for another day. the links are not to hand and I must get to bed for the night.
“Here’s a fact that will twist you into knots. By the beginning of 1865, there were more blacks on duty in the Union Army, both from slaves states and northern freemen -— 180,000 total -— than there were soldiers remaining in the entire Confederate Army due to attrition and high rates of desertion.”
And my response is........so?
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