How many times have I said I am not really talking about the bombings, either civil war, or WWII. I am talking about the behavior of troops on the ground!!!! Why do you keep ignoring this point? Do you really think it is fine for troops to randomly shoot civilians, burn houses and rape women? Because it really sounds like you do.
No I don’t condone those things and where specifically did I say that I did? I said you destroy an enemies ability to wage war and the infrastruce that supports it and that means civilians have to die. Since you seem to be so enlightened and self-righteous maybe you can tell the generals how to fight a war in which no civilian dies. I’m sure they’d love to hear it. In the mean time spare me your self-righteousness because it’s nothing more than a phony form of respectability.
I think we can agree that the troops on the ground during Sherman’s march behaved badly at times. That is really not arguable. Raping, looting and shooting civilians is certainly not acceptable behavior for armed forces.
The real question, though, is to what degree we should hold Sherman morally accountable for these actions. Obviously, as a leader, Sherman must bear some culpability. However, at least in my opinion, there’s a big difference in culpability between a leader who orders his troops to take what supplies (livestock, crops, etc.) from the civilian population and destroy the rest so that these supplies can’t be used by the enemy and a leader who tells his soldiers (either directly or implicitly) that they can burn homes, rape women and steal non-essential items from the civilians. In the first case, an argument from military necessity can be made. In the second, no such argument exists.
Which is the case for Sherman? I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t think he had rape, murder, and pillaging in mind when he devised his idea of the march to the sea. I think his idea was to increase his army’s mobility by outpacing his supply lines and having his army live off the land. On the other hand, though, he sure didn’t seem to be overly concerned with his army’s behavior during the march, and discipline from above was certainly lacking. I don’t think what happened was necessarily what Sherman intended, but I do think he did not do enough to prevent it.