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Two sets of first hand experiences with Sherman and Sheridan in my mother's family:
A plantation in Georgia in the middle of Sherman's infamous march. The barns, fully stocked with the harvest, were burned and most of the animals carried off or slaughtered. The house was searched for weapons but not looted. Federal officers were even placed at the doors to the house to make sure that the enlisted men didn't go inside. Sherman tended not to destroy residences that were occupied but houses abandoned by a family who had fled were at risk and the Southerners quickly figured this out so most people stayed put.
A large farm and tannery in the Shenandoah Valley. The tannery was burned to the ground, understandably as it had been supplying Confederate forces with leather. The house was not touched.
For all the disruption and population movement due to the armies on the march, rape was exceedingly rare. The Civil War was, in many ways, a gentlemanly war due to the behavior and respect showed to both sides by the armies (for the most part). For sheer total warfare you'd have to look at Eastern Front during WWII where both the German and Russian armies thoroughly terrorized the civilian populations of the various countries. Or look even earlier into history during the scores of medieval wars where rape and slaughter of peasants of the opposing kingdom was commonplace enough.
This has long been the general consensus, primarily garnered from eye-witness sources on both sides, despite the pro-Confederate propaganda (ie, Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind), embittered oral histories, and more recently, neo-Confederate idiocy.
Civil wars are nasty, and always have been. Ours became nastier as time went on, but on a scale of 1-10, the murder/rape/deliberate harm of civilians was probably a 1 except in some areas like Missouri and the Appalachians.
Certainly once the war ended, the ex-Confederates were treated much better than any group of defeated rebels had ever been. There were no mass executions or even imprisonments. Those who chose to reconcile, ie, take the oath of allegiance, had their civil rights restored. Several important members of the Confederate government and/or military were elected to federal office, and I think former Confederate general James Longstreet became a general in the US Army.
The biggest problem with the South after the Civil War was that the people who had held most of the region's wealth lost it all when they lost their slaves. Before the war, slaves could be used as collateral for loans. They could be sold to raise capital if needed. Planters who had borrowed money before the war on the value of their slaves were immediately bankrupted. Planters who borrowed money after the war on their land struggled to make crops with the now uncertain labor supply and frequently lost all or part of their property, if not immediately, over the course of several decades.
The second biggest problem with the South after the Civil War was that too many Southerners idealized and romanticized the antebellum period and failed to look forward. For every advocate of "the New South", there probably were ten others who clung to the old ways.
Most planters in the South resisted change after the Civil War just as they had resisted change before it. The Carolina rice planters continued to try to raise labor/infrastructure intensive crops until just before WW I when a hurricane destroyed most of the remaining rice fields. In the cotton lands, the planters resorted to share-cropping despite the boll-weevil infestations, dropping cotton prices, decreasing productivity, and increasing poverty. Meanwhile, farmers in the North and Midwest were rapidly mechanizing, adding acreage, improving crop yields, trying new varieties and even new crops, etc.
Sherman's tactics (and Sheridan's tactics in the Shenandoah Valley) were not a "new kind of warfare". The concept of a scorched earth policy has been practiced in both offensive and defensive warfare for over 2000 years.
During their military campaigns the Romans employed a method of punitive destruction and subjugation of civilians called vastatio as part of their military operations.
In his series of military campaigns known as the Harrowing of the North, William the Conqueror used a scorched earth policy in subduing the northern part of England by burning towns, killing the inhabitants, destroying food stocks and livestock, and generally laying waste to the countryside.
The British employed scorched earth policies in Ireland during the second half of the 16th century. The British response to the Desmond Rebellions pretty much destroyed the Irish province of Munster.
In the war of 1812, the American forces burned York (now Toronto) in Canada; in response the British invaded and burned Washington DC.
In 1863 (before Sherman's victory in Atlanta and March to the Sea in 1864), Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill lead a force on a raid into Lawrence, Kansas, wherein the Confederates burned buildings and killed civilians, even after the civilians had surrendered. In response, the Union forces depopulated three and a half Missouri counties on the border with Kansas, forcing out the civilians and burning buildings and food stocks and shooting livestock, all to deny any support to the Confederate guerrilla forces.
So yes, the Union employed scorched earth policies to reduce the Confederacy's ability to wage military operations. And no, it wasn't anything new - and it wasn't anything that Confederate forces, given an chance, hadn't done. General Sherman was simply more effective at it, and a lot less blood thirsty about it than others before him.
"War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want" - William Tecumseh Sherman.
Not new in application but rather the scope and the type of nation to employ it.
Since the overwhelming majority on this thread agree with Sherman and his total war tactics, would all of you be in favor of the harsh application of his tactics today if you were one of the victims to soon (say within 24 hours) to be "visited" by his army and bummers?
Since the overwhelming majority on this thread agree with Sherman and his total war tactics, would all of you be in favor of the harsh application of his tactics today if you were one of the victims to soon (say within 24 hours) to be "visited" by his army and bummers?
That is like asking someone doing a stretch in the state pen if he or she supports the penal system.
In war it is always a matter of approving of the misery inflicted on someone else, preferably someone on the enemy side. Victims of war never approve of being victims, not of bombs, bullets, high explosives, fire, theft or rape. You can be in favor of dropping bombs, firing bullets etc on the other side while not welcoming the same upon yourself.
You just seem to have taken a serious disliking to a certain W.T. Sherman and wish to share it with the rest of us, that's all.
Problem is that unlike you, we're not seeing him as latter day incarnation of Attila the Hun.
I personally have been given clear and powerful example(s) of those who employ these cowardly tactics and I know the mind of the one in command on how to deal with cowards like these and I do know exactly what needs to be done concerning them. My inadequate words can never provide the justice to reprove in full measure such wicked destroyers like these but only swift, decisive and physical deadly force could ever avenge of such cowardly acts and be the proper justice these heathen cowards deserve. But this fight is for someone else to stand up in the future and not for me to perform, I know. I am a follower of peace and can never lift my hand against any man and so it is...
All war is about death and destruction and its effects have never been limited to combat soldiers. So unless you are an absolute pacifist I don't see what you are moaning about.
I personally have been given clear and powerful example(s) of those who employ these cowardly tactics and I know the mind of the one in command on how to deal with cowards like these and I do know exactly what needs to be done concerning them. My inadequate words can never provide the justice to reprove in full measure such wicked destroyers like these but only swift, decisive and physical deadly force could ever avenge of such cowardly acts and be the proper justice these heathen cowards deserve. But this fight is for someone else to stand up in the future and not for me to perform, I know. I am a follower of peace and can never lift my hand against any man and so it is...
No, you haven't "given clear and powerful example(s)" of anything except out-of-context bull manure from neo-Confederate websites and from the Bible that you, as a supposed "follower of peace" use to advocate slavery and violence (but not by you because you want to keep your lily-white hands unbloodied).
FTR, discussing Sherman's March to the Sea is off topic as it occurred during the Civil War not after the war.
Not new in application but rather the scope and the type of nation to employ it.
Not new in anything really.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turn Hearts
Since the overwhelming majority on this thread agree with Sherman and his total war tactics, would all of you be in favor of the harsh application of his tactics today if you were one of the victims to soon (say within 24 hours) to be "visited" by his army and bummers?
No one would be happy being in the situation as GS pointed out. However, in all honesty, I would take facing Sherman's army before most others if given the choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turn Hearts
I personally have been given clear and powerful example(s) of those who employ these cowardly tactics and I know the mind of the one in command on how to deal with cowards like these and I do know exactly what needs to be done concerning them. My inadequate words can never provide the justice to reprove in full measure such wicked destroyers like these but only swift, decisive and physical deadly force could ever avenge of such cowardly acts and be the proper justice these heathen cowards deserve. But this fight is for someone else to stand up in the future and not for me to perform, I know. I am a follower of peace and can never lift my hand against any man and so it is...
How does one reconcile such seething hatred and desire for revenge while proclaiming they are a pacifist? Jesus turned the other cheek, but he didn't secretly desire for Peter to start lopping off people's heads while he did it...
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