History shows that Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas brought that war to an end far sooner than it would have otherwise. And he did it with far fewer deaths than others would have.
Study W.T. Sherman the man sometime. You might change your mind about his “ethics”.
“The purpose of an army is to kill people and break things. “
That’s a clever quip by a talk show host, it’s not military science. The purpose of an army is to impose your will, it’s an extension of politics. This can be accomplished by blockades and sieges. The first strategic move by the Union was Scott’s Anaconda, the blockade of southern ports.
Fans of Sherman and the Union in general should keep in mind that American citizens were the targets of their violence. Lincoln denied that the Confederacy existed. In his view there were no “Confederate citizens”, there were only rebellious citizens of the United States. And Congress didn’t declare war. It funded Lincoln’s use of the army to suppress an insurrection by American citizens in rebellious American states.
Someday a President like an Obama might declare that Americans who refuse to follow his executive orders are in rebellion. And in need of the sort of correction that was used in the past. Lincoln raised the army and blockaded ports and suspended habeus corpus all on his own, while Congress was not in session. If a President were to do this again I wonder if he would get his own Temple built in Washington DC and be hailed as the best President ever?