William Tecumseh Sherman

[Webmaster]

Was really William Tecumseh Sherman a norther but choosed to fight for the Southern.

[ole]

Was really William Tecumseh Sherman a norther but choosed to fight for the Southern.

Sherman was born and raised in Ohio. Although he very much liked the south and southern people, he fought (quite successfully) for the Union.

Sherman was a complex individual. He was as racist as almost everyone else, and he didn't much care about slavery -- it just was a part of his country. What he could not and did not tolerate was breaking the law as he saw it. He considered secession as breaking the law, therefore he was against it.

ole

[Old Guy]

What  a joke! If the South had won, he would have been hung, and rightly so!

[ole]

Well, Old Guy, I'll match you year for year.

You might want to expand on the "Rules of War" he violated. The Confederacy lost in its bid for independence. Who, besides the unfortunate Wirz, was hung. Had the Confederacy won, would the same restraint have applied?

ole

[Old Guy]

Although he very much liked the south and southern people

I keep hearing this. If he liked them so well why did he do what he did to the women at Roswell? Why did he burn a 60 mile path in Ga.? I suppose he liked the Indians too. He killed enough of them. Sherman today is the most hated Gen. of the CW in the South. Why is that?
OG

[ole]

Why is that? Probably because there are a great number of unread buttheads lurking about.

Sherman was no saint. But Sherman believed in his heart, that this muss had to stop. So he went about doing exactly that. He went off to show that it was fruitless to continue. And he burned barns and mills in a 60-swath through Georgia. Then he did the same through the Carolinas. I find some faults with his tactics, but in the final analysis, he showed the Confederacy to be toothless. Lee bottled up in Petersburg, Hood whupped in Tennessee. And all those other guys west of the Mississippi unable to do anything.

Would it have not been a stroke of sanity for Davis to toss in the towel when Sherman occupied Atlanta? Wasn't it all over then? Was it inevitable that Sherman had to march to Savannah? It is fine to rave on about Sherman's March. But the rave doesn't usually include why.

Just some random thoughts.

ole

[Old Guy]

WhOA! Are you saying because they are from the South that they are unread? That's really stereotyping. Of course we hear that all the time. Dumb hill billies! Right? You are right about one thing. The war was over after Atlanta. Thomas was taking care of Hood quite well. Grant had Lee bottled up at Petersburg. The rest of the march to the sea was revenge on Sherman's part. It served no purpose.
OG

[Johan Steele]

It should be noted that Sherman was actually fairly well liked in the South after the War; particularly in Savannah where he did what the CS had failed miserably to do, he fed the city.

Many... IMO perhaps 90% of the claims of atrocities laid at the feet of Sherman and his men are at best exaggerations and at worst outright lies and inventions.  And much of the negative press of the man and his men was created out of whole cloth after the war when the Lost Cause began to take root.

There are other threads where "Sherman the antichrist" are suitably refuted.  Sherman was a man of his times, no better or worse than most of his contemporaries.  I grow weary of standing up and pointing out that much of the criticism of the man and his men is unfounded.

"Lost Cause" historians have a tendency to ignore the words of the men of the day... particularly if they don't agree w/ their premise.  The letters and diaries written at the time are quite revealing; Sherman was loved by his men, respected and feared by his enemy and most important a General that won campaigns and quite possibly the war.

[Johan Steele]

Fellman, Michael Citizen Sherman: A LIfe of William Tecumseh Sherman
Lewis, Lloyd Sherman, Fighting Prophet

Marszalek, John A Soldiers Passion for Order

same author Shermans Other War, The General and the Civil War Press
His own memoirs are interesting and not too self serving...

As to the March to the Sea there are quite a few books out there some of them better than others. While I don't agree w/ the conclusions of all listed below I think they are reputable and fairly intellectually honest.

Glatthar, Joseph THe March to the Sea and beyond:Shermans Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaign

Neely, Mark "Was the Civil War a Total War?"

[Johan Steele]

First let us discuss what is a Total War? If it is defined as the novel approach of taking the war to the civilians as a first time ever as is often charged against Sherman... Well Sherman was neither the first or most brutal by any stretch of the mind. Such a charge requires either a willful ignorance of military history or not bothering to look at the last 2000 years or so of history.

Total War was waged, quite effectively, by the Romans & Mongols to name just two of the more effective practitioners of the ancient world. Then of coarse there were the French in Spain, English in India, Russians etc in a more 19th Century light.

The Romans gave us the idea of "abject lesson" w/ places like Carthage, Juerselum and the temple mount to name just two. We get the term decimate and depopulate from the Romans. Sowing salt on fertile ground and leaving no stone upon another as well as leaving a city or region empty of inhabitants. That is total war. Later putting a city to the sword was outright common and giving a city to the army for a couple days was how some armies of the Dark & Middle ages were paid! Noble Knights of the Crusades? Posh.

The Mongols took mobility & psychological Warfare to a whole new level... one that has never been surpassed; truly epitomizing the idea that wars are fought in the will. They encouraged the belief in the supernatural and demonic and scared the wits out of opponents... destroying EVERYTHING that resisted them. Total War? Absolutely and the standard by which the premise should be judged.

The French in Spain did everything Shermans men are accused of doing... and actually did it.   By what definition were these Total Wars? Well Total War equals treating enemy civilains as combatants and treating them as such. No quarter asked and none given... more like what happened to the Native Americans in the US or upon the battlefields of the Pacific in WWII than to the citizens of Georgia, SC & NC at the hands of Shermans men.
Frankly, NOT fighting a total war is a relatively new concept.  We must remember that history does not happen in a vacuum. What Shermans men did pales when compared to quite a few Armies prior; whether it be the French in Spain during the Napoleanic Wars or even the British in Denmark in that same time frame.

Polite conduct towards the civilians of an enemy simply did not exist. The idea that Sherman and his men were the first to turn "Total War" loose upon the world flies in the face of reality and of history. This was not history to the men of West Point, they were current events with many a nasty event as recent as the 1840's and 50's conducted by "civilized" nations.

Shermans men were relative saints when compared to the French, Germans or even Brits. Politness towards civilians is a relatively recent phenomenom in warfare... the evidence is simply the lack of mass graves or piles of bones throughout Georgia & the Carolinas. I guarantee that few descendents of those civilians in the above mentioned area have blue coated ancestors...

When looked at in a purely military sense the destruction wrought upon Georgia and South Carolina was largely of legitimate nature.  Mills, RR's, barns, livestock, bridges etc...
Much of the charges of mass looting is pure rhetoric with little foundation in reality. Simply put where did the loot go, how was it carried and where did it end up? The men did not carry it, if there were large amounts it never left Savannah (the records of postal shipments are available) and the men certainly didn't carry it w/ them through to the Grand Review. In short tons of loot never left Georgia & the Carolinas.

Why did General Sherman feel his campaign through Georgia and the Carolina’s was needed?  I suppose the one thing that Sherman knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that the CS did not think they were beaten when he began his March to the Sea. By the time he was done... it was over. At the end the whole world knew it was over and there was no doubt in the mind of any foreign power either. When Sherman began that campaign the CS was still viable; no matter the reality of economics or strategic situation. While we in the 21st may easily conclude that the CS was beaten; the CS in 1864/65 certainly didn't believe it... and there was some question in the mind of the average Union soldier as well.

What Sherman and his men did was prove to the world and to the CS that the War was over. The armies of the CS were no longer capable of defending anything and certainly no longer capable of stopping 60,000 men from rolling through the middle of their country.

Without that campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas the CS may well have held on. Grant was stymied by Lee outside Petersburg and that was where the press saw and reported the war. Much as today the press were the eyes of the nation; they saw the war through their eyes and in their eyes the war was still front page news with Grant and Lee at Petersburg. The war was ended through that march by Sherman and his men.
What was the cost?  There were less than a thousand CS casualties prior to North Carolina; among both the military and civilian population.  Sherman lost less than 200 men. There is, of course, no figure on the dead and wounded freed slaves at Ebeneezer Creek.  But because they were black men, women and children attacked by Wheeler they are overshadowed by Sherman. Although Jeff Davis (the Union General) was as much at fault for ordering the pontoons pulled.

Shermans actions at the very least shortened the War by a year if not ended it. It is a fascinating campaign, as to it being the first time such tactics were used. It was not the US actions during the Seminole War, French in Spain, English in India and China in other words there was ample precedence within the 60 years prior to 1864 of much more brutal actions by European Armies against a civilian populace. Sherman’s march was nothing new to the world and hardly as brutal as a myriad of European campaigns.