You know, Walt, it's interesting you bring that up. In the time since our last discussion of Sherman's war crimes ended with you ignoring a lengthy list of rapes by Sherman's men I've come across a couple documents on this very subject.
As you are probably aware, during the course of Sherman's march the confederates adopted a strategy of cutting off his advances by disrupting his supply lines through Tennessee and northern Alabama. In order to deal with the problem, Sherman, then commander of the western union forces, dispatched troops to guard the supply lines and permit continuation of his path of destruction. After the plunder of Atlanta he sent Gen. George Thomas to cover the rear. After embarrassing failures in the east Brig. Gen. Robert Milroy was reassigned to Thomas' dispatch from Sherman's army to conduct operations patrolling Sherman's supply lines in Tennessee. Shortly after his arrival Milroy began his own little reign of terror against southern civilians. He drew up lengthy "suspect lists" of civilians who were friendly to the confederate cause and began paying them visits with demands to know the whereabouts of nearby confederate forces.
On January 11, 1861 one such visit was paid to a farm in southern Tennessee. Brothers William and Thomas Sanders and neighbor LeRoy Moore, all three of them civilian farmers, had been named as confederate friendly on union lists. Troops were dispatched there for information on nearby confederate forces with orders to execute the men if they refused. The confederate forces in the area were small in number and were being sought for execution themselves - not for any crime, but for simply being confederates and for skirmishing with the supply lines.
The Sanders brothers and Moore would not reveal confederate troop locations. The yankees responded by taking them to a remote pond on the farm, marching them into the water, and shooting the three. According to one report they went back to the farm and burned down all the buildings. The widow and children of one of the men were forced to brave the winter living in a small smokehouse that survived.
The murders of civilians did not stop there though. In February Milroy composed additional orders to murder other named civilians and burn their farms to the ground. One instructs for the capture of civilian Willis Taylor, directing him to be turned over to civilian Moses Pittman to be executed by Pittman as a reward for his being a snitch on his neighbors to Milroy. And those are just a few of the incidents Walt.
You can find them all documented in "Shoot if you can by accident" by Michael Bradley and Milan Hill from North & South magazine, November 1999. The actual orders of execution etc. may be found in Microfilm 416, Roll 130 of the Union Provost Marshall, Civil War, from the National Archives.
Aside from these murders exposing your above statement as a blatant lie, I will note for the record that they also strike close to home for my own situation. You see, I discovered one of the victims in this particular incident appears to be one of my own direct ancestors. I found rumors of it while researching a previously unsearched branch of family history and with the help of many others after I started asking around I was recently able to confirm the documentation.
And just as a word of warning in the event that you intend to continue your holocaust-denier style tactic of fibbing about the Sherman murders - as soon as a records request is fulfilled for the military documents detailing the murder itself, I'll happily transcribe them and have them on hand ready to plaster all over any and every thread where you even so much as think about trying to push a lie such as the above again. Other than that, have a nice day.
Sherman had no control over Milroy's operations. This does appear to be new information. We'll see if it holds up.
Walt