In his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more during his "march to the sea."
Sherman would announce that "to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy." In 1862 Sherman wrote his wife that his purpose in the war would be "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people" of the South. His loving and gentle wife wrote back that her wish was for "a war of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing."
Real Cool, Guys.
"I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes and under the Government of their inheritance." - William T. Sherman 1864
What goes around comes around, I guess.
War is hell. Don't start something you can't finish. Maybe you'll learn from the Taliwackers. LOL