Sherman at 150

 

WAR AND CONFLICT BOOK ERA:  CIVIL WAR/LEADERSOne hundred and fifty years ago this September 2, William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta after a brilliant campaign through the woods of northern Georgia. While Grant slogged it out against Lee in northern Virginia all through the late spring and summer of 1864—the names of those battles still send chills up our collective spine: Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor — Lincoln’s reelection chances were declared doomed.  All summer, General George McClellan reminded Americans that he had once gotten closer to Richmond than had Grant and at far less cost — and promised that, under his presidency, the war would end with either the South free to create its own nation or to rejoin the Union with slavery intact … but that in either case the terrible internecine bloodletting would end. Then Sherman suddenly took Atlanta (“Atlanta is ours and fairly won.”); McClellan was doomed and the shrinking Confederacy was bisected once again.

What was to be next?  Southerners grew confident that the besieger Sherman would become the besieged in Atlanta after the election, as his long supply lines back to Tennessee would be cut and a number of Confederate forces might converge to keep him locked up behind Confederate lines.

Instead, Sherman cut loose on November 15, 1864 — despite Grant’s worries and Lincoln’s bewilderment — and headed to the Atlantic Coast in what would soon be known as “The March to the Sea,” itself a prelude to an even more daring winter march through the Carolinas to arrive at the rear of Robert E. Lee’s army, trapped in Virginia at war’s end.

After daring Sherman to leave Atlanta, and declaring that he would suffer the fate of Napoleon in Russia, Confederate forces wilted.  The luminaries of the Confederacy — Generals Bragg, Hardee, and Hood — pled numerical inferiority and usually avoided the long Northern snake that wound through the Georgia heartland.  Sherman’s army had been pared down of its sick and auxiliaries, but was still huge, composed of Midwestern yeomen who liked camping out and were used to living off the land.  Post-harvest Georgia was indeed rich, and Sherman’s more than 60,000 marchers soon learned that they could live off the land in richer style than they ever had while occupying Atlanta.  In their wake, they left a 300 mile-long, 60 mile-wide swath of looting and destruction from Atlanta to Savannah.

Yet there was a method to Sherman’s mad five-week march.  He burned plantations, freed slaves, destroyed factories, and tore up railroads—but more or less left alone the farms and small towns of ordinary Southerners.  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”; and to humiliate the Confederate military, especially what he called the cavalier classes that boasted of their martial audacity but would not dare confront such a huge army of battle-hardened troopers from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and other Midwestern states.  In this context, the message was not lost: Unionists were not just New England Yankee manufacturers, but farmers who did their own hard work in harsh, cold lands more challenging than temperate Georgia; material advantages and repeating rifles were not antithetical to martial audacity, as a Michigan farmer with a Sharps rifle was more than a match for a plumed Southern cavalryman who boasted of killing Yankees.

Sherman was hated not so much because he killed Southerners: in comparison to Grant’s bloodbath in northern Virginia, probably less than 1,000 Confederates were killed during the March to the Sea.  Rather, he humiliated the South by having supposedly less-audacious Northerners taunting the South to attack them on their own turf, and exposing the plantation class as hollow, showing them more willing to flee their rich and hitherto untouched plantations than to die while protecting them.

Was he a terrorist in destroying stately mansions, telegraph lines, and railroad tracks rather than searching out Confederate armies to square off in battle?  Not really.  His agenda of collective punishment aimed at ending the war quickly by starving Confederate armies of their ability to move, communicate, and be supplied.  Sherman felt that it made no sense to kill young Southerners who did not own slaves when it was possible to destroy the livelihoods of those who did.  He waged, instead, a sort of psychological terrorism, in which he sought to remind the Southern population that war was no romance, fought in far off places in glorious battle, but a dirty, nasty slog in which those who supported an amoral war would themselves have to pay some of its costs by the general impoverishment that followed the destruction of their leadership class.

Sherman’s legacy in Georgia is not akin to the blanket bombing of Dresden or Tokyo, much less to the nuking of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.  Nor is it a parallel to the indiscriminate bombing during Vietnam or the war against civilians waged by the Taliban or ISIS.  Rather, it resembles the selective targeting that the U.S. sought against Slobodan Milosevic or the current Israeli shelling and bombing of Hamas in Gaza.  In both cases, the targets were those who prompted the war, the homes and offices of the Serbian and Gazan commanders and controllers.  The general population itself was neither deliberately targeted nor left alone.  The destruction of infrastructure that had aided the efforts of the Serbians or Hamas was analogous to the railroads that ferried Confederate armies or the telegraphs that sent orders to Southern commanders.  Such material damage was not just “collateral” but intentional, as a bitter reminder to both the Serbians and the Palestinians of the wages of joining a cause that was not only wrong, but also as weak in the concrete as it has sounded savage in the abstract.

Sherman believed that a martial, if not tribal, society was especially prone to humiliation, especially those cadres who bragged that material disproportionality did not matter given the supposed superiority of their own individual warriors.  Sherman was quite eager to disabuse Confederates of that myth, in the same manner, perhaps, that American pilots reminded Serbians that their beefy, scary killers were vulnerable, or that Palestinians are being reminded that otherwise normal-looking Israeli youths can decimate those in Gaza who brag of their willingness to blow themselves up against cowering Jews.

The South hated Sherman in a way it never quite did Grant, the grim reaper of Southern youth.  Sherman was unapologetic after the war; he welcomed controversy and kept reminding his critics that the Confederacy was mostly hollow, prone to bluff but — on examination — weak.  It was his duty, he continued, to remind both the North and the South of that paradox in ways that were hardly subtle.

George S. Patton sought to do the same to formidable SS divisions in France, as did the 1st Marine Division to the Japanese veterans who had butchered the innocent in China, as did American Marines in Fallujah to supposedly indomitable Islamic terrorists and insurgents.

Sherman would say to us that the way to destroy a martially audacious enemy is to enter his homeland, to separate the rhetoric from reality, to destroy things that aid the war, and to remind the population why most of their own houses and homes survive and why those of the most prominent usually do not—and why the general chaos that follows is somehow connected to their own blind support to those who have misled them.

Sherman is still hated for that, or, as Machiavelli put it, “men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.”

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  1. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    If you think Southrons hate Sherman, get them started on Phil Sheridan. 

    Sheridan burned out the Shenandoah Valley, making it impossible to use as a corridor to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania, or of use to remount and feed the Army of Northern Virginia facing Grant. 

    What was truly unforgivable, however was that little upstart Sheridan kept beating Confederate armies with a regularity and thoroughness that put the lie to the claim the Yankees had no good generals and won only through mass of material.

    Seawriter

    • #1
  2. Pilli Inactive
    Pilli
    @Pilli

    “Sherman would say to us that the way to destroy a martially audacious enemy is to enter his homeland, to separate the rhetoric from reality, to destroy things that aid the war, and to remind the population why most of their own houses and homes survive and why those of the most prominent usually do not—and why the general chaos that follows is somehow connected to their own blind support to those who have misled them.”

    How does one accomplish this when their “leaders” insist on using the homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques of the locals to base their  assaults?

    I can more easily hate the “enemy” that blew up my house than the “freedom fighter” that was using it as his base.

    • #2
  3. GKC Inactive
    GKC
    @GKC

    Great read.  VDH, Sir, which book on the Civil War would you most recommend?

    • #3
  4. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    I think though implicit in Sherman’s tactic was that the South when it gave up its prideful war would once again be welcomed back into the Union. Once Serbia gave up its genocidal thuggish leaders it could once again be part of Europe. Do the Palestinians get Palestine back if they cease their aggression? What do they go back to? I think that is what is missing in this modern equation.

    • #4
  5. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    While I agree with the thrust of your post (in fact, I’m a little choked up at having my position so eloquently stated), I’d say the North was fortunate in the standards of honor and decency of its enemy in a way that Israel is not. The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up. 

    Hamas humiliates the Palestinians. What can Israel possibly do that would be worse, and would convince the Palestinians to make permanent peace? It seems the average non-combatant Palestinian will lose his life either to Israeli defensive measures, or by having his throat slit as a Jewish collaborator. 

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

    • #5
  6. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    I think there is some reason to say that the North’s greatest general was George Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga, who won every battle he ever fought and did so with low casualties and destroyed entire Confederate armies (allowing Sherman to march to the sea without worrying about the armies Thomas had pinned down and destroyed).

    Sherman was like Grant, a pure butcher and blunderer.  He was tactically weak-minded and he had a touch of mental instability as well.

    Now, with all that being said. . . .

    I’m no fan of Sherman, Grant, or Sheridan, but I do recognize that despite Sherman’s tactical weaknesses, that he and Grant and Sheridan understood total war in a way that we have forgotten.  It is the people that allow wars to continue.  It is the people that should be targeted in warfare.

    The only moral way to fight a war is through total war.

    • #6
  7. WeighWant Inactive
    WeighWant
    @WeighWant

    I think Sherman and Patton, and an overall leader with a large vision like Nimitz, would win any war, any time.  Sherman’s 3-column march, each route planned every day, was designed to be strong and flexible, letting the enemy’s movements determine the way.   And all done completely cut off from supplies, marching through land where his every move was observed.  The confidence he had in his army, and their confidence in him, is shown in every diary and letter.

    • #7
  8. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Western Chauvinist: The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up. 

     Certainly Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet certainly not.  Jefferson Davis or Jubal Early?  Well . . .  

    Davis ordered Lee to break up his army and wage guerrilla warfare.  Lee disobeyed that order to sign a regular surrender with Grant. (Give credit to Grant, too.  He offered surrender on terms making it impossible to try members of the Army of Northern Virginia for treason, allowing them to go home and resume peaceful lives.) If anyone wants to see the result had Lee obeyed Davis, read about the Civil War in the Indian Territory, where the two sides waged total warfare, including guerrilla war against each other.

    As for Early, he is the architect of the Lost Cause movement, which was ultimately irredentist, denigrated those like Longstreet seeking peaceful accommodation, and poisoned race relations.

    A protracted guerrilla campaign would have sacrificed the Confederacy’s children to no good purpose, and the Lost Cause movement inflamed the lynch culture in the South.

    Seawriter

    • #8
  9. Jackal Inactive
    Jackal
    @Jackal

    Gave rise to a great song too.

    • #9
  10. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Western Chauvinist:

    While I agree with the thrust of your post (in fact, I’m a little choked up at having my position so eloquently stated), I’d say the North was fortunate in the standards of honor and decency of its enemy in a way that Israel is not. The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up.

    Hamas humiliates the Palestinians. What can Israel possibly do that would be worse, and would convince the Palestinians to make permanent peace? It seems the average non-combatant Palestinian will lose his life either to Israeli defensive measures, or by having his throat slit as a Jewish collaborator.

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

     Maybe Israel could offer Palestinians refuge from Hamas. A chance to build a new life in Israel as part of it rather than against it.  

    • #10
  11. Frank Soto Member
    Frank Soto
    @FrankSoto

    Valiuth:

    Western Chauvinist:

    While I agree with the thrust of your post (in fact, I’m a little choked up at having my position so eloquently stated), I’d say the North was fortunate in the standards of honor and decency of its enemy in a way that Israel is not. The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up.

    Hamas humiliates the Palestinians. What can Israel possibly do that would be worse, and would convince the Palestinians to make permanent peace? It seems the average non-combatant Palestinian will lose his life either to Israeli defensive measures, or by having his throat slit as a Jewish collaborator.

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

    Maybe Israel could offer Palestinians refuge from Hamas. A chance to build a new life in Israel as part of it rather than against it.

     Hamas has widespread support among Palestinians.  This would be the equivalent of opening the gates to accommodate the giant wooden horse.

    • #11
  12. hawk@haakondahl.com Member
    hawk@haakondahl.com
    @BallDiamondBall

    Whether or not Grant “cut loose” from his supply base at Grand Gulf, the thought must have tantalized Sherman.  I imagine it occupied him during his brief pursuit of Hood.

    • #12
  13. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Frank Soto:

    Valiuth:

    Western Chauvinist:

    While I agree with the thrust of your post (in fact, I’m a little choked up at having my position so eloquently stated), I’d say the North was fortunate in the standards of honor and decency of its enemy in a way that Israel is not. The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up.

    Hamas humiliates the Palestinians. What can Israel possibly do that would be worse, and would convince the Palestinians to make permanent peace? It seems the average non-combatant Palestinian will lose his life either to Israeli defensive measures, or by having his throat slit as a Jewish collaborator.

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

    Maybe Israel could offer Palestinians refuge from Hamas. A chance to build a new life in Israel as part of it rather than against it.

    Hamas has widespread support among Palestinians. This would be the equivalent of opening the gates to accommodate the giant wooden horse.

     And so everything stands as it is and the war continues with neither victory or defeat just casualties. 

    • #13
  14. hawk@haakondahl.com Member
    hawk@haakondahl.com
    @BallDiamondBall

    Valiuth:

    Frank Soto:

    Valiuth:

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

    Maybe Israel could offer Palestinians refuge from Hamas. A chance to build a new life in Israel as part of it rather than against it.

    Hamas has widespread support among Palestinians. This would be the equivalent of opening the gates to accommodate the giant wooden horse.

    And so everything stands as it is and the war continues with neither victory or defeat just casualties.

     Victory, not “End” is the goal.   End without victory is defeat.  And did you really mean to imply that defeat would be preferable to continued war?

    • #14
  15. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Maybe I was being too poetic and so I was unclear. I was thinking of both sides of the conflict not just the Israeli side. So it isn’t a question of preference in my view. Both sides fail to grasp victory and neither will admit defeat. So there is just struggle.

    • #15
  16. Frank Soto Member
    Frank Soto
    @FrankSoto

    Valiuth:

    Frank Soto:

    Valiuth:

    Western Chauvinist:

    While I agree with the thrust of your post (in fact, I’m a little choked up at having my position so eloquently stated), I’d say the North was fortunate in the standards of honor and decency of its enemy in a way that Israel is not. The Confederacy would never have sacrificed its children for a political leg-up.

    Hamas humiliates the Palestinians. What can Israel possibly do that would be worse, and would convince the Palestinians to make permanent peace? It seems the average non-combatant Palestinian will lose his life either to Israeli defensive measures, or by having his throat slit as a Jewish collaborator.

    Hamas must be utterly destroyed. What other choice is there?

    Maybe Israel could offer Palestinians refuge from Hamas. A chance to build a new life in Israel as part of it rather than against it.

    Hamas has widespread support among Palestinians. This would be the equivalent of opening the gates to accommodate the giant wooden horse.

    And so everything stands as it is and the war continues with neither victory or defeat just casualties.

    Israel is doing well in this conflict.  None of the middle eastern nations who call her enemy are capable of any direct action against her.  

    There was a time when Palestinian terrorists could march onto buses or into markets with explosives strapped to their chest.  Today the wall keeps them at bay.  

    Next Hamas tried to go over the wall with Rockets.  Far less deadly even before the iron Dome, which has further enhancements coming which will ultimately lead to the irrelevance of Hamas’ low tech rocket terror.

    Now Hamas has gone under the wall with tunnels at ENORMOUS cost.  As the IDF identifies and neutralizes the tunnel networks, they will begin the process of integrating anti-tunneling technology to the wall, eventually rendering tunneling useless. 

    The primary international opposition to Israel comes in the form of the UN, who is largely useless as an entity for projecting power.

    Israel is winning, they are just playing a long game.

    • #16
  17. Look Away Inactive
    Look Away
    @LookAway

    Well Dr. Hanson, it really does not matter in the long run does it? Wars have winners and losers, winners control the narrative as part of their tribute.  I find it ironic, having read with empathy the many articles you have written describing the devaluation of your homeland in California, from work ethic, to respect for private property to the growth of the welfare state, impacting your way of life that you appear not to understand that you are on the receiving end of a Sherman type campaign by the Leviathan state on one flank and Mexican and Central american immigrant lawlessness on the other. The center is held by the sanctimonious whose battalions are made up of the morally indignant. Total war today is steamrolling any thought or way of life outside that approved by the northeastern elite and the Ivy league. They will always justify what they do to keep power. They always have.

    • #17
  18. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    Valiuth, what, perhaps needs to be stated here is that Israel and Hamas have two different concepts of victory. For Israel it is simply the end of terrorist invasions and attacks on Israeli soil and the means by which these are accomplished. For Hamas, indeed for all Muslims, it is the destruction of the state of Israel. 
    Israel sits on lands which Muslims believe was once Dar al Islam. Once that status has been declared it can never be changed. They will never give up attempting to remove Israelis from what they consider to be “their” lands. They will not co-exist, they will not become part of a greater Israel. They want the land back and will accept nothing less.
    Hamas is the militant faction, but the rest believe in this concept and support Hamas and others who would drive out the Jews. Bernard Lewis has made this very clear in several of his books. What is terribly sad is that so few in the west have read Lewis and understand how truly impossible compromise really is.

    • #18
  19. TG Thatcher
    TG
    @TG

    Thank you, Dr. Hanson.

    • #19
  20. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Seawriter: A protracted guerrilla campaign would have sacrificed the Confederacy’s children to no good purpose, and the Lost Cause movement inflamed the lynch culture in the South.

    Which may all be true, but is still not comparable to placing one’s children at the bull’s eye of a pre-announced target so that their corpses may be photographed and the images projected around the world to gain sympathy for one’s cause (of annihilating the opponent).

    • #20
  21. Nick Stuart Inactive
    Nick Stuart
    @NickStuart

    Very good. Now here’s hoping Dr. Hanson favors us from time to time with essays of his thoughs on World War 1.

    • #21
  22. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Thanks. My favorite General of the war is Sherman, in some part because I have spent my life in the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain!

    • #22
  23. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Valiuth:

    Maybe I was being too poetic and so I was unclear. I was thinking of both sides of the conflict not just the Israeli side. So it isn’t a question of preference in my view. Both sides fail to grasp victory and neither will admit defeat. So there is just struggle.

     Ha! Victory could be had by Israel tomorrow, in such as way that the people of Gaza would never again be a threat. They would wipe the people out to the last one. 

    That is what Hamas, voted into power, I might add, wants to do. So Victory is out there, but you would be first in line to blame them for it. 

    Come to think of it, were you one of the, “Just withdraw and things will be fine” crowd, or have you always been in the “Right of Return” camp?

    • #23
  24. user_473455 Inactive
    user_473455
    @BenjaminGlaser

    I know those of us of rebel blood are not allowed to comment in some defense of our southron ancestors, but as Shelby Foote once notably related, the reason why my family was fighting was because y’all were down here destroying our farms, killing our livestock, and in the case of Sheridan’s terroristic campaign, raping our women. 

    • #24
  25. user_157053 Member
    user_157053
    @DavidKnights

    Sherman was undoubtedly a good general.  However, Joe Johnston’s defense of Atlanta was a brilliant fighting defense that confounded Sherman again and again.  It was only when he was replaced by Hood that Sherman really succeeded.

    • #25
  26. user_5186 Inactive
    user_5186
    @LarryKoler

    Valiuth:

    I think though implicit in Sherman’s tactic was that the South when it gave up its prideful war would once again be welcomed back into the Union. Once Serbia gave up its genocidal thuggish leaders it could once again be part of Europe. Do the Palestinians get Palestine back if they cease their aggression? What do they go back to? I think that is what is missing in this modern equation.

     The only formulation that can work is what can keep Israel intact with an Israeli super-majority for their elections. This they must have. Once that is given, then the people in Gaza and Israel can work together. Israel, once assured of their safety, could be depended on to help Gaza become developed. Once Gazans renounce their barbaric acts and are not a threat to Israel — all else can be worked out. Gazans will never be Israelis and they will never live in Israel. Not gonna happen — but a good life is possible by being next door to 1st world country like Israel. They can build a good life for their children — they just don’t want to do it this way. They insist on genocide.

    • #26
  27. user_5186 Inactive
    user_5186
    @LarryKoler

    Great article, Mr. Hanson. I hear you often on Dennis Miller, Hugh Hewitt and other places and I love your perspective on the passing parade.
    Thanks for this discussion of Sherman and the connections you are making to other times and situations. Often war is a thing of pride. Terrorism is so often only pride — and then often only the pride of a few. When the pride of Hirohito was finally broken, his compassion for the regular Japanese citizens broke out and he finally stopped supporting the war. It must have been humiliating to contemplate having to deal with MacArthur but this great general/diplomat was not the normal governor or viceroy. MacArthur proved that Japan could realign its aims into peaceful, non-feudal, non Samurai modes. America really helped Japan after the war and it must have surprised the Japanese people — especially after all the war-time propaganda they endured.

    • #27
  28. user_44643 Inactive
    user_44643
    @MikeLaRoche

    Amen to what Look Away and Benjamin Glaser said.  And I’ll defend my Southern ancestors to the hilt.

    • #28
  29. Tim H. Inactive
    Tim H.
    @TimH

    Benjamin Glaser:

    I know those of us of rebel blood are not allowed to comment in some defense of our southron ancestors, but as Shelby Foote once notably related, the reason why my family was fighting was because y’all were down here destroying our farms, killing our livestock, and in the case of Sheridan’s terroristic campaign, raping our women.

     Amen.  My great great grandmother documented some of this in her diary, kept throughout the war in Middle Tennessee.  For the rest of her life, she never forgave the Northern people for the invasion and conquest.  Sherman is rightly hated not because he was successful—heck, Grant was successful—but because of his terrible war waged against our civilians.

    For example, in How to Speak Southern:  “Hale:  Where General Sherman wound up.”
    Search in the book for “hale”—the cartoon is perfect.  ;)

    • #29
  30. Matty Van Inactive
    Matty Van
    @MattyVan

    Skyler: “The only moral way to fight a war is through total war.”

    Really? I would respond, “Government by consent of the governed.”

    That total war dictum only has a chance of morality if you are talking about defensive warfare. Doesn’t work for invasion of another country or place.

    There were few good guys in the story of the Civil War. Southerners denied government by consent of the governed to slaves; Northerners denied it to the South. All who denied it must be condemned by history.

    Glad to see some anti-Sherman sentiment finally making it to this thread. And don’t forget, Sherman, Sheridan (and reluctantly Grant) took their total war philosophy west after the Civil War in the attempt to impose America’s version of the final solution on western Indians. Trying to make Sherman and Sheridan somehow heroic – though VDH makes a valiant attempt – shreds the spirit and probably the letter of the American Constitution.

    • #30
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