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.”
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“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.”
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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?
ReplyDeletePerhaps 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.
Perfectly stated and I have never understood why Johnston went to his funeral. Utterly mind boggling.
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