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This article greatly educated me today. (A long read.)

Not the date "1846" at the beginning of the article should be "1864."

www.victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5133

also:

www.victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=7734

--Brant

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This article greatly educated me today. (A long read.)

Not the date "1846" at the beginning of the article should be "1864."

www.victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=5133

also:

www.victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=7734

--Brant

Yes, I was just as open to the truth about Patton's casualty rate per thousand which, apparently, was amongst the lowest in the European theatre in WW II < you know the BIG ONE...

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Especially among Union generals, Sherman represented the return of the "civilized world" to total war, the disappearance of any discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Sherman wrote that his goal was "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [southern] people." (Letter of July 31, 1862 to his wife from his Collected Works)

In this sense Sherman is the perfect Übermensch, the man who is freed from the standard Christian concern for the lives of others. The Übermensch makes his own morality.

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Especially among Union generals, Sherman represented the return of "civilized world" to total war, the disappearance of any discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Sherman wrote that his goal was "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [southern] people." (Letter of July 31, 1862 to his wife from his Collected Works)

In this sense Sherman is the perfect Übermensch, the man who is freed from the standard Christian concern for the lives of others. The Übermensch makes his own morality.

So, you didn't click on the links. A mere comment on the title of the thread and its presumptive content is no comment on the thread at all but a hijack onto an historical bromide. Why would I put up a thread to confirm common ignorance? Try the second link, it's quicker to its point.

--Brant

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You would rail against Thomas Piketty, but then salute the military. Of course Sherman or Patton or whoever had lower casualty rates among their own troops. Someone has to be better - and some other general must moan over the Pyrrhic victory or utter defeat. The fact remains that everything Sherman did, everything that Patton did, made everyone (even in America) poorer. Every bullet fired was a loss of capital.



Oh, yes, sometimes you do need to defend yourself. You can meet a drunken bully in a bar - leaving aside why you are in a bar in the first place. Stuff happens. But if someone pushes you, you do not have the right to kill them, kill their family, burn their home, just to prove that you refuse to be intimidated by a context-dropping whim-worshipping muscle-mystic.



Even after Fort Sumter, the course of the war was not inevitable; and neither was the dissolution of the Union, nor the continuance of slavery. The Battle of Gettysburg was July 1-3, 1863. New Orleans was re-occupied a year earlier, May 1862. Ulysses Grant wanted to teach mathematics at a girls' school; and he was a drunkard. He won battles because he knew that the arithmetic of manpower and materiel was on his side and he did not care about the loss of life. That's war. The South asked for it. But at some level, it has to end because each and every resource dedicated to war cannot be invested in profitable extension of human happiness.


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You would rail against Thomas Piketty, but then salute the military. Of course Sherman or Patton or whoever had lower casualty rates among their own troops. Someone has to be better - and some other general must moan over the Pyrrhic victory or utter defeat. The fact remains that everything Sherman did, everything that Patton did, made everyone (even in America) poorer. Every bullet fired was a loss of capital.

Oh, yes, sometimes you do need to defend yourself. You can meet a drunken bully in a bar - leaving aside why you are in a bar in the first place. Stuff happens. But if someone pushes you, you do not have the right to kill them, kill their family, burn their home, just to prove that you refuse to be intimidated by a context-dropping whim-worshipping muscle-mystic.

Even after Fort Sumter, the course of the war was not inevitable; and neither was the dissolution of the Union, nor the continuance of slavery. The Battle of Gettysburg was July 1-3, 1863. New Orleans was re-occupied a year earlier, May 1862. Ulysses Grant wanted to teach mathematics at a girls' school; and he was a drunkard. He won battles because he knew that the arithmetic of manpower and materiel was on his side and he did not care about the loss of life. That's war. The South asked for it. But at some level, it has to end because each and every resource dedicated to war cannot be invested in profitable extension of human happiness.

WTF? Why this lecture? Try reading the second link then adjust and add to your comments.

--Brant

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Especially among Union generals, Sherman represented the return of "civilized world" to total war, the disappearance of any discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Sherman wrote that his goal was "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [southern] people." (Letter of July 31, 1862 to his wife from his Collected Works)

In this sense Sherman is the perfect Übermensch, the man who is freed from the standard Christian concern for the lives of others. The Übermensch makes his own morality.

I think it was more practical than that. Sherman wanted to shorten the war. The only way to do that was to wreck the economy of the Confederacy which he did. Aside from burning houses and fields he had railway track ripped up, heated in fire and wrapped around trees. They were called Sherman's neckties.

His objective was to lay the confederacy militarily and economically prostrate and that is what he did.

Within a year of his famous (infamous) March through Georgia the war was finished. The effects were so profound that even today, while you are reading this there are Southrons who still curse Sherman's name.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Yes, I read the Hanson pieces, both of which confirm that Sherman's intention was the "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, . . but the [southern] people."

Quoth Hanson (who apparently never met a war he didn't love): "His purposes were threefold: to punish the plantation class, the small minority of Confederates who owned slaves, as the culprits for the war; to destroy the Southern economy and remind the general population, as Sherman put it, 'that war and individual ruin were now to be synonymous.'”

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Especially among Union generals, Sherman represented the return of "civilized world" to total war, the disappearance of any discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.

Sherman wrote that his goal was "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [southern] people." (Letter of July 31, 1862 to his wife from his Collected Works)

In this sense Sherman is the perfect Übermensch, the man who is freed from the standard Christian concern for the lives of others. The Übermensch makes his own morality.

I think it was more practical than that. Sherman wanted to shorten the war. The only way to do that was to wreck the economy of the Confederacy which he did. Aside from burning houses and fields he had railway track ripped up, heated in fire and wrapped around trees. They were called Sherman's neckties.

His objective was to lay the confederacy militarily and economically prostrate and that is what he did.

Within a year of his famous (infamous) March through Georgia the war was finished. The effects were so profound that even today, while you are reading this there are Southrons who still curse Sherman's name.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Lincoln's goal was not shortening the war (he refused to make any compromises with Confederate emissaries) but unconditional surrender. In fact, those words were thought to be what the initials in Grant's name stood for.

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Yes, read the Hanson pieces, both of which confirm that Sherman's intention was the "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, . . but the [southern] people."

Quoth Hanson (who apparently never met a war he didn't love): "His purposes were threefold: to punish the plantation class, the small minority of Confederates who owned slaves, as the culprits for the war; to destroy the Southern economy and remind the general population, as Sherman put it, 'that war and individual ruin were now to be synonymous.'”

Yeah, but he didn't exterminate as in visit genocide onto the people of Georgia or even South Carolina. He destroyed the ability of the South to support Lee and he came up on Lee's backside ending the war. I'm not saying Hanson wrote proper and objective history about this but was implicitly asking if he got this right for it would seem he did. Sherman also provides an interesting contrast to Grant and it seems Sherman's bark was about 50% worse than his bite--what he wrote and what he said.

Now, what should Sherman have done instead from occupying Atlanta on? We are not talking about whether there should have been a war. Sherman was an ardent Unionist. I think there shouldn't have been a war. The South should have been allowed to go its own way. This thread is about strategy and tactics and how they inform the present, for as such the Civil War was as modern as the major wars that followed and what is extant today.

--Brant

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WTF? Why this lecture? Try reading the second link then adjust and add to your comments.

--Brant

Surprised me also.

However, MEM has been in a non-connective mode for the last month or so.

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Within a year of his famous (infamous) March through Georgia the war was finished. The effects were so profound that even today, while you are reading this there are Southrons who still curse Sherman's name.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Only a few months, not a year. His campaign up through the Carolinas was in the winter of 1865.

--Brant

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The purposeful destruction of crops, the killing of livestock (that Union soldiers could not consume), the burning of residences, mills, granaries, stores, and warehouses ensured that thousands of non-combatant men, women and children would die in the months after the March to the Sea. And let us not forget the countless rapes and beatings that Sherman turned a blind eye to. We have no precise numbers because there were no number-takers in this wasteland.

If only it were true that there had been no bite after the bark.

And there was certainly both boast and follow through with regard to Sherman's post-war treatment of American Indians:

"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous. " --William Tecumseh Sherman

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The purposeful destruction of crops, the killing of livestock (that Union soldiers could not consume), the burning of residences, mills, granaries, stores, and warehouses ensured that thousands of non-combatant men, would and children would die in the months after the March to the Sea. And let us not forget the countless rapes and beatings that Sherman turned a blind eye to. We have no precise numbers because there were no number-takers in this wasteland.

If only it were true that there had been no bite after the bark.

And there was certainly both boast and follow through with regard to Sherman's post-war treatment of American Indians:

"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous. " --William Tecumseh Sherman

There was relatively little rapine in the March Through Georgia. The Southrons exaggerated the little there was to demonize Sherman.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Hanson said there were very few rapes. Extremely few.

The questions are (1) how could Sherman have done better than marching through Georgia with 60,000 men living off the land? That army had to live off the land for it could not protect long resupply lines. The army destroyed plantations owned by slave owners, generally not poor white farms and small towns. Fewer than 1000 Confederate soldiers died. (According to Hanson.) His close buddy Grant ran an inexorable meat grinder by contrast.

If Sherman had simply turned North after Atlanta to support Grant he would have left significant Confederate forces behind him, forces that could have subsisted off the bounty of Georgia and engaged him significantly. But that might have worked. I dunno. But if (2) marching through Georgia was the thing to do, how might he have done it better in any significant way? By "better" I mean less destructively and to the same end the war result.

--Brant

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And there was certainly both boast and follow through with regard to Sherman's post-war treatment of American Indians:

"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous. " --William Tecumseh Sherman

If you fight a war you're an SOB, the questions are what kind and how much?

As for Sherman and the Indians he was an SOB especially against the Comanches, but the Comanches were much worse as their way of life. They looted, raped, tortured, killed and kidnapped and dominated a vast landscape through Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado and eastern New Mexico. Extremely mobile with their horse culture they raided into Mexico. They even pushed the Apaches into Arizona and Mexico. They started out as a small tribe with no horses in Wyoming. The army seized 1600 of their horses, kept 600 and shot the rest breaking their collective back. No horses, no go, except to the reservation in Oklahoma. Buffalo hunters had previously hollowed out their main food supply.

There were many horrible genocides but most seem to have been carried out by locals not the army. Wounded Knee was the army, but not out of army policy. Sand Creek in Colorado and one near Tucson were done by ad hoc irregulars. Imported disease like influenza and smallpox and chollera did by far the worse damage to native populations and not just in North America. South Sea islanders were decimated.

--Brant

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The purposeful destruction of crops, the killing of livestock (that Union soldiers could not consume), the burning of residences, mills, granaries, stores, and warehouses ensured that thousands of non-combatant men, would and children would die in the months after the March to the Sea. And let us not forget the countless rapes and beatings that Sherman turned a blind eye to. We have no precise numbers because there were no number-takers in this wasteland.

If only it were true that there had been no bite after the bark.

And there was certainly both boast and follow through with regard to Sherman's post-war treatment of American Indians:

"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous. " --William Tecumseh Sherman

What is your point Mr. "I live in the past and I will always be annoying about it?"

How many men, women and children would have died the day after Appomattox, if Appomattox did not occur?

Surrender at Appomattox, 1865

With his army surrounded, his men weak and exhausted, Robert E. Lee realized there was little choice but to consider the surrender of his Army to General Grant. After a series of notes between the two leaders, they agreed to meet on April 9, 1865, at the house of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Courthouse. The meeting lasted approximately two and one-half hours and at its conclusion the bloodliest conflict in the nation's history neared its end.

Prelude to Surrender

On April 3, Richmond fell to Union troops as Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia in retreat to the West pursued by Grant and the Army of the Potomac. A running battle ensued as each Army moved farther to the West in an effort to out flank, or prevent being out flanked by the enemy. Finally, on April 7, General Grant initiated a series of dispatches leading to a meeting between the two commanders.

"General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.:

5 P.M., April 7th, 1865.

The results of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.

U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General"

The note was carried through the Confederate lines and Lee promptly responded:

"April 7th, 1865.

General: I have received your note of this date. Though not entertaining the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its surrender.

R.E. Lee, General."

Grant received Lee's message after midnight and replied early in the morning giving his terms for surrender:

"April 8th, 1865.

General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.:

Your note of last evening in reply to mine of the same date, asking the conditions on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply I would say that, peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon,--namely, that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received.

U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General"

The fighting continued and as Lee retreated further to the West he replied to Grant's message:

"April 8th, 1865.

General: I received at a late hour your note of to-day. In mine of yesterday I did not intend to propose the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender of this army, but, as the restoration of peace should be the sole object of all, I desired to know whether your proposals would lead to that end. I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia; but as far as your proposal may affect the Confederate States forces under my command, and tend to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased to meet you at 10 A.M. to-morrow on the old state road to Richmond, between the picket-lines of the two armies.

R.E. Lee, General."

Exhausted from stress and suffering the pain from a severe headache, Grant replied to Lee around 5 o'clock in the morning of April 9.

"April 9th, 1865.

General: Your note of yesterday is received. I have not authority to treat on the subject of peace. The meeting proposed for 10 A.M. to-day could lead to no good. I will state, however, that I am equally desirous for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms, they would hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed. Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, etc.,

U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General"

Still suffering his headache, General Grant approached the crossroads of Appomattox Court House where he was over taken by a messenger carrying Lee's reply.

"April 9th, 1865.

General: I received your note of this morning on the picket-line, whither I had come to meet you and ascertain definitely what terms were embraced in your proposal of yesterday with reference to the surrender of this army. I now ask an interview, in accordance with the offer contained in your letter of yesterday, for that purpose.

R.E. Lee, General."

Grant immediately dismounted, sat by the road and wrote the following reply to Lee.

"April 9th, 1865.

General R. E. Lee Commanding C. S. Army:

Your note of this date is but this moment (11:50 A.M.) received, in consequence of my having passed from the Richmond and Lynchburg road to the Farmville and Lynchburg road. I am at this writing about four miles west of Walker's Church, and will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you. Notice sent to me on this road where you wish the interview to take place will meet me.

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General."

apomtx6a.jpg

The McLean family sits on the porch

of their home. The surrender was

signed in the 1st floor room on the left. Meeting at Appomattox

The exchange of messages initated the historic meeting in the home of Wilmer McLean. Arriving at the home first, General Lee sat in a large sitting room on the first floor. General Grant arrived shortly and entered the room alone while his staff respectfully waited on the front lawn. After a short period the staff was summoned to the room. General Horace Porter described the scene:

"We entered, and found General Grant sitting at a marble-topped table in the center of the room, and Lee sitting beside a small oval table near the front window, in the corner opposite to the door by which we entered, and facing General Grant. We walked in softly and ranged ourselves quietly about the sides of the room, very much as people enter a sick-chamber when they expect to find the patient dangerously ill.

The contrast between the two commanders was striking, and could not fail to attract marked attention they sat ten feet apart facing each other. General Grant, then nearly forty-three years of age, was five feet eight inches in height, with shoulders slightly stooped. His hair and full beard were a nut-brown, without a trace of gray in them. He had on a single-breasted blouse, made of dark-blue flannel, unbuttoned in front, and showing a waistcoat underneath. He wore an ordinary pair of top-boots, with his trousers inside, and was without spurs. The boots and portions of his clothes were spattered with mud. He had no sword, and a pair of shoulder-straps was all there was about him to designate his rank. In fact, aside from these, his uniform was that of a private soldier.

Lee, on the other hand, was fully six feet in height, and quite erect for one of his age, for he was Grant's senior by sixteen years. His hair and full beard were silver-gray, and quite thick, except that the hair had become a little thin in the front. He wore a new uniform of Confederate gray, buttoned up to the throat, and at his side he carried a long sword of exceedingly fine workmanship, the hilt studded with jewels. His top-boots were comparatively new, and seemed to have on them some ornamental stitching

apomtx2a.jpg

Signing the surrender

From a contemporary sketch. of red silk. Like his uniform, they were singularly clean, and but little travel-stained. On the boots were handsome spurs, with large rowels. A felt hat, which in color matched pretty closely that of his uniform, and a pair of long buckskin gauntlets lay beside him on the table.

General Grant began the conversation by saying 'I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico, when you came over from General Scott's headquarters to visit Garland's brigade, to which I then belonged. I have always remembered your appearance, and I think I should have recognized you anywhere.'

'Yes,' replied General Lee, 'I know I met you on that occasion, and I have often thought of it and tried to recollect how you looked, but I have never been able to recall a single feature.'"

The two generals talked a bit more about Mexico and moved on to a discussion of the terms of the surrender when Lee asked Grant to commit the terms to paper:

"'Very well,' replied General Grant, 'I will write them out.' And calling for his manifold order-book, he opened it on the table before him and proceeded to write the terms. The leaves had been so prepared that three impressions of the writing were made. He wrote very rapidly, and did not pause until he had finished the sentence ending with 'officers apomtx7.gifappointed by me to receive them.' Then he looked toward Lee, and his eyes seemed to be resting on the handsome sword that hung at that officer's side. He said afterward that this set him to thinking that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to require officers to surrender their swords, and a great hardship to deprive them of their personal baggage and horses, and after a short pause he wrote the sentence: 'This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage.'

Grant handed the document to Lee. After reviewing it, Lee informed Grant that the Cavalry men and Artillery men in the Confederate Army owned their horses and asked that they keep them. Grant agreed and Lee wrote a letter formally accepting the surrender. Lee then made his exit:

apomtx3a.jpg

General Lee leaves

From a contemporary sketch. "At a little before 4 o'clock General Lee shook hands with General Grant, bowed to the other officers, and with Colonel Marshall left the room. One after another we followed, and passed out to the porch. Lee signaled to his orderly to bring up his horse, and while the animal was being bridled the general stood on the lowest step and gazed sadly in the direction of the valley beyond where his army lay - now an army of prisoners. He smote his hands together a number of times in an absent sort of way; seemed not to see the group of Union officers in the yard who rose respectfully at his approach, and appeared unconscious of everything about him. All appreciated the sadness that overwhelmed him, and he had the personal sympathy of every one who beheld him at this supreme moment of trial. The approach of his horse seemed to recall him from his reverie, and he at once mounted. General Grant now stepped down from the porch, and, moving toward him, saluted him by raising his hat. He was followed in this act of courtesy by all our officers present; Lee raised his hat respectfully, and rode off to break the sad news to the brave fellows whom he had so long commanded."

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Unfortunately, Sherman made war on virtually all Plains Indians, not just Comanches. He wrote to Grant, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." Using Sheridan as his field commander, Sherman ordered attacks on the Kiowas, the Lakota and Cheyenne. He also used the army to destroy buffalo herds to deprive the Plains Indians of their chief economic resource.

If most of the Indians died at the hands of locals, it's not because Sherman didn't try to do it with army bullets,

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The purposeful destruction of crops, the killing of livestock (that Union soldiers could not consume), the burning of residences, mills, granaries, stores, and warehouses ensured that thousands of non-combatant men, would and children would die in the months after the March to the Sea. And let us not forget the countless rapes and beatings that Sherman turned a blind eye to. We have no precise numbers because there were no number-takers in this wasteland.

If only it were true that there had been no bite after the bark.

And there was certainly both boast and follow through with regard to Sherman's post-war treatment of American Indians:

"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous. " --William Tecumseh Sherman

What is your point Mr. "I live in the past and I will always be annoying about it?"

I had forgotten that I had said that. It must have been so long ago even Google can't find it. As to my purpose here, I supposed that it had been made clear from the context of the thread: Sherman set out to kill not just armed combatants, but unarmed civilians as well.

Perhaps one couldn't see it because the words kept getting in the way.

How many men, women and children would have died the day after Appomattox, if Appomattox did not occur?

I addressed this earlier. The war could have ended long before Appomattox had the North agreed to negotiate with the South.

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Unfortunately, Sherman made war on virtually all Plains Indians, not just Comanches. He wrote to Grant, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." Using Sheridan as his field commander, Sherman ordered attacks on the Kiowas, the Lakota and Cheyenne. He also used the army to destroy buffalo herds to deprive the Plains Indians of their chief economic resource.

If most of the Indians died at the hands of locals, it's not because Sherman didn't try to do it with army bullets,

No one said most of the indians died of anything but disease. What he said and what was done were mostly two different things. However, that approach and attitude were carried over into the Philippines where the Marines killed 200,000 three decades later. The United States has a lot to do with war. After the westward continental expansion, it kept right on going--and fighting. One might rightfully question every single war, including the Revolutionary, for they all seem to have a single root in the collectivist governing impulse.

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Unfortunately, Sherman made war on virtually all Plains Indians, not just Comanches. He wrote to Grant, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." Using Sheridan as his field commander, Sherman ordered attacks on the Kiowas, the Lakota and Cheyenne. He also used the army to destroy buffalo herds to deprive the Plains Indians of their chief economic resource.

If most of the Indians died at the hands of locals, it's not because Sherman didn't try to do it with army bullets,

No one said most of the indians died of anything but disease.

What he said and what was done were mostly two different things.

In Post #16 you wrote, "There were many horrible genocides but most seem to have been carried out by locals not the army."

I foolishly jumped to the conclusion that "locals" meant the local human population, not the local community of pathogens.

But apparently the germs were not mobilizing fast enough for Sherman's taste. Why else initiate over a thousand army attacks on Indian villages during winter months when the whole tribe, including children, were together? A good account of Sherman's solution to the Indian question can be found in John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Sherman called for Indian killing. Indian killing was done. I fail to see the disconnect. True, there was not absolute extermination, but does Hitler get off the hook because some European Jews escaped the final solution?

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There was relatively little rapine in the March Through Georgia. The Southrons exaggerated the little there was to demonize Sherman.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The recent work of Harvard historian Cystal Feimster shows that rape of both white and black women was not uncommon during the Union occupation of the South:

"Whether they lived on large plantations or small farms, in towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war . . . Southern women’s wartime diaries, court martial records, wartime general orders, military reports and letters written by women, soldiers, doctors, nurses and military chaplains leave little doubt that, as in most wars, rape and the threat of sexual violence figured large in the military campaigns that swept across the Southern landscape."

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There was relatively little rapine in the March Through Georgia. The Southrons exaggerated the little there was to demonize Sherman.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The recent work of Harvard historian Cystal Feimster shows that rape of both white and black women was not uncommon during the Union occupation of the South:

"Whether they lived on large plantations or small farms, in towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war . . . Southern women’s wartime diaries, court martial records, wartime general orders, military reports and letters written by women, soldiers, doctors, nurses and military chaplains leave little doubt that, as in most wars, rape and the threat of sexual violence figured large in the military campaigns that swept across the Southern landscape."

Pullease! We are talking about Sherman's March to the Sea and this impossibly broadens everything out and would destroy the thread with this gigantic dog leg. You did the same thing with your first post here.

If you are against the War Between the States--me too, me too! Now you can just say so. But that's also another thread.

--Brant

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There was relatively little rapine in the March Through Georgia. The Southrons exaggerated the little there was to demonize Sherman.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The recent work of Harvard historian Cystal Feimster shows that rape of both white and black women was not uncommon during the Union occupation of the South:

"Whether they lived on large plantations or small farms, in towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war . . . Southern women’s wartime diaries, court martial records, wartime general orders, military reports and letters written by women, soldiers, doctors, nurses and military chaplains leave little doubt that, as in most wars, rape and the threat of sexual violence figured large in the military campaigns that swept across the Southern landscape."

Pullease! We are talking about Sherman's March to the Sea and this impossibly broadens everything out and would destroy the thread with this gigantic dog leg. You did the same thing with your first post here.

If you are against the War Between the States--me too, me too! Now you can just say so. But that's also another thread.

--Brant

There has been no attempt to broaden the discussion, only to support my claim that violence against women was among the crimes that Sherman's troops in Georgia committed.

Professor Feimster's argument is that the "threat of sexual violence and the fear of rape were common to Southern women and central to how they experienced the Civil War." Now, if such violent acts were common in the war torn South, then there is no reason to suppose that an exception was made by Sherman's men in occupied Georgia. In fact, Feimster specifically cites a Georgia case.

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There was relatively little rapine in the March Through Georgia. The Southrons exaggerated the little there was to demonize Sherman.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The recent work of Harvard historian Cystal Feimster shows that rape of both white and black women was not uncommon during the Union occupation of the South:

"Whether they lived on large plantations or small farms, in towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war . . . Southern women’s wartime diaries, court martial records, wartime general orders, military reports and letters written by women, soldiers, doctors, nurses and military chaplains leave little doubt that, as in most wars, rape and the threat of sexual violence figured large in the military campaigns that swept across the Southern landscape."

Pullease! We are talking about Sherman's March to the Sea and this impossibly broadens everything out and would destroy the thread with this gigantic dog leg. You did the same thing with your first post here.

If you are against the War Between the States--me too, me too! Now you can just say so. But that's also another thread.

--Brant

There has been no attempt to broaden the discussion, only to support my claim that violence against women was among the crimes that Sherman's troops in Georgia committed.

Professor Feimster's argument is that the "threat of sexual violence and the fear of rape were common to Southern women and central to how they experienced the Civil War." Now, if such violent acts were common in the war torn South, then there is no reason to suppose that an exception was made by Sherman's men in occupied Georgia. In fact, Feimster specifically cites a Georgia case.

Of course there was "a Georgia case." 60,000 men marching 60 miles wide for 300 miles. Your implied case is Sherman's army raped its way through Georgia. Adduce your evidence.

--Brant

now Sherman's men "occupied Georgia"--I thought they just went through Georgia, so why would they leave anyone behind?--the harassing Confederates would have chopped them up

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