[central_va]

Trying to ennoble a POS like W. T. Sherman is going to be pretty hard thing to do. But keep trying. We all need windmills to tilt at.

[Ditto]

Trying to ennoble a POS like W. T. Sherman is going to be pretty hard thing to do.

The Germans would say the same thing about Patton or Eisenhower I'd assume. They both destroyed a lot of German cities.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Trying to ennoble a POS like W. T. Sherman is going to be pretty hard thing to do.
But keep trying. We all need windmills to tilt at."

Then you're missing my point, which is not to "enoble" Sherman, but simply to point out that war is h*ll (best not to get into it), both sides were generally very well behaved, especially compared to other wars and times, but also that both practiced pillage and destruction in the other's territories.

Your complaining about Sherman is equivalent to German civilians complaining about allied bombing in WWII.
By today's standards of precision guided "shock and awe" smart-bombs, they were unnecessarily destructive and immoral.

So today's defense of those past actions is similar:

1. At the time it was considered necessary, and both sides did it.

2. It demonstrably shortened the war, and therefore saved not only US but also opponents' civilian lives.

3. Today's military doctrines are quite different, focusing on precision aiming and data-sorting bad-guys from their presumed innocent civilian populations.
   But there's no way today's technical standards can apply to our ancestors.

But while we're on this subject, did you ever notice how much longer today's wars last than those of the past?
Did you ever wonder how fighting a "kinder and gentler" form of war doesn't seem to convince our enemies to stop fighting as quickly as the brutal older methods did?