Influence of Native American Warfare on Cavalry Tactics

[trice]

Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike

...By the end of the war Sherman would have his men rape, plunder, burn and kill civilian populations and their homes. Many of the same people who think the "South asked for it", think those tactics were "genocidal" when used against the Indians after the war.
...

I have never seen any verifiable case of Sherman doing this. Certainly his men plundered and burned on the march through Georgia and the Carolinas. Rape and murder is another matter, and incidences of that appear to have been very low for a nineteenth century army marching through hostile territory. Many Southerners regarded a visitation from the "friendly" cavalry of Confederate Joe Wheeler as being at least as bad as a visit from Sherman's Bummers in late 1864 and 1865.

What was visited on the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Apache and many other tribes was far harsher than anything done to the Confederacy by Sherman's men.

Tim

[DJ Psychomike]

After Sherman in the Civil War the military turned to total war. This would lead to the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of women by Russians attacking Germany, the destruction of whole cities.

Today those tactics have been removed with "targetted bombing", avoiding civilian areas the order of the day.

Sherman is credited with this theory of warfare, check out this article about rape in warfare:

The inherent violence and terror of rape finds its most barbaric realization during war, especially under conditions of modern total war. The Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, pioneered total war during his infamous "march to the sea" in 1864. His campaign effectively destroyed his enemy in both physical and spiritual senses; it ended America's most consequential military engagement.
Sherman believed that war should be total, that it should be extended from a conflict between recognized combatants to a conflict involving an enemy's entire society, including its natural resources, farming and food supply, utilities and other aspects of civilian life.
This shift in military strategy only got worse during the 20th century. The first and second World Wars added airplanes and toxic gases and then gas chambers, fire bombings and nuclear weapons to the arsenal of total war. This enhanced weaponry extended Sherman's model of military engagement from the destruction of the civilian infrastructure to the terrorization of the civilian population. And, in the euphemistic language the so distinguished last century's bureaucratic denial, the targeted civilian casualties of total war came to be known as "collateral damage".

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen04042008.html

[DJ Psychomike]

You know, there is only website I know of that deals with rape during the war.
http://hometown.aol.com/cwrapes/page2.htm

[trice]

Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike

After Sherman in the Civil War the military turned to total war. This would lead to the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of women by Russians attacking Germany, the destruction of whole cities.

Today those tactics have been removed with "targetted bombing", avoiding civilian areas the order of the day.

Sherman is credited with this theory of warfare, check out this article about rape in warfare:

The inherent violence and terror of rape finds its most barbaric realization during war, especially under conditions of modern total war. The Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, pioneered total war during his infamous "march to the sea" in 1864. His campaign effectively destroyed his enemy in both physical and spiritual senses; it ended America's most consequential military engagement.
Sherman believed that war should be total, that it should be extended from a conflict between recognized combatants to a conflict involving an enemy's entire society, including its natural resources, farming and food supply, utilities and other aspects of civilian life.
This shift in military strategy only got worse during the 20th century. The first and second World Wars added airplanes and toxic gases and then gas chambers, fire bombings and nuclear weapons to the arsenal of total war. This enhanced weaponry extended Sherman's model of military engagement from the destruction of the civilian infrastructure to the terrorization of the civilian population. And, in the euphemistic language the so distinguished last century's bureaucratic denial, the targeted civilian casualties of total war came to be known as "collateral damage".

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen04042008.html

This has all been very much overdone in the years since the Civil War. Nothing that Sherman did was particularly unique in the annals of warfare other than his concentration on that to the exclusion or minimalization of other aspects.

If you look at this in perspective, Sherman's men were comparatively mild in their treatment of the civilian population. Most of what they did would be considered routine in that day, and many instances can be found of other nations doing things far worse.

For example, Napoleon's war in Spain (1808-1814) makes the March to the Sea look like a picnic. The French suppression of the rebellion in the Tyrol (1805, and again in 1809) was far bloodier and more horrific than anything Sherman's men did. Napoleon himself ordered the killing of Turkish POWs during the butchery at Jaffa in 1799. Plundering and rape by Prussian soldiers was considered even worse than that of the Cossacks during the Napoleonic Wars. Wellington's British troops spent three days in an orgy of drunken destruction at Badajoz in 1812 (technically, a city of their allies). In 1848, an Austrian general suppressing revolution had a convent of Catholic nuns stripped and whipped in order to get information as he was passing through. The behavior of US troops in Mexico is fairly barbaric as well. Such events were not the norm, exactly, but they were common enough.

Sherman's troops concentrated on the destruction of property. Incidents of violence against civilians were comparatively rare. (I understand they happened; they are just are fairly infrequent when compared to other situations in the same century, before and after the Civil War.)

Tim

[johan_steele]

Anyone who really believes Sherman began the idea of total war is woefully ignorant of history. From the Romans to Napoleon warfare has never been pleasant and what Shermans boys did across the Georgia & SC pales to what the French did in Spain less than fifty years prior. There aare other ample examples as well. Shermans men don't hold a candle to the pure evil of others and comparing them to the Russians in East Prussia is pure carefully calculated insult.

[larry_cockerham]

In the 1978 MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA, Arno Press, Rufus Meade of Connecticut is quoted:

" We had a glorious old tramp right through the heart of the state, rioted and feasted on the country, destroyed all the RR, in short found a rich and overflowing country filled with cattle, hogs, sheep & fowls, corn sweet potatoes & syrup, but left a barren waste for miles on either side of the road, burnt millions of dollars worth of property, wasted & destroyed all the eatables we couldn't carry off and brought the war to the doors of Georgians so effectively, I guess they will long remember the Yankees. I enjoyed it all the time we had pleasant weather & good roads, & easy times generally."

'Guess the evaluation of that episode depended somewhat on one's interest and point of view.

[DJ Psychomike]

The idea of targeting the families and homes of civilians as a practice of war is attributed to Sherman. No question rape and pillage had existed before, but this was a thought out strategy which would have repurcussions for decades to come.

The idea that once a soldier discovered his home had been destroyed would cause him to leave the battles and return home was true. Many soldiers deserted as tales filtered to the battlefield. Decades later in New Orleans during Katrina, policemen would flee areas getting out of control to check on their family.

This theory would lead to the carpet bombing of World War 2, the napalming of Japanese cities, the rape of women in German camps by their Russian liberators, the body counts of Vietnam, total war as a tactic and not just a consequence of troops running wild, because of Sherman.

Today we avoid terms like carpet bombing. We go out of way to "target" what we hit. It is also much cheaper than rebuilding entire cities at war's end.

In the end, it was discovered from the UK to Germany, the bombing had an odd unifying effect on the civilian population. Total war might cause desertions, but it never did break the morale of the people being bombed.

Next time you watch Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND keep in mind you are watching the story of a headstrong woman, who survived rape, having her home and city burned to the ground, loss of loved ones- and whose words "Tomorrow is another day" had a deep meaning for women whose mothers had lived during the war.

Today in Ireland the economy is actually ahead of ours since the fighting stopped. Yet an odd thing has come with peace. The suicide rate continues to climb. The bombings and battles with the Men of Orange and Green gave people a common reason to live. Look at how we rallied for two years after 911. Attacking civilians does not work.

[johan_steele]

Gone w/ the Wind as any kind of historical document is a joke; kind of like watching Birth of a Nation for... never mind.

Sherman was not the first, not the most efficient and certainly not the most brutal by any stretch of the imagination. laming Sherman, and thus the US, for the "escalation" of war against civilians is pure undeducated, unresearched anti US propoganda.

Frankly I would drop a list of titles a mile long that would refute such crock if I felt it would have an effect. Maybe I'm just getting old arguing w/ the same arguments taken up by new people.

The number of rapes and civilian murders in SC & Georgia were miniscule. I suppose we'll see the web site citation "proving" a million rapes in Georgia alone next.

As an aside, total bombing destroyed the war making capability of both Japan and Germany. Was it nice? No, did the US invent it, no. Was the US the first to do it? No. Anyone capable of reading military history can figure that out w/out blaming the US for everything under the sun.

[DJ Psychomike]

I certainly don't blame the United States, but I dismiss as propaganda popular history.

The way we were taught history was like this: George Washington got into a pitched battle with Indians who had been ordered to kill Washington. Years later, an Indian Chief sought him out, and told him he'd fired at him 18 times, not one bullet hit Washington so he ordered his men not to kill Washington, as the Great Spirit protected him. This was in school history books up until the early 1980's. This is absurd.

The bombings of the cities had no effect on the morale of the citizens or the outcome of war in the Second World War. I would also include Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that statement.

GONE WITH THE WIND was the Southern hallucination for the fact so many died for nothing in the end. Yet there are truisms in it that resonated with the audience, the woman who would not give in to events for example.

After all, slaves often fought alongside the lone women because they knew the supplies would be stripped bare and all left hungry. They did not rebel against the women left in charge, even as the Union troops approached.

When the British first began bombing German cities Hitler thought he had over-estimated the British. He thought they were missing all the targets. After a few weeks of this, his military let him know it was a deliberate strategy, and Hitler changed his tactics, too.

Sherman brought forth hell to people, that in our tradition, had spared cities in our battles. It bankrupted the South, but it did not break the Southern morale.

[M E Wolf]

Dear DJ_Psychomike;

War brings the worst of the already bad person and brings the best out of good people. Each person is possessed by good and evil; to which it is an individual endeavor to 'rule' over their spirit of intent.

There is Sherman but, there was Stonewall Jackson's attitude which seems identical --to which utter destruction was the goal. "The Black Flag."

There were many crimes against human kind, soldier, officer, human and against animals, if you want to get nit picky--animal cruelty and war that has mass slaughter of human life.

This is nothing new, it has happened before Christ's lifetime and will only end when Earth is a cinder.

America is no angel -- however, there are worse out and about.

There will be an endless circle in this sort of situations. You curb those who are harmful to society and or in command with no restraint--

If General Grant didn't curb General Sherman; Sherman would have slaughtered what was left of General Lee's army. Sherman didn't think about those still out west. It is by timing--perhaps the Devine--or just coincidence; that two civil soldiers that knew it was time to quit and casualties would serve no purpose. Grant and Lee did what was correct, it was painful but--it was the right thing to do. The lesson is;
that life is not about winning or loosing. It is doing what is 'right.' It isn't about being popular. It isn't about being politically correct. It is about being moral and ethical; and be able to give as much respect and dignity as one 'expects' and or 'demands.'

There is no amount of payment any of us can make for those who suffered through the Civil War on American soil. However, unlike some other Civil Wars. The Union and Confederates could look each in the other's eyes and knew that respect was earned-- They had the right to their dignity.

No matter what 'leaders' think--it is the mass population that ultimately has the power. Hurt people (civilians) and they have a habit of giving a swift kick in the cabboose when all is said and done.

As Mr. Foote said -- Civil War is the most savage. I'm just grateful that when our American Civil War finally ended-- there was a more peaceful transition...it did cost though. President Lincoln for one, others who perished thinking they had enough breath left in the Western theaters of War. However, having seven Presidents after Lincoln's death who served in various ranks in the Union Army--kept Lincoln's prayer for a united America alive and did their best however, as with any Government-corruption took it's toll also. Just as it took it's toll during the Civil War.

Yes, our American Civil War changed how wars were conducted ever since. Dr. Gatling inventing the Gatling gun during the Civil War, Professor Lowe's hot air balloon, the humble beginnings of air wars. The railroad system and so many different things. War will always be with us, somewhere--it is our task to make sure it is elsewhere--not here.

Just some thoughts.

Respectfully submitted for consideration,
M. E. Wolf