With
his sanity questioned by those around him, Sherman personalized
American civilians in the South as his enemy; he branded their acts of
self-defense as “cowardly” and deserving of swift retaliation. He was
in effect denying that the South had the right to resist an invasion of
its own country.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Sherman’s Civilian Enemies:
“Article
44 [of US Army General Orders No. 100]….specified that “All wanton
violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all
destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all
robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main
force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are
prohibited under penalty of death, or other such severe punishment as
may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.”
Paradoxically,
it was….Union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, [who] gradually
evolved his own personal philosophy of war along line which were clearly
at variance with the official pronouncements, and in his practical
application of that philosophy became one of the first of the modern
generals to revert to the idea of the use of force against the civilian
population of the enemy.
On
the eve of the Civil War, Sherman could look back upon a career of
dependence, frustrations, and failures. “I am doomed to be a vagabond,
and shall no longer struggle against my fate,” he wrote his wife from
Kansas in 1859. As he travelled northward in late February, 1861, to
face once more the prospect of renewed dependence upon his
father-in-law, his brooding over the ghosts of his own failures became
mingled with gloomy forebodings concerning the future of the nation
itself.
Passing
from the South, where it seemed to him that the people showed a
unanimity of purpose and a fierce, earnest determination in their
hurried organization for action, into Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, where
he found no apparent signs of preparation….he began to develop the deep
conviction that he was one of the few people who understood the real
state of affairs. It was only a short step from there to resentment
against those who seemed unwilling to heed his warning or advice.
Convinced
that Washington’s failure to act promptly on his requests [as a
brigadier in Kentucky] was due either to indifference to the situation
or to a willingness to sacrifice him, he developed a state of nervous
tension in which his irritability and his unreasonable treatment of
those about him antagonized the newspaper correspondents and led
some….to publish stories questioning his sanity.
[He was relieved of
command and]….It was during this period of inactivity that the full
import of these charges of insanity began to bear in upon him and to
create in his mind an agonizing sense of humiliation. [He wrote his
brother John] “that I do think I should have committed suicide were it
not for my children. I do not think I can ever again be entrusted with a
command.”
Two
months later….he wrote to his brother that the civilian population of
the South would have to be reckoned with in the months of war
ahead......”….the country is full of Secessionists, and it takes all [of
a Northern] command to watch them.” Having become convinced that
[telegraph] destruction was being accomplished by civilians rather than
military personnel, he found it easy to judge the whole South on the
basis of what he saw….Here was a manifestation of his tendency to arrive
at generalizations by leaping over wide gaps of fact and reason and to
proceed on the basis of his inspirations and convictions with the utmost
faith in the soundness of his conclusions.
In
this case his generalization led him to visualize the people themselves
as a significant factor in the conduct of the war and to think in terms
of a campaign against them as well as against their armies. [Writing
to the Secretary of the Treasury], “When one nation is at war with
another,” he said, “all the people of the one are enemies of the other:
then the rules are plain and easy of understanding.” [He continued]:
“The Government of the United States may now safely proceed on the
proper rule that all in the South are enemies of all in the North; and
not only are they unfriendly, but all who can procure arms now bear them
as organized regiments or as guerrillas.”
Sherman’s
disposition to consider all resistance as treacherous acts of the
civilian population prepared the way for the next steps in the
development of his attitude on the conduct of the war.”
Well, I've always thought that war was the medium that encouraged all the perverted, twisted, egocentric, cruel, low lifes of any civilization to emerge and do what they love best for the "good" of the nation. Sherman certainly was no exception.
ReplyDeleteMiss V
Good point.
DeleteI upset an old physician, WW II Marine, friend of mine by saying, "Well, we finally win all our wars by slaughtering civilians, like Sherman did in Georgia and the USAF did over Dresden and Hiroshima." He later died of a heart attack, which I may have unwittingly contributed to, but I hope not.
ReplyDelete:)
Delete