Can you name one civilian executed by Sherman's men or on his orders?
Forty loyal Texans were hanged in Gainesville, Texas during October 1862, simply for being loyal to the U.S. Twenty-two loyal North Carlinians were similarly executed by CSA forces. About 180 murders were committed in the Raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Fifty-three Union soldiers were murdered at Saltville, Virginia in October, 1864, and between 3-400 Union soldiers were murdered in cold blood at Fort Pillow. I make that about 600 murders.
There were no similar acts on the U.S. side.
Walt
With the exception of some who were hanged by a lynch mob, they were tried by a civilian court (an impromptu civilian court on the frontier) organized by Confederate army officers. The Confederate Articles of War includes the following:
”Art. 57. Whosoever shall be convicted of holding correspondence with, or giving intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly, shall suffer death or such other punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial.”
Northern military courts applied a similar rule to anyone who gave intelligence to the enemy without the authority of the general in command. Federal military courts claimed jurisdiction over editors, newspaper correspondents, and all others publishing what they considered improper intelligence.
Why the Texas case was not tried in a military court I don't know, but it sounds like the issues involved fall under this article of war. Two years after the Texas hangings, a Confederate judge ordered that civilian courts had jurisdiction in the trial of someone accused of treasonable correspondence with the enemy and plotting to turn cotton over to them.
At Gainsville, the Confederate Army rounded up about 150 Unionists after it learned of plots to seize or destroy Confederate arsenals, support Union armies when they came, and spy for the Federals. Apparently some correspondence with the North was believed to have taken place. Some of the arrested men confessed and others were just convicted. Forty (total) were hung. The great bulk of the Unionists rounded up by the Confederate Army were either found innocent or released.
Whatever the convicted ones did was apparently considered a hanging offense (it wouldn’t take much under the Articles of War above then in effect). Court justice was and is not perfect. It could well be that innocent men were hung. But some were apparently guilty of more than just being loyal to the Union.
You forget that soldiers die in battle -- Fort Pillow was a battle that the Federals lost big time. Claiming that that many Union soldiers were murdered in cold blood does not match what happened though I have no doubt that some, perhaps many, were killed as they tried to surrender.
Shortly before this battle, Negro troops reportedly fired on surrendering Confederate troops in Virginia. This incident was published (in the South anyway) in The Daily Picayune newspaper of New Orleans on February 9, 1864. They published a January 1864 letter of complaint about it to US Gen. Wilde, Commanding Colored Brigade, Headquarters Forces on Blackwater, Franklin, VA from CSA Colonel Joel R. Griffin. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Negro troops suffered so heavily at Fort Pillow. Negro troops were also reported to have been firing during the truce at Fort Pillow.
The Picayune reported the words of a Union captain captured at Fort Pillow: "Capt. Young, Provost Marshall, was taken prisoner, slightly wounded, and paroled the liberty of their camps, and allowed to see his wife. He says that our troops [the Federals] behaved gallantly throughout the whole action, that our loss [Federals again] in killed will exceed 200; he also stated that Gen. Forrest shot one of his own men for refusing quarters to our men."
New Orleans was run by the Federal Army at this point in time and so the Picayune would have been subject to their control. The Picayune is a good source of information compiled from other newpapers and sources from both North and South. The Picayune clearly labeled the sources of their information. In this case, Capt. Young's words were reported in the Memphis Argus. Memphis was also in Federal hands.