Scorched Earth Policy in Emerging Conflicts

Via Jonathan

 

Excerpt

..........we look at Sherman’s brutal March to the Sea that had the explicit support of the American seat of power in Washington, District of Criminals.
From Sherman’s Order (9 Nov 1864):

V. To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.

If anyone was going to stop Sherman, it would have been Lincoln or Grant who didn’t necessarily support Sherman’s plan.  In the end, Lincoln telegraphed Sherman in response to the plan and said, “Go as you propose.”  There may not have been an abundance of support by volume but by authority, certainly so.  And it’s not like the murdered Southerners mattered to Sherman as much as his desire to be the man who brought the war to an end.

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