Saturday, January 4, 2014

Sherman and Total War

William T. Sherman: Mad General
In an order to one of his generals, Thomas Ewing (Order #11) Sherman said “There is a class of people (in the South), men women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” And again to his wife he wrote from north Georgia, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash.”Continue reading at NowPublic.com: William T. Sherman: Mad General - Mass Murderer | NowPublic News Coverage http://www.nowpublic.com/world/william-t-sherman-mad-general-mass-murderer#ixzz29t82TkUE

William T. Sherman: Mad General

In an order to one of his generals, Thomas Ewing (Order #11) Sherman said “There is a class of people (in the South), men women and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” 

And again to his wife he wrote from north Georgia, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash.”
 
*********************************************

“In North America, European influence had always dominated and this logically included modes of warfare mostly in accordance with European standards. There were of course departures from this but usually armies fought each other rather than terrorizing civilian populations – the war with Mexico being an example which did not revert to total war against noncombatants. 

In his book “Advance to Barbarism, F.J.P. Veale writes: “. . . the first historic break with European practice . . . took place in the sanguinary American Civil War (or “The War Between the States,” as the Southerners still prefer to designate it).  It was the Northern or Federal armies which produced this historic reversion to primary or total warfare.  The North had endured much more bellicose contact with the Red Indians and was much less influenced by Europe than the South.” (C.C. Nelson, 1953, pg. 121)

Veale finds “the traditional habit of saddling [Sherman with the] Northern departure from civilized warfare” unjust.  He saw that “Sherman only executed the most dramatic and devastating example of the strategy which was laid down by President Lincoln himself and was followed by General Ulysses S. Grant as commander-in-chief of the Northern armies. 

Veale continues:  “That Lincoln determined the basic lines of Northern military strategy has been well-established . . . [and] Grant only efficiently applied Lincoln’s military policy in the field.  [Professor Harry T. Williams writes that Grant] “grasped the . . . concept that war was becoming total and that the destruction of the enemy’s economic resources was as effective and legitimate a form of warfare as the destruction of his armies.”  

Hence it is apparent that Sherman was only carrying out effectively the military policy which Lincoln and Grant had adopted (pg. 122).

More @ NCWBTS

2 comments:

  1. In a search for primary motives, I always found it odd and somewhat insidious that Sherman was both a lawyer and a banker; a banker who had seen his bank wiped out in the Panic of 1857, when the North experienced a massive financial collapse that left the South relatively unscathed. By the time he started his blood drenched ride of pillage and plunder from Atlanta to the sea in most practical terms, the South was militarily beaten. So why cause untold millions in economic damage to an all but vanquished foe?
    Perhaps because "Reconstruction" was in sight on the horizon, and certain New York bankers (with whom Sherman would have had a more than nodding acquaintance) stood to make an absolute mint from reconstruction loans and Southern land speculation...
    This of course, extends the concept of economic warfare against the South into a multi-decade program that dovetails nicely into the other atrocious conduct perpetuated during 'reconstruction'.
    Just food for thought.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perfectly stated and I have never understood why Johnston went to his funeral. Utterly mind boggling.

      Delete