Posted on 07/18/2004 8:40:59 PM PDT by canalabamian
Not only was William Tecumseh Sherman guilty of many of the crimes that some apologists portray as "tall tales," but also his specter seems to haunt the scandal-ridden halls of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Sherman had a relatively poor record battling armies. His lack of preparation nearly destroyed Union forces at Shiloh. He was repulsed at Chickasaw Bluffs, losing an early opportunity to capture Vicksburg, Miss. The result was a bloody campaign that dragged on for months. He was blocked by Gen. Pat Cleburne at the Battle of Chattanooga and needed to be bailed out by Gen. George Thomas' Army of the Cumberland. His troops were crushed by rebel forces in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
But Sherman knew how to make war against civilians. After the capture of Atlanta, he engaged in policies similar to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia by expelling citizens from their homes. "You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war," he told the fleeing population. Today, Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for similar actions in Kosovo.
An article on Sherman in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last spring asserted that Sherman attacked acceptable military targets "by the standards of war at the time." This seems to assume that human rights were invented with the creation of the United Nations. But Gen. Grant did not burn Virginia to the ground. Gen. Lee did not burn Maryland or Pennsylvania when he invaded. Both sought to destroy each other's armies instead of making war against women and children, as Sherman did.
After promising to "make Georgia . . . howl," Sherman continued such policies in the Carolinas. Not only did he preside over the burning of Columbia, but he also executed several prisoners of war in retaliation for the ambush of one of his notorious foraging parties. While Andersonville's camp commander, Henry Wirz, was found guilty of conspiracy to impair the health and destroy the life of prisoners and executed, nothing like that happened to Sherman.
According to an article by Maj. William W. Bennett, Special Forces, U.S. Army, Sherman turned his attention to a new soft target after the Civil War: Native Americans. Rather than engage Indian fighters, Sherman again preferred a strategy of killing noncombatants. After an ambush of a military detachment by Red Cloud's tribe, Sherman said, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children."
Bennett notes that Sherman carried out his campaign with brutal efficiency. On the banks of the Washita River, Gen. George Armstrong Custer massacred a village of the friendly Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, who had located to a reservation. Sherman was quoted as saying, "The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or maintained as a species of paupers. Their attempts at civilization are simply ridiculous."
Such slaughter was backed by the extermination of the buffalo as a means of depriving the men, women and children with a source of food. Many Native Americans not killed by Sherman's troopers were forced onto reservations or exiled to Florida to face swamps and disease.
Now we have learned about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Such events may seem unrelated, were it not for reports that Sherman's policies are still taught to West Point cadets as an example of how to break an enemy's will to fight.
Are we therefore shocked by the acts of barbarity against Iraqi detainees? As long as we honor Sherman, teach his tactics and revise history to excuse his actions, we can expect more examples of torture and savagery against noncombatants we encounter in other countries.
John Tures is an assistant professor of political science at LaGrange College who was born in Wisconsin, opposes the 1956 Georgia flag and still has a low opinion of Sherman.
Yeah, you're right. At least some Southerners had the decency of lynching their subjects rather than subjecting them to a cruel stoning.
The republic was lost.
The democracy won.
Are you amazed that some people will still argue about what the War of Southern Rebellion was about, and about who started it?
As a matter of fact, General Jubal Early did burn Chambersburg, PA in 1864. He had threatened to burn Frederick, MD also but the local bankers bought him off with a ransom payment. I believe it was over 100 years later that their descendants finally got some kind of reparations from the U.S. government, on the grounds that their heroic sacrifice had saved Washington itself by delaying Early's invasion for a couple of days.
sherman was a war crimal, period
Where do you get off calling the Civil War "useless and idiotic"?
I find it one the most noble contests in human history.
It was an unavoidable necessity in the history of this nation and for adavancing the cause of human freedom.
You're labeling the war as "useless" is idiotic and ignorant.
This is a worthwhile and important strategy, and is taught in almost all major military schools in the world today. After the Civil War, Europe sat up and took notice of the new way of war invented by W.T.Sherman.
The United States achieved total victory in Europe in WWII by wiping out the industrial capacity of Germany, which the victorious allies had failed to do in the Great War.
I'll bump to that!
General Sherman was a national hero!
W.T.Sherman put the question to the South. He ended the pussyfooting, and drove a dagger into the South's soul. He won the civil war. He understood what war is about. We could all learn a lesson from him. Listen, if you don't want the atrocities of war brought to bear upon your heartland, don't make war.
That's a great book isn't it?
I've lived most of my life in the South and from time to time have had to listen to nitwits like the guy who posted this topic.
Hanson's book had it exactly right. Sherman was the most innovative general not only of the Civil War but of the entire 19th century. While Lee and Grant were still chasing chasing each other around the countryside and losing huge numbers of soldiers on both sides, Sherman figured out that if he couldn't kill every confederate soldier, he could kill the South's will to fight and keep his men alive at the same time. Hanson's book gave evidence of this when he recounted that Lee's army was losing hundreds of soldiers to desertion every day.Why? To go home and try to protect their property because they had gotten the news that
Sherman was loose in the South and was "making Georgia howl".
"As long as Sherman was killin Southerners he was OK by me"
Would you like to have a go at this Southerner, girlie man?
The good professor is from Wisconsin one of the most liberal states anywhere...moreover it ain't a dixie ping because this guy hates a Georgia flag...And by the way you guys lost
As long as he was just killin' Jews, I guess Hitler was alright to you also! You sick a-hole.
bump
""It will be a physical impossibility to protect the roads, now that Hood, Forrest, Wheeler, and the whole batch of devils are turned loose without home or habitation. I think that Hood's movements indicate a diversion to the end of the Selma & Talledega road, at Blue Mountain, about 60 miles southwest of Rome, where he will threaten Kingston, Bridgeport, and Decatur,Alabama, I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out with our wagons for Midgeville, Millen, and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people, will cripple their military resources. By attempting to hold the roads, we will lose a thousand men each month, and we will gain no result. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl! We have on hand over 8 thousand head of cattle and three million rations of bread, but no corn. We can find plenty of forage in the interior of the state." -- William T. Sherman, October 1864.
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