Sherman's March to the Sea

[yankeewoman]

Oh, thank you BOTH sooooo much!

[sgtcsa]

Yankeewoman,
In your conversations with any of us, civility goes a long way. Just use a little common courtsy, and you'll see just 'civil', us Southerners can be. Use that education that you possess, and put it to use for good, and healing, instead of vindictiveness. We may still disagree, but, we can still find out things about that great conflict that we never knew before, and perhaps, even some common ground. We (Southerners) are not all wrong, just as you (Northerners) are not all right. I grew up learning a lot about the war, not through books in school, but through my own ancesters and their friends. There are many local stories told and passed down by these fine people, and they are sometimes, very colorful indeed. Some of those stories are probably exaggerated somewhat, but there is, at least, a basis of truth in each one of those accounts. I'm sure your ancestors must have passed down stories of that war in your history, as well, and I am sure that you treasure those testimonies just as much as we do ours. The next time you read the Books of Mr. Shelby Foote, please don't take just a portion of what he speaks of, take the whole thing, and I'm sure that you will find that there are many things that you will not agree with. I know, because Mr Foote is a Southerner, and by and large, he will "tell it like it is", but the one thing he does not do, and that is run down the South as if it were to be totally wrong in all that it did, about the conflict, and how 'right' the North was in fighting it. He treats the Southerners as people, not as something to be spat upon, as you have done with your tirades. My patience has been tested, and that is a fact, however, I still hold out that somehow, someway, you may let loose of your 'hatred' of the South and it's reasons for the war, and in why they choose to fight. Your 'boys' on Shermans march, took out their anger on the South, in some pretty horrendous ways. True, Quantrill and Anderson commited some very heinous crimes, some that I do not agree with at all, but I don't believe they were actually considered part of the Confederate army, even though they may have thought otherwise.
If anyone has some 'facts' on this statement, I'd appreciate hearing from you, that is, if I don't find it myself first. Even if they were, the larger part of the army, and their commanders, did not ascribe to declaring war on civilians. One thing is for certain, Lee never did, and neither did his subordinates. If you continue to berate and belittle everything that the South stood for and believed in, then I suppose our 'battles' are over, and I shall retire from any further conflict with you. Then, you may proceed to battle with others who will continue to hear your scorn, your disdain, and your venomous and derogatory statements towards, and about the South. As a Southerner, I will do my best to meet you on, shall we say, a level playing field, to debate as much about that war as you may want, but I ask you to refrain from being 'overly ambitious' toward my, or our, outlook at the way events took place. Again, I have my views, just as you have yours, and I can find no fault with that. The fault, as I see it, is not that you disagree, it is the way in which you attack our responces to certain events..........such as .............Shermans march. I have done my best to remain on friendly terms with you. How you respond, will determine just what kind of individual you are, and just what you really think of Southerners as a whole. If these kinds of passions are raised now, just think of how they must have been in 1860. I cringe, at the kind of feelings that must have been demonstrated toward each other, North and South, in those terrible years, and I still pray, that we can refrain from doing such to each other on this wonderful board. If I spoke too harshly, I send my apologies to you, and hope sincerely, that a common bond may be found between us, so that we may continue to ......'debate' and learn. Untill then, I remain,

Very Respectfully yours,
SgtCSA

[thea_447]

Getting back to the subject at hand, in declaring that all the people of the South were "enemies" and "traitors", not only was Sherman given Lincoln's blessing but he sent a clear message to his soldiers that no line should be drawn between civilians and the Confederate military, thus abandoning all the premises of international law that civilized countries at the time were attempting to live by. (It's been said on this board that earlier, Lee would not employ this tactic because it would have turned the North completely against the South and would have aroused a "sleeping giant". I submit that the "sleeping giant" was already fully awake and eating breakfast. Gen. Lee simply chose to abide by the standard practices of warfare that civilized countries were trying to live by, of not waging war on innocent civilians. (It is especially troublesome to me that the North would employ these tactics against their own "blood kin". After all, the South was not a foreign country, these were their neighbors, and in some cases, their real brothers, cousins, etc.)

Please forgive me at this point if I repeat some remarks that have already been made concerning Sherman's March to the Sea. We have several threads pertaining to Sherman and it is so hard trying to keep track of the reams of information that have been given out. I have trouble remembering what's been said and what I have read in books! (This is a credit to the members who post here with such literary style.)

Sherman issued numerous orders that private property should be spared, but those orders were given with a wink and were received as such by his junior officers and soldiers. The object was to go ahead and commit the crimes without leaving a paper trail. Sherman's silence told his troops what they needed to know. Furthermore, whenever Sherman did order his henchmen (oops, soldiers) to stop the looting and burning so they could move on, they did so with great discipline. As Grimsley notes repeatedly, his army was extraordinarily well-disciplined and it understood that pillaging and plundering would indeed be fulfilling its commander's wishes.

Although Lincoln was elected with less than 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860, Sherman argued repeatedly that the war was a rebellion against "the National Will" and that, as such, "the people at large" of the South "should be made to feel...the existence of a strong government, capable of protecting as well as destroying." (Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, John Bennett Walters, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973, p. 78) ( a strong federal government already in place in the minds of Sherman, Lincoln, others, etc., just as the South had always feared.)

Vicksburg, Ms.: farms were stripped bare, houses burned, the objective: to totally destroy the Southern economy and starve out the population as much as possible. Sherman wrote of "absolutely stripping" the land of all crops and even houses. The city was so heavily bombed that residents resorted to living in caves and eating rats, dogs, and mules.

Sherman always blamed Southern citizens for their fate and took no responsibility for the damage and death to citizens caused by his army. If they hadn't resisted the Lincoln administration he'd argue, they wouldn't have found themselves in such a predicament. He also rationalized the pillaging, plundering, and destroying of cities with socialistic rhetoric, such as "a woman who has fifty loads of fine furniture deserves to lose it." (Ibid., p.110)

Jackson, Ms: spring of '63, Sherman ordered the systematic bombardment of the town every five minutes, day and night. Similar bombardment occurred in other Southern cities under Sherman's orders as well as other Federal generals.

After Jackson was all but demolished, Sherman's soldiers entered the town :
"...the soldiery proceeded to sack the town completely. Pianos and articles of Furniture were dragged into the streets and demolished. The aroused soldiers entered residences, appropriating whatever appeared to be of value...those articles which they could not carry they broke....They thrust their bayonets into pictures and knocked out windows and even removed doors from their hinges." (Ibid. p.96)

Here are a few more adventures of "Billy T. and the Boys":

I need not say anything further about *******n, Ms.' fate other than to quote the end of Sherman's own statement: "Meredian....no longer exists."

Slaves suffered as much as anyone else at the hands of Sherman's army. They were frequently threatened with death if they did not reveal to the soldiers where the plantation owners' valuables were. A typical practice was to put a hangman's noose around the slave's neck and threaten to hang him unless he "confessed". In one instance, "a large group of soldiers were lounging about a railway station when a black man walked past them. One of the soldiers snatched the man's hat, whereupon he tried to take it back. Instantly, the nearest soldiers attacked the black man, many others join broke....They thrust their bayonets into pictures and knocked out windows and even removed doors from their hinges." (Ibid. p.96)

Here are a few more adventures of "Billy T. and the Boys":

I need not say anything further about *******n, Ms.' fate other than to quote the end of Sherman's own statement: "Meredian....no longer exists."

Slaves suffered as much as anyone else at the hands of Sherman's army. They were frequently threatened with death if they did not reveal to the soldiers where the plantation owners' valuables were. A typical practice was to put a hangman's noose around the slave's neck and threaten to hang him unless he "confessed". In one instance, "a large group of soldiers were lounging about a railway station when a black man walked past them. One of the soldiers snatched the man's hat, whereupon he tried to take it back. Instantly, the nearest soldiers attacked the black man, many others joined in, and by the time officers could intervene the black man had received a fatal beating." (Michael Fellman, ed., Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 280.)

One of Sherman's own soldiers wrote in his diary, "Never before have I witnessed so much wanton destruction as on this march. The soldiers are perfectly abandoned." Captain Poe described the March to the Sea as an orgy of "robbery and plundering" and prayed to God that "it may never be my duty to see the like again." (Lee Kennett, Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman's Campaign (New York: Harper-Collins, 1995) p. 277.

At least two thirds of Columbia was burned to the ground. In his typical fashion, "Billy T." blamed the Confederates "for starting the fire and....God for enlarging it."
"God Almighty started wind sufficient to carry that [burning] cotton wherever He would," Sherman announced. (Interestingly, the winds somehow passed over the French Consulate's house and the house that was used as a Federal military headquarters building.) At times Sherman blamed Confederate General Wade Hampton, a native of Columbia, for the improbable act of setting fire to his own hometown. In later years Sherman would admit in his memoirs that he publicly blamed General Hampton in an attempt to ruin his reputation among his own people during the war. In his memoirs he boasted that he not Hampton had "utterly ruined Columbia".

"About three miles from Sparta we struck the "Burnt Country," as it is well named by the natives, and then I could better understand the wrath and desperation of these poor people. There was hardly a fence left standing all the way from Sparta to Gordon. The fields were trampled down and the road was lined with the carcasses of horses, hogs, and cattle that the invaders, unable either to consume or to carry away with them, had wantonly shot down to starve out the people and prevent them from making their crops. The stench in some places was unbearable....The dwellings that were standing all showed signs of pillage, and on every plantation we saw the charred remains of the [cotton] gin house and packing screw, where here and there lone chimney stacks, "Sherman's Sentinels," told of homes laid in ashes." (Michael Fellman, ed., Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman (New York: Penguin Books, 2000) p. 310-311.) Note to a previous poster, yes we do read authors other than Southern or Southron, including this one which you suggested. I believe this author even attests to some of the shenanigans of "Billy T. and the Boys".

Finally there are the heart-wrenching letters that are left to the ages. Letters tell of the feelings of husbands and wives separated but still thinking of one another's pains in these times. B.F.R. Jeffares wrote home from Virginia in December 1864. Worse was knowing that his native Georgia was largely occupied now by the advance of General Sherman's army, that Atlanta had fallen and Savannah was about to be taken. "You cant immaggin how bad it makes me want to see you all when I hear what a condition you are all left in, in that country it seems to me that it is more than I can bear to stay away from & that Dear & sweet child, oh if I could just see you with the natural eye as plain as I imagined I saw you in my sleep last night I thought I had you embraced in my arms but it turned out to be only a Dream when I awoke up I was crying." (Look Away!, William C. Davis, Free Press, p. 220)

There were innumerable cases of soldiers on the front learning that a letter had arrived, and standing up and running heedless of enemy fire. "I got out of the Ditch and ran threw the whistles of minnys and the bursting of Shells to get my letter," David Denney told his wife from the lines around Atlanta. (Ibid.)

When invading Yankees finally took a community, the women left behind suffered terrible emotional distress. "I suffered too much, was too crazed," said Flora George when Macon, Georgia, fell in April 1865. "I have no words to tell you how utterly wreched and broken my heart is." The men who were there, too, whether those had been too old for the army or those who were furloughed homesick or discharged for disability, suffered the same. Flora's husband, Parker, was destitute, desperate to find employment, and yet spent by the war. She found him "so much changed the end is so bitter for him." (Ibid.)

March 27, 1865, after his March to (and from) the Sea was completed, Sherman met with Grant and Lincoln at City Point, on the James River, where he entertained them with his exploits. General Sherman wrote in his personal memoirs that Lincoln wanted to know all about his marches, particularly enjoying the stories about the bummers (as looters were called) and their foraging activities. Sherman kept his word to Lincoln, he did indeed "make Georgia howl" with his March to the sea.

[johan_steele]

Yes, I'm wearing the funny looking Mod Hat.

OK All, I have been on the road for the last two weeks and only loosley followed this thread, there has been a couple of complaints to me about this and another thread. I wish to re-iterate that this board is intended to educate and to learn. Lets keep name calling, flame baiting and anything inflamatory off the site. There is no need to get personal, when we post opinion it is just that and when we post fact we should be able to verify it w/ solid sources upon request. We can debate civily here, there is no need to let anything get out of hand or personal.

I want to encourage all who post here to post their opinions and expect to read others, even if we fail to agree w/ them we can understand where the other opinion comes from. Understanding an opposing view is often more important than agreeing w/ it.

Thea, I want to extend a thank you for putting the thread back on track, it is much appreciated. Let's try to stay on point. Some of us believe Sherman was a good soldier and others disagree. Lets have a good clean discussion as to why each opinion is valid.

THe FAQ section is up w/ a thread entitled Etiquette for any who may need to check the rules for posting here. That thread also explains some of the no-no's.

Thank you All, North and South.

Mod hat comes off...

[30th_il]

Thank-you Johan Steele. At first this was an interesing thread but it became too much a..."oh yeah, well you side did...(fill in the blank)" and I became disgusted. I enjoy a discussion that expands the mind and this thread seems to have lost it's mindset for that. Sherman...like him or not, was a general to be considered during this engagement as a major factor/contributor to the end of this ordeal; feelings aside, the end was accomplished via his determination...and for the south..explotation. The month of March (to the sea) has ended, let us move on to other situations of this conflict.

[unionblue]

From the book, Marching Through Georgia, by Lee Kennett:

"In 1919 a writer named Stephen Graham followed the route of Sherman's army, talking to the inhabitants as he did so. He found Atlanta a humming metropolis awash in Ford Runabouts; the people were cordial enough but clearly busy with other things: "The firing of Atlanta is forgotten," he concluded, "and the pitful exodus of its humiliated people." The road south, the one Sherman had taken, was now lined with "vaudeville sheds, fruit-stalls, and booths of quack doctors and magic healers"; not until Graham approached Covington did he see some vestige of the Georgia of 1864. The Georgians he accosted were "suprisingly friendly" and struck by the fact that he was not selling anything, but simply following the route of Sherman's march. "They said they knew nothing about it themselves, and then took me to the old folk who remembered." One old Georgian assured Graham that during the war "the colored people" remained faithful to their masters, while another told him it was Sherman who set the blacks against the whites. He found an old black man who remembered "the Jubilation" the night the bluecoats appeared, and he found a white Georgian who described in great detail the ransacking of his parents' home, a scene he had witnessed as a small boy. The old man grew more and more angry as he recounted the Yankees' profanations. He told Graham: "I know Sherman is in hell." But this anger was exceptional; generally Graham found "asurprising absence of bitterness." Among the old, memories had dimmed and fact and fable were now sometimes hopelessly mixed, and they said by way of apology: "it's a long, long time ago now."

"Graham's reportage was more about the Georgia of 1919 than the Georgia of 1864, though he probably didn't intend it that way. It was just that he found so few traces of that earlier time. The land bore few marks of the great struggle that had ravaged the state from Ringgold to Savannah, and the generation that had lived through and remembered the year that Sherman came was largely gone."

I also managed to come across some American Economic History that included:

The Economic Costs of the Civil War.

A. Dimensions of the War

1. Laregest Land Armies assembled in Human history--by 1863 the North had 1,000,000 men under arms and the South 650,000.
2. Battles involving over 100,000 men were commonplace and some reached 200,000.
3. In one day, nearly 5,000 men were killed at Antietam and 20,000 wounded. It is still the most American soldiers killed in one day.
4. Total Dead: 360,000 North + 258,000 South = 618,000 with at least 500,000 wounded.

B. Direct Costs of the War for North & South

1. Direct Cost = All War Spending by Government + Destroyed Physical Capital + Destroyed Human Capital.
2. Summary of Direct Costs (From Goldin and Lewis)

NORTH
Government- 2,292
Draft - 11(162,000 men)
Physical Capital Destruction - na
Human Capital
Destruction: Killed 955
Wounded 365
Risk Premiums -256
TOTAL $3.367b

SOUTH
Government 1,011
Draft 20(3000,000 men)
Physical Capital Destruction 1,487
Human Capital
Destruction: Killed 684
Wounded 261
Risk Premiums -178
TOTAL $3.285b

GRAND TOTAL $6,652,000,000

3. Magnitude of Direct Costs: 4 times all government expenditures, 1789 to 1860; 17 times 1860 export earnings; could have purchased all the Slaves at prevailing market prices, given each family 40 acres and a mule, and still have $3.5 billion left over.

C. Indirect Costs: Hypothetical (consumption if no War) versus actual consumption over time discounted by prevailing interest rate. This shows that the costs for the North were $5.2b and the South $9.5b for a total of $14.7b.

D. How was the War Paid For

1. Confiscation - Mostly by Southern Military.
2. Direct Taxation.

a. Tax Present Population Directly - Income taxes, excise taxes, tariffs in the North, about 20% of the cost of War was paid through direct taxes; about 12% in the South.
b. Tax Future Population - Bonds and Greenbacks in the North, about $2.7b in interest bearing bonds were issued along with $450m in non-interest bearing notes--the Greenbacks. In the South, about $2b in bonds were issued--these were repudiated in the 14th Amendment.

3. Tax Present Population Indirectly--Inflation. In the North the money supply went from $442m in 1860 to $1,180m in 1865 but inflation was less than the increase in the money supply (approximately 70%). In the South there was hyper-inflation. Confederate money was practically worthless.

4. Paying off the Debt: After the war the North left in place the very high tariffs passed during the war. The government ran surpluses nearly every year into the 1890s and the debt quickly declined. Indeed, there were political problems with calling in the Greenbacks too fast because there was a persistent deflation from the end of the War into the mid-1890s and many favored inflation.

E. Why Didn't the South Recover From the Civil War

a. The conventional wisdom was that the South was devastated by the War--the great loss of human life, livestock, and physical destruction. But the South was not depopulated--the skills and knowledge embodied in the survivors should have been sufficient (witness West Germany 1946-1954!).
b. SOUTHERN RAILROADS WERE REBUILT BY 1867.
c. SOUTHERN MANUFACTURING WAS REBUILT BY 1870.

2. Agriculture

a. The agricultural output of the South was significantly lower after the War. About 97% of crop acreage in the South was devoted to cotton, corn, oats, sugar, and wheat. Using a per-capita crop index devised by Ransom and Sutch where 100 = 1859, the index stood at 39.7 in 1866, 44 in 1868, 64 in 1870, 70 in 1880, and 75 in 1900.
b. Why this decline in agricultural output?

i. The price of Cotton was high right after the war but then began to decline. However, it did not fall low enough to explain the decline in output.
ii. The key is the fall in the per acre output of Cotton.

3. The Effect of Emancipation of the Slaves

a. The amount of labor offered by each freedman and his family fell significantly after the war. Instead of being "driven," the freed slaves behaved rationally and consumed more leisure time.
b. Given the limited technology, it was not easy to substitute capital for labor in the production of Cotton. Before the war, it is clear that the slaves were worked nearly to the limit of their economic capacity.
c. This drop in labor input clearly accounts for part of the decline in per capita crop output after the war.

4. The Effect of Disease--Especially Hookworm

a. Hookworm spread during the Civil War because the assembling of large armies mixed heretofore isolated (and non-infected) men with infected men thereby spreading the disease. Sanitation was very poor in the camps. The uneducated rural men relieved themselves wherever and whenever they felt the need as this was common practice in the rural South.
b. In addition, there was a chronic and serious shortage of shoes throughout the Southern armies meaning many of the soldiers went barefoot. Being barefoot, they easily fell victim to hookworm infection.
c. Hookworm produces an apathetic, "lazy" disposition in victims. Infected children do poorly on standard intelligence tests and may even appear to be mentally retarded. Hookworm causes people to be thinner and shorter.
d. It is quite probable that Hookworm infection was as important as Emancipation in causing the decline in per-capita crop output.

F. The South as a Third-World Country

1. In response to the drop in labor input after the war, the Sharecropping system arose. The plantations were split into smaller farms. The standard split was 50-50 of the crop. The owner supplied the farm, buildings, equipment, seed, and provisions, and the sharecropper furnished the labor.

2. It was a poverty system very similar (but not exact) to the relationship between a slum-lord and an apartment tenant.

3. The rapid development of the Railroads after the war, the sharecropping system, and the collapse of the Southern Banks and financial system, resulted in the "atomization" of the cotton crop.

4. This "atomization" also encouraged the development of the "country store" system which the sharecroppers relied upon. These stores extended credit at usurious rates and only reinforced the prevailing poverty.

5. The tremendous economic expansion that occurred from 1865-1914 which saw a tripling of per-capital real income in the US largely bypassed the South.

Copyright@1997 KPoole@uh.eduKeith T. Poole

So here we seem to have two sources that claim the South was not as devestated as some of us might be led to believe. The idea that production in the South went down primarily due to the loss of slavery and the ability to work them to their full capacity seems to indicate one area of possible economic downturn, but the idea that the railroads and industry were pretty much repaired and up and running seems to run counter to the idea that the South took almost a century to recover from its war years.

And then, when you throw in the environmental study by the Univ. of Georgia, that Sherman's march did no long-term harm to that region of Georgia, maybe that's why I have a hard time going with the idea that Georgia, or any other Southern state is any better or any worse off than any other state in the Union at the present time.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[yankeewoman]

Unionblue,

Sherman DID make Georgia famous.

[thea_447]

Across Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia - the states most hurt - one writer told of "blackened chimneys" standing guard above charred rafters where once had stood a mansion, a substantial farm house, a trim town house. A good bit of Jackson, Charleston, Mobile, Richmond, and Savannah, and many smaller communities had been burned. Atlanta and Columbia lay in ashes. A correspondent of the New York Herald who was with Sherman in Atlanta wrote:

"On Sunday night a kind of long streak of light, like an aurora, marked the line of march and the burning stores, depots, and bridges, in the train of the army...everything in the way of destruction was now considered legalized...ruffians ran with brands, to fire churches, hotels, depots, and stores, pillaging as they went. "The streets" were soon in one fierce sheet of flame, houses were falling on all sides, and fiery flakes of cinders were whirled about. Men punged into the houses, broke windows and doors with their muskets, dragging out armfuls of clothes, dressing themselves with some, and flinging the rest into the fire. Occasionally shells exploded, excited men rushed through the choking atmosphere to escape the ruin. At a distance the burning city seemed overshadowed by a cloud of black smoke. The sun looked like a blood-red ball of fire; and the air for miles around, felt oppressive and intolerable. The lyre of the South was laid in ashes, and the "Gate City" was a thing of the past. (David P. Conyngham, Sherman's March Through the South, (New York, 1865), pp. 236-238, 243-269.

This same correspondent reported that wherever the Union armies had passed, the homes of the well-to-do and the middle classes were left almost bare of silver, paintings, books, and even clothing-anything of value or any trifle that attracted the pillager's eye. Trees, fences, and shrubbery were felled or uprooted. Not enough ginhouses were left standing to accommodate even the small crop of 1865. Men in creaking wagons drove their gaunt mules for miles to find fords across bridgeless rivers.

Sherman described conditions two years after his march: "Look to the South, and you who went with me through that land can best say if they too have not been fearfully punished. Mourning in every household, desolation written in broad characteristics across the whole face of this country, cities in ashes and fields laid waste, their commerce gone, their system of labor annihilated and destroyed. Ruin, poverty, and distress everywhere, and now pestilence adding the very cap-sheaf to their stack of miseries; her proud men begging for pardon and appealing for permission to raise food for their children; her five million of slaves free and their value lost to their former owners forever." (Quoted in Hodding Carter, The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction, 1865-1890 (New York, 1959), p.33.)

Sherman knew what he was talking about, for the New York newspaperman who was with him on his march to the sea told of the vandalism that had been openly encouraged and seldom punished. On one occasion the correspondent reported that he:

....."came up to a retired plantation house, just set on fire. The soldiers were rushing off on every side with their pillage. An old lady and her two grandchildren were in the yard alarmed and helpless. The flames and smoke were shooting through the windows. The old lady rushed from one to another beseeching them at least to save her furniture. They only enjoyed the whole thing, including her distress...The scenes I witnessed in Columbia--scenes that would have driven Alaric the Goth into frenzied ecstasies, had he witnessed them --made me ponder a little on the horrors of war. (D.P. Conyngham, op.cit., pp. 313,335.)

Not only this but there were no funds with which to rebuild or restore the damage. One editor described the situation:

"It is difficult, for those who are away to understand the utter pecuniary prostration in which the war has left this section of the country. It is as if at a single word and in a single moment the issues of every state and national bank and of the government should prove without value or effect, and the people instead of currency that they had as representative of toil and years of labor and hard-earned competency had only pieces of waste-paper." (Francis B. Simkins and Robert H. Woody, South Carolina
During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1932), p. 11.)

All that was left of wealth in the country was mere lands. Even these had suffered. In a region of heavy concentrated rainfall, erosion and harmful micro-organisms had always been a problem. The end of war found galls and gullies on every side, and wide acres abandoned to sorrel and sedge. It is estimated that from a third to a fourth of all the horses, mules, and hogs had vanished. In places, if a plow was to be used, men and women would have to drag it through the fields. Farm machinery was worn out. Even shovels, spades, and hoes were lacking. Actual starvation threatened.

Human losses were far more serious. Manpower was heavily depleted. The population was now around five million, of whom one million had been in the armies. Many of these were crippled and maimed, more a burden than an asset. More than a quarter of a million had died in the war, so that from a fourth tmic Sans MS">All that was left of wealth in the country was mere lands. Even these had suffered. In a region of heavy concentrated rainfall, erosion and harmful micro-organisms had always been a problem. The end of war found galls and gullies on every side, and wide acres abandoned to sorrel and sedge. It is estimated that from a third to a fourth of all the horses, mules, and hogs had vanished. In places, if a plow was to be used, men and women would have to drag it through the fields. Farm machinery was worn out. Even shovels, spades, and hoes were lacking. Actual starvation threatened.

Human losses were far more serious. Manpower was heavily depleted. The population was now around five million, of whom one million had been in the armies. Many of these were crippled and maimed, more a burden than an asset. More than a quarter of a million had died in the war, so that from a fourth to a third of the able-bodied white men were gone. In South Carolina, of some 44,046 arms-bearing population, 44,000 had volunteered, and in all some 71,000 men had seen service. Of these, nearly 13,000 (23 percent) had been killed. Of Alabama's 126,587 white men between the ages of 15 and 20, over 122,000 had ultimately been in the army and over 35,000 were lost in the war.

The section had been bled white, and those lost were its best- young men who would leave no descendents. Never before or since in modern times has any people suffered such proportionately high casualties. To the South's 258,000 dead must be added at least 100,000 who were wounded, with an additional 60,000 taken prisoners. When an already bankrupt people were forced to spend as much as a fifth of their TOTAL revenue to buy artificial arms and legs for their veterans and even more for the support of their widos and orphans, one can begin to realize something of the human wreckage.

The South of 1865 was too busy trying to just survive to think about politics or anything to do with reconstruction.

"The North itself was so preoccupied with the issue of deciding a Reconstruction policy that everything Southern was distorted. Purveyors of Southern news to the North were curious as to what the South thought, especially about the negro and the political situation. They pried into the minds that would never otherwise have expressed opinions, and opinions were relayed North to be printed in newspapers, reports, and books." (The Road to Reunion, Paul H. Buck, (Boston) pp. 36-37)

With the war over, Southerners were now a badly beaten and disorganized body of fellow Americans. Lincoln knew that they could not immediately resume their place in the Union. Thaddeus Stevens viewed the South as conquered territory and wanted it treated as such, while Charles Sumner insisted that the states had committed suicide. Each demanded both punishment and social reconstruction.

The North came out of the war with most of its economic demands more than realized--tariffs, homesteds, internal improvements, and finances beyond all expectations. The war had settled these matters and opened the way for whatever else might be asked. The North had come out of the war vastly stronger along all lines than when it began. As Eric F. Goldman observed:

"Except in the battered South everybody and everything seemed on the move. The drain of the Civil War was over, the backward looking planters were crushed. The industrial Revolution, wheeled ahead decades by five years of war, was creating new careers by the thousands, turning thistle-patches into whistle-stops, towns into cities, and cities into metropolitan centers. In the East a rampant prosperity touched every venture with the "everything-is-possible." In the West, the tide of emigration swept out in proportions unequaled in man's restless history. West and East, virtually every index of activity--the number of steel ingots produced, the number of trees felled, the immigrants arriving for a farm, the gentlemen leaving for a spin around Europe, the churches built--almost any statistics showed a wild surge upward." (Eric F. Goldman, Rendevous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform (New York, 1952) p.3)

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"A British visitor who came a few months after Appomattox could not decide whether he should commiserate with Atlantans over what had happened to their town or congratulate them on its revival; he found hardships enough--the only coffee was made from rye and it had to be drunk black because "Sherman had taken all the cows"--but frontage on Peachtree Street was selling for forty dollars a foot and mounting steadily in price. This resurrection of Atlanta found formal expression in 1887, when the city dropped the locomotive from its seal, replacing it with a phoenix and the motto Resurgens. A former Union officer, visiting the city about that same time, tried to locate the Howard House, or at least its site, for he had seen Sherman there the day of the Battle of Atlanta. He had no luck, for "the new Atlanta had never heard of it."

"As time passed Georgians increasingly attributed the catastrophe that had struck them to a single man, perhaps because it was easier to focus blame on Sherman than on the faceless mass he led into their state. Here again we enter the world of myth. In North Georgia, for example, it was common knowledge that the general had issued an order (which has not been found) to have a railway car full of prominent citizens or Confederate prisoners placed ahead of the locomotive whenever torpedoes were suspected on the track ahead.

Then there was the letter, supposedly found in Sherman's wake, in which a Union officer reported he himself had collected about a quart of jewelry on the march; the commanding general's share made him a rich man: "General Sherman has silver and gold enough to start a bank." In South Georgia the legend lingered that Sherman collected white horses as he came through and eventually had five hundred. (Of this charge too the general seems to have been innocent. "I could collect plenty of trophies," he wrote Ellen in March 1865, "but have always refrained and think it best I should.") The geographer who studied Sherman's march concluded: "if Sherman spent the night in as many places as is claimed, it would have taken close to a year to make the trip to Savannah."

"By the time Sherman died Georgians had sufficiently softened their opinion to acknowledge that he was a highly competent general, even if a hard one. The obituary in the Americus Daily Times said: "he never yielded to sentiment but spread fire and devastation on all hands," But setting aside the rancorous felings he had engendered, one would have to concede that "he was the victorious general who really subdued the Confederacy. By his devastations in Georgia the morale of Lee's army was so reduced and his ranks so thinned that Grant's success was possible, so that at last Sherman and not Grant was entitled to the credit of Appomattox."

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"Mobile, ......., and many smaller communities had been burned."
The 'burning' of Mobile was caused, not by a wanton burning of a southern town, but by mishandling of either shells or gunpowder at a warehouse, causing the 30 tons of gunpowder to explode. The explosion caused the distruction of 8 or 9 blocks of the city (warehouse section), and of the block the warehouse was located, not even a whole brick was left. More damage was caused in the rest of the city from the exploding shells, which had been tossed around the remainder of the town.
By sheer luck, only a few civilians and solders were killed in the accident.
Since the town was being occupied by Union troops, and was going to be for at least a short time more, its extremely improbable that the explosion was intentional.
Chuck in Il.