[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.

[GOPcapitalist]

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.

Sure it can. The very nature of the war entailed the overwhelming majority of it being found in the heart of the south, therefore the civilian population most immediately affected by the war was southern. After consciously choosing a war strategy that heavily imposed upon the southern population, the northern command proceded to wreak havoc upon civilians incomparable in number, degree, or geographic size to anything ever done by the confederates against the northern population. Your attempt to dismiss Sherman's path of total destruction by drawing equivalence with a single incident of confederates burning a Pennsylvania hick town, or even the totality of confederate action in the north for that matter, is fundamentally fraudulent and dishonest.