Posted on 08/03/2005 10:47:14 PM PDT by churchillbuff
A city in east-central Ohio in September will celebrate Army Gen. William T. Sherman and the 125th anniversary of his ``War is hell'' speech.
The events will be Sept. 23-25, mostly in Lancaster in Fairfield County, the birth place of the Union Civil War general who marched in 1864 from Atlanta to Savannah through the heart of the Confederacy.
The celebration will include nationally recognized scholars and authors and hundreds of re-enactors portraying notable Ohioans and key Civil War figures. There will be a Civil War tea and fashion show and history walks featuring a Civil War encampment.
There will also be a Sept. 23 opening dinner at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus. The speaker will be Dr. Richard McMurry, a Civil War author and historian. Re-enactors will portray Sherman and Ohio's own President Rutherford B. Hayes.
Sherman (1820-1891) delivered his famous speech on Aug. 11, 1880, at the Civil War Soldiers' Reunion at the Ohio State Fairgrounds (now the Columbus Park Conservatory).
``The war is away back in the past and you can tell what books cannot. When you talk, you come down to practical realities, just as they happened.... There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror; but if it has to come, I am here,'' Sherman told 10,000 Civil War veterans.
Sherman's birthplace in Lancaster is a museum run by the Fairfield Heritage Association.
For more information, contact the association at 105 E. Wheeling St., Lancaster, OH 43130, 740-654-9923. The Internet site is www.lancaster-oh.com/Sherman.
Sherman did not have pillage the South as he did .
I think he gave the Nazi's the idea for their Blitzkrieg.
Totally unacceptable.
Are you comparing an American general instrumental in ending the Civil War, which the South started, with the Nazis?
"celebrate Army Gen. William T. Sherman"
Grrrrrrrrr.
"Are you comparing an American general instrumental in ending the Civil War"
If Sherman's methods are acceptable, why aren't we targeting women and children in the Middle East?
"which the South started"
Only in the sense that they wanted to be left alone by someone who refused to let them alone.
Sherman did this with a minimum of loss in life, quite opposite from the bloodlettings between Grant & Lee further north... said bloodlettings being made possible only because both these generals were certainly of indomitable disposition, but wherein one (Lee) could only continue fighting if he had the logistics from the deep South that continued to feed his army the needed cotton, bullets, food and human flesh for those battles to be fought.
Sherman was one of America's greatest Generals, a man of Honor just as much as Lee. Because of his "pillage"; hundreds of thousands of lives were spared.
CGVet58
isn't it interesting how the Yankee's write their own versions of history ?
If the someone who wanted to be left alone really wanted to be left alone, they shouldn't have opened fire on a federal reservation. They all but handed Lincoln all the justification he needed to present the fencesitters. The right of secession was a point which warranted some constitutional debate, but nothing in the Constitution could be read as permitting the attack on Fort Sumter. It was federal property.
Victor Davis Hanson's take on Sherman. Worth a read: http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/5300.html
"If the someone who wanted to be left alone really wanted to be left alone, they shouldn't have opened fire on a federal reservation."
Well, if you want to take it to that level, according to accepted international law, Lincoln committed the first act of war when he undertook to reinforce Sumpter.
It there was a right to secede, and there was, then Lincoln was obliged to get his troops off.
We need more men like William T. Sherman in our war against the Islamics. The South brought it on themselves, and should consider themselves lucky that they didn't have to face General Clemenza.
"isn't it interesting how the Yankee's write their own versions of history ?"
I hate that.
So if someone, or a group wants "to be left alone" they incite mobs to attack United States forts and shipping? How interesting.
It's a real shame the U.S. did not have a dozen more Generals just like Sherman in order crush the insurrectionists, and resort civil order a couple of years prior to 1865.
I hope he can watch. From Hell!
Impeccably stated!
It's a real shame the CSA didn't have M-16's
" More than any other person, he destroyed the institution of American slavery and the Southern aristocracy that was interwoven with it."
I guess, given the immense, unnecessary loss of life and the hagiography that passes for study of Lincoln, it's just too much to ask people to accept that the War of Northern Aggression was not only wrongfully prosecuted by a tyrannical government, but unnecessary.
I think Lincoln realized that at Gettysburg, but thanks to (what else) an actor, we'll never know.
"It's a real shame the U.S. did not have a dozen more Generals just like Sherman in order crush the insurrectionists, and resort civil order a couple of years prior to 1865."
And you talk about freedom? Well, you're pretty free with words like "insurrectionists," I guess.
There was no insurrection. The South never undertook to overthrow the government of the US. They *seceded.* Do you know what that word means? They sought to leave a voluntary union as they had joined it, by popular vote.
Here's a remark by H. L. Mencken:
"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves."
"The South brought it on themselves"
Yeah, that's what George III and the redcoats said...until they lost.
And that's the difference.
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