Nope. Davis did not deliberately target civilians. Sherman did.
The pillaging and plundering of private property and the murder and rape of civilians was so widespread that even the pro-Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote in Marching through Georgia (page 286) that “had the Confederates somehow won . . . they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”
In Citizen Sherman Michael Fellman describes how Sherman’s chief engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, advised that the bombing of Atlanta was of no military significance (the Confederates had already abandoned the city) and implored Sherman to stop the bombardment after viewing the carcasses of dead women and children in the streets. Sherman coldly told 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 even 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).
Brigadier General Edward M. McCook, First Cavalry Division of Cavalry Corps, at Calhoun, Georgia, on October 30, 1864, reported to Sherman, “My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned....I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable.”
The indiscriminate bombing of Southern cities, which was outlawed by international law at the time, killed hundreds, if not thousands of slaves. The slaves were targeted by Union Army plunderers as much as anyone. As Grimsley writes, “With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked.” A typical practice was to put a hangman’s noose around a slave’s neck and threaten to hang him unless he revealed where the household’s jewelry and silverware were hidden. Some slaves were beaten to death by Union soldiers.
“The government of the U.S. has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war - to take their lives, their homes, their land, their everything...war is simply unrestrained by the Constitution...to the persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better...” Mjr. Gen. W. T. Sherman, Jan. 31, 1864.
“The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous...” Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
This war on citizens was not simply restrained to be applied against men and women but also children. Gen. Sherman in a June 21, 1864, letter to Lincoln’s Sec. of War, Edwin Station wrote, “There is a class of people men, women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.”
in 1862 Sherman was bothered that “the country” was “swarming with dishonest Jews” (see Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 153). He got his close friend, General Grant, to expel all Jews from his army. As Fellman writes, “On December 17, 1862, Grant . . . , like a medieval monarch . . . expelled The Jews, as a class,’ from his department.” (Grant’s infamous General order #11) Sherman biographer Fellman further writes that to Sherman, the Jews were “like n****rs” and “like gr****rs (Mexicans) or Indians” in that they were “classes or races permanently inferior to his own.”
He was also a railroad investor and he lobbied his brother, Senator John Sherman, to allocate federal funds for the transcontinental railroad. “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians stop and check the progress of the railroad,” he wrote to General Grant in 1867 (Fellman, p. 264). As Fellman writes:
[T]he great triumvirate of the Union Civil War effort [Grant, Sherman and Sheridan] formulated and enacted military Indian policy until reaching, by The 1880s, what Sherman sometimes referred to as “the final solution of the Indian problem,” which he defined as killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places . . . .
Sherman wrote to Grant: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” Writing two days later to his brother John, General Sherman said: “I suppose the Sioux must be exterminated . . .” (Fellman, p. 264).
With this attitude, Sherman issued the following order to his troops at the beginning of the Indian Wars: “During an assault, the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. As long as resistance is made, death must be meted out . . .” (Marszalek, p. 379).
Most of the raids on Indian camps were conducted in the winter, when families would be together and could therefore all be killed at once. Sherman gave Sheridan “authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (Fellman, p. 271). All livestock was also killed so that any survivors would be more likely to starve to death.
Sherman was once brought before a congressional committee after federal Indian agents, who were supposed to be supervising the Indians who were on reservations, witnessed “the horror of women and children under military attack.” Nothing came of the hearings, however. Sherman ordered his subordinates to kill the Indians without restraint to achieve what he called “the final solution of the Indian problem,” and promised that if the newspapers found out about it he would “run interference against any complaints about atrocities back East” (Fellman, p. 271).
By 1890 Sherman’s “final solution” had been achieved: The Plains Indians were all either killed or placed on reservations “where they can be watched.” In a December 18, 1890 letter to the New York Times Sherman expressed his deep disappointment over the fact that, were it not for “civilian interference,” his army would have “gotten rid of them all” and killed every last Indian in the U.S. (Marszalek, p. 400).
God bless William T. Sherman - the right man for the job.
The Confederacy little understood or cared about the mismatch with the Union regarding warfighting.
They thought they could strike first and hard and sue for peace.
The Union fought to win, ruthlessly, that’s war for ya. If ya don’t like it, don’t start it.
Of course Sherman was a drunken, lunatic, killer.... And perfect for the job.
There were many atrocities and war crimes committed by the Confederacy:
Silas Gordon, Champ Ferguson, Confederate General John Bell Hood’s burning of much of Atlanta before Sherman got there, Lt. Col. James Keith, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, Fort Pillow, Captain William Clarke Quantrill, Camp Sumter in Andersonville, GA.....
Leaving aside for a moment the bald-faced lie about "indiscriminate bombing of Southern cities", had it actually happened then what was this international law you speak of that outlawed it?
“The government of the U.S. has any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war - to take their lives, their homes, their land, their everything...war is simply unrestrained by the Constitution...to the persistent secessionist, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better...” Mjr. Gen. W. T. Sherman, Jan. 31, 1864.
Wow! Do you have any idea how much was left out by the two ellipsis in the middle of that quote? Any idea at all? Any clue on the context? Lets check, shall we?
The quote is context is as follows:
"I would advise the commanding officers at Huntsville, and such other towns as are occupied by our troops to assemble the inhabitants and explain to them these plain, self-evident propositions, and tell them that it is for them now to say, whether they and their children shall inherit the beautiful land, which, by the accident of nature, has fallen to their share. The Government of the United States has in North Alabama any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war, to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything, because, they cannot deny, that war does exist there, and war is simply power unrestrained by Constitution or compact. If they want eternal war, well and good -- we will accept the issue and dispossess them, and put our friends in possession. I know thousands and millions of good people who, at simple notice, would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations now there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago, by a little reflection and patience, they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well, last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late -- all the mowers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit, ought to know the consequences. Many, many people, with less pertinacity than the South, have been wiped out of national existence.
My own belief is, that even now the non-slaveholding classes of the South are alienating from their associates in war. Already I hear crimination. Those who have property left, should take warning in time.
Since I have come down here, I have seen many Southern planters who now hire their negroes, and acknowledge that they knew not the earthquake they were to make by appealing to secession. They thought that the politicians had prepared the way, and that they could past in peace. They now see that we are bound together as one nation by indissoluble ties, and that any interest or any people, that set themselves up in antagonism to the nation, must perish.
Whilst I would not remit one jot or tittle of our nation's right in peace or war. I do make allowances for past political errors and false prejudices. Our national Congress and Supreme Courts are the proper arenas in which to discuss conflicting opinions, and not the battle-field.
You may not hear from me again, and if you think it will no any good, call some of the better people together, and explain there my views. You may even read to them this letter, and let them use it, so as to prepare them for my coming.
To those who submit to the rightful law and authority, all gentleness and forbearance, but to the petulant and persistent Secessionists, why, death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of, the better. Satan, and the rebellious saints of heaven, were allowed a continuance of existence in hell merely to swell their just punishment. To such as would rebel against a Government so mild and just as ours was in peace, a punishment equal would not be unjust."
That is really a long winded explanation that Sherman put far more succinctly on another occasion: "War is the remedy our enemy's have chosen. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunderstorm. I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are."
I don't have references handy for the rest of your stuffbut based on past performance I'm betting a lot of them are out of context as well.
“But on June 2, 1924, Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. Yet even after the Indian Citizenship Act, some Native Americans weren’t allowed to vote because the right to vote was governed by state law. Until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting.”
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/jazz/jb_jazz_citizens_1.html
Sounds to me like there’s e tough blame to go around for all parties.