[GOPcapitalist]

There was pillage and burning enough on both sides, and when the war was far from over. Sherman's actions in Georgia were preceded, on a smaller scale, by confederate looting in Pennsylvania by Lee's men and the burning of Chambersburg by McCausland. It should be noted that a number of other Union cities would have suffered the same fate as Chambersburg except that they met the confederate ransom demands.

Your attempted equivalence is amusing. There is simply no comparison to be made between Sherman's pillage of the south's major cities and one confederate band's burning of a single hick town in backwoods Pennsylvania. Even if there were, two wrongs do not make a right. Your "both sides did it" argument will not buy you any ground against the inexcusable actions of the northern armies against southern civilians.

[Non-Sequitur]

So if I understand you correctly burning towns is OK as long as it's little towns?

[Drennan Whyte]

So is your complaint that the Confederates never did to the North what Sherman did to the South to the same degree? It can't be because of the behavior of Sherman's men in general because the actions of the Confederate soldiers up North were no different. Take, for example, the first part of the Confederate campaign in 1863. When Early passed through Cashtown Gap he detoured slightly to burn the ironworks belonging to Congressman Thaddeus Stephens. While there his men looted the houses belonging to the workers. These are the words of Confederate soldiers during the campaign:

"Our men did very bad in MD and Penn. They robbed every house...not only of eatable but if everything they could lay their hands on. They tore up dresses to bits and broke all the furniture."

"We are now in the enemy country we know not what will befall us for some of our soldiers have done mity(sic) bad since they have ben(sic) here."

"The people of this state did not know any thing of war times only what they heard and read...but they feel the effects of war at this time."

"I hope the officers will devastate the territory and give the enemy a taste of the horror of war."

"The wrath of southern vengance will be wreaked upon the pennsilvanians(sic) & all property belonging to the abolition horde which we cross"

Lee's army lived off the land up north in the same fashion that Sherman's army did a year later.

"...quartermasters and the small cavalry force with us are busy collecting horses, cattle, and sheep for the use of the army."

"Our army is pressing in provision and horses by the whole sale and some of the finest horses I ever saw."

Lee's forces took more than horses, cattle and private property. Southern soldiers tell of taking free black citizens out of their homes and sending them south into slavery. This happened every time the Confederate army went north.

War is hard on the civilian population and Civil Wars tend to be harder because of the strong feelings they promote. Southern civilians suffered, so did Northern civilians. Southern civilians suffered more perhaps, since most of the war was waged down there, but I'm not going to pity the Southern losses any more than you pity the Northern losses. You seem to feel that Northern civilian losses don't matter because they weren't on the same scale as Southern losses. So be it.