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When the union Army made it's way south, they looted homes and businesses of all food and valuables (like gold and jewelry). They also raped the women, both white and black. If there were men or boys who may have been of age to fight, they were shot. If any southerner tried to stop the looting, they were shot. When they left, many homes had no livestock, no grain, and no crops in the soil. These were told to my grandparents by their parents who survived the attacks. General Sherman not only knew his troops were doing this, but he approved of the total destruction and did nothing to stop even the raping.
Sherman's March covered only a month of the war! The troops, away from there supply trains, foraged to feed themselves, and it takes an incredible amount of resources to feed an army. That's a fact. In turn they destroyed resources that could be used by the enemy.
The march is misrepresented as a swath of destruction through the heartland of the south. That's not really true - there were no massacres, no murders of civilians or troops, rapes, or anything like that. Civilians were properly treated although, yes, food and livestock was taken. Foraging troops usually left enough for a family to subsist on. I believe they gave them some sort of chit or script to account for there losses but I am not positive.
Sherman's March covered only a month of the war! The troops, away from there supply trains, foraged to feed themselves, and it takes an incredible amount of resources to feed an army. That's a fact. In turn they destroyed resources that could be used by the enemy.
The march is misrepresented as a swath of destruction through the heartland of the south. That's not really true - there were no massacres, no murders of civilians or troops, rapes, or anything like that. Civilians were properly treated although, yes, food and livestock was taken. Foraging troops usually left enough for a family to subsist on. I believe they gave them some sort of chit or script to account for there losses but I am not positive.
Yes, there were rapes and murders of civilians. Remember, history is written by the victors. But there are volumes of books written on what union troops did in the south. For the northerners not in the war, life was relatively normal. Virtually all battles took place south.
So you agree the looting took place and write it off to feed the troops even though it left towns and families with young children with no food?
No, the North had to destroy the South, both to win the war and win the peace afterwards. Just as Sherman had to destroy the ability of the land to support the southern war effort, the army of occupation had to destroy the southern aristocracy, or the whole thing would have started over as soon as the military withdrew. Even after the war, there was a southern armed resistance, in the form of the Klan and other armed groups. Members that were not shot on sight were hung after a military trial.
Yes, many women and children died of starvation and disease during the war. The weak are often the first casualties in war.
There is a wealth of good information in this book detailing the cruelty of the war on the southern homefront. The problem with the book is that Cisco has not approached his topic fairly. Rather, he has set about to write a polemic with a decidedly pro-Confederate slant. There is no gray in Cisco's portrayal of the war. There is only black and white. The message is clear. The Union army and especially their commander in chief were war criminals, and the South was the abused victim who always turned the other cheek when confronted with the hard war. War Crimes Against Southern Civilians fits right in line with the lost Cause histories of the early nineteenth century and is part of a disturbing trend that is emerging. Masquerading as legitimate history, pro-Confederate revisionism aimed at an unreconstructed audience pretends to reveal new truths to the reading public that have supposedly been kept from view by so-called liberal academia. Unfortunately, the audience for such works only seems to be growing.
My emphasis.
And Andersonville was no picnic as a prison camp.
This is not to say that these weren't awful things, but as somebody stated earlier, the politics forum is the place for slanted, agenda-driven threads.
Obviously history books are skewed.. they leave out tons of history but how much do we really want to know? Most kids in history class, just want the hour to end so they can head to the next class but for the few of us who actually love history we have to look beyond the history books in school.
One resource that I found to be invaluable to me is period diaries. One diary I read several years ago was written by a young girl in Louisiana during the Civil War. Now this is just one girls account, but you get a good idea of how the south felt about the north and how the north soldiers treated the civilians...
the diary is;
A Confederate Girls Diary
Sarah Morgan Dawson
Available at Amazon for Kindle for ~$5
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