Sherman Evilizing General Sherman

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Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Feb 20, 2005
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i can understand why the people of the south hated Sherman as he brought "hard war" to the south. on the other hand he got blamed for a lot of things he didn't do. i saw an interview with Shelby Foote, and he said people would say Sheman was a devil, he burnt down my great great granfathers farm, and after research Sherman was no place near there. love him or hate him he was a great general in american history.
 
All that in that blog may be true. However Sherman did not skip through Georgia and toss daisies. The author seems to try to paint him in a saintly light as he accuses other of doing with Southern generals. It will be hard to convince me that the civilians in his army's path would have ever forgiven him.
 
Anything Sherman makes interesting reading. He is either appreciated or reviled ... sometimes both. But he did make Georgia howl and probably shortened the war, which was everyone's goal.
 
I know little about W.T. Sherman, the man. What I know of him as a military commander is that he appeared to apply the concept of "total war" rather effectively. That is, he made little differentiation between military and civilian targets. They were all part of the same effort, the same machine that opposed him and his objective: To end the war.

Sherman wasn't content to fight a gentlemen's war where the combatants put away their arms when not on the field of battle. If the Union was going to defeat the Confederacy, it had to crush it, and not merely bruise it. The U.S. Navy was doing its part through the Anaconda Plan. Sherman and Grant were given the task of fulfilling the army's responsibility to see an end to the war as soon and as surely as possible.

Sherman is credited with having said, "The crueler it (war) is, the sooner it will be over."

He seemed to have a more realistic grasp of the nature of war, than the more naive and cavalier ideals held by so many that yearned to "see the elephant." To Sherman, seeing the elephant was akin to getting stomped by it. He saw war's ugly reality, and he frequently referred to it in the most unkind, but truest terms: "War is Hell," among them.

I think Sherman had the right mindset for war. Yes, his tactics were indeed brutal toward the Confederacy. He was also coldly cruel and brutal toward the American Indian tribes during the Indian Wars. But his strategies against his foes worked. Wars ended, the killing and the bloodshed stopped sooner rather than later. Later U.S. military commanders like Douglas MacArthur and George Patton possessed a similar regard for war. It was something needed to end something else. A means to an end. A bit Machiavellian, but effective nonetheless.

For this reason, I place W.T. Sherman highly among the USA's most effective and successful military commanders.

I'd rather have a Sherman in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else our forces are called to fight, than a dozen General Lees if it meant ending the conflict sooner rather than later.
 
Anything Sherman makes interesting reading. He is either appreciated or reviled ... sometimes both. But he did make Georgia howl and probably shortened the war, which was everyone's goal.

In the case of the Confederates I guess we could file that under, "be careful what you wish for."

:D

I think Mark Grimsley did a pretty fair job on Sherman in his book "The hard hand of war." I just finished reading "Sherman's march in myth and memory" that was pretty good.
 
It was all pretty grim, but Sherman, Jackson and Grant held to the truism that "gentlemen don't fight." Knock him down and stomp him. Bite his ear off. Only one gets up.
 
That brings up something I've pondered a time or two - Davis could never quite understand that neither Sherman or Grant operated with a conventional supply and communications line. He kept going after Grant's logistics line during his Vicksburg campaign - Grant didn't really have one! He was largely living off the countryside. (It was a different situation for Lee in Virginia - he had to stay there and he couldn't live off the land as both armies had picked it clean.) After Holly Springs, Grant realized this was a strategy that could work for him. With his supply depot ashes, he had to see what the local yokels had lying about!
 
That brings up something I've pondered a time or two - Davis could never quite understand that neither Sherman or Grant operated with a conventional supply and communications line. He kept going after Grant's logistics line during his Vicksburg campaign - Grant didn't really have one! He was largely living off the countryside. (It was a different situation for Lee in Virginia - he had to stay there and he couldn't live off the land as both armies had picked it clean.) After Holly Springs, Grant realized this was a strategy that could work for him. With his supply depot ashes, he had to see what the local yokels had lying about!
that is a very good point ,Diane. with guys like nathan bedford forrest around, if you had a supply line or depot he would be after it.
 
In the unintended consequences category, Forrest might have scored a point with Holly Springs. Once that big depot was wiped out, Grant had to figure what else to do. So he told the civilians he'd brought supplies intended for his troops but since their dog ate his lunch, he would have to rely on their hospitality! To his surprise, there was lots. It might even have been the seed of Sherman's march through Georgia idea. He had tried a march to, possibly, Mobile - which would take him through the breadbasket of Mississippi prairies, but Forrest put the kibosh on that! (That was the Meridian campaign.)
 
In the unintended consequences category, Forrest might have scored a point with Holly Springs. Once that big depot was wiped out, Grant had to figure what else to do. So he told the civilians he'd brought supplies intended for his troops but since their dog ate his lunch, he would have to rely on their hospitality! To his surprise, there was lots. It might even have been the seed of Sherman's march through Georgia idea. He had tried a march to, possibly, Mobile - which would take him through the breadbasket of Mississippi prairies, but Forrest put the kibosh on that! (That was the Meridian campaign.)
lol, Grant had to figure what else to do. So he told the civilians he'd brought supplies intended for his troops but since their dog ate his lunch, he would have to rely on their hospitality! in all my reading that is the first time i have heard that quote. thanks so much for that. made my night.
 
Holly Springs crippled Grant's plan to envelop Vicksburg over land. However, living off the land is a misconception. He had a supply line that furnished things he couldn't count on by living off the land. One doesn't get powder and shot by overrunning plantations. Nor salt or flour or coffee for an army. That sort of thing had to come through his pipe line. Yes. He had fresh meat and forage and cornmeal by requisitioning same from the inhabitants, but ...

... a cow, cut up, feeds how many men? Yes, he could feed his men meat, but 70,000 men also need biscuits or hoe-cakes and such that wasn't available to foraging parties There was a supply line; he didn't exactly live off the land.
 
Holly Springs crippled Grant's plan to envelop Vicksburg over land. However, living off the land is a misconception. He had a supply line that furnished things he couldn't count on by living off the land. One doesn't get powder and shot by overrunning plantations. Nor salt or flour or coffee for an army. That sort of thing had to come through his pipe line. Yes. He had fresh meat and forage and cornmeal by requisitioning same from the inhabitants, but ...

... a cow, cut up, feeds how many men? Yes, he could feed his men meat, but 70,000 men also need biscuits or hoe-cakes and such that wasn't available to foraging parties There was a supply line; he didn't exactly live off the land.
you are right , ole. it was grand gulf mississippi. i provide a link.

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/vicksburg/vicksburg-history-articles/vicksburgsupplyhillpg.html
 
I do feel sorry for Sherman. Had it not been for Jeff Davis' Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Uncle Billy might be on the face of Stone Mountain today. Who knew Southerners were so well read?
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There is so much emotion caught up in this issue, to this day, that it often clouds a rationale discussion. I remember when I was going to school, and a woman who was a fifth generation Atlanta (or something like that) came to my apartment and I had a CW book open to a picture of Sherman. From her reaction, you would have sworn I had a manual to satanic cult! She stormed out of my apartment and wouldn't speak to me for a couple of weeks.

I would recommend Joseph Glatthaar's "The March to the Sea and Beyond" for a fairly dispassionate review of the topic. His conclusion is that the the March was far more targeted and strategic than often thought (though he bases his arguments on a somewhat limited dataset of records). His conclusion is that, with the exception of Columbia, S.C., confiscation/destruction was fairly limited to materials truly of war value. Glathaar still concludes that Sherman was the first real example of "total war" and bringing the fight to the enemy homefront, just not the "pirate" that he is so often thought as.
 
All that in that blog may be true. However Sherman did not skip through Georgia and toss daisies. The author seems to try to paint him in a saintly light as he accuses other of doing with Southern generals. It will be hard to convince me that the civilians in his army's path would have ever forgiven him.

I think you need to read it again, because nothing there resembles what you wrote.

" A people brave enough to bury their hatreds in the ruins his hands have made, and wise enough to turn their passion towards recuperation rather than revenge."

This is the point being made: "It would be a stretch to say that Sherman was popular across the South, but it was clear that he was not considered the reviled monster he later was to become in some quarters."
 
What a load of dodo this piece is. I don't revile the man and compared to some who came along later he seems almost benevolent. Sherman was a pretty good general and was more of a thinker than most of the federals stable of stars but he was personally a small, noisy jerky kind of guy. Skittish is the word.
 
That's a good book but I disagree that Sherman waged total war. Caesar waged total war on the Gauls - their country was rich, fertile farmland and today, a couple thousand years later, it is still the poorest region in France. Hannibal did well not only because he was a majorly brilliant general but also because his core elites were Gauls who had lost everything and lived to kill Romans - as many as they could before they were killed. Sherman didn't quite raise that level of hatred! Then we have Ghengis Khan's chlorination of the Mideastern gene pool almost 2,000 years ago - he didn't just kill an opponent and his family, he hunted down third, fourth and fifth cousins, annihilated whole villages, tribes and regions. He got RID of an opponent and any chance of one coming along unto the bazillionth generation. Some historians have suggested that is why Iran and other nations in that region cannot seem to get on - no leadership to speak of has come forth since that time! Now that their societies are more open to the world, perhaps the repair job can begin - if that theory is true. Well, Sherman didn't do that!

Actually, imho, Sherman's actual actions were bad but recoverable - Georgia put out a bumper crop one year after the war. (Maybe burning over the fields helped!) The Shenandoah Valley was still devastated one year on - yet there is no vilification of Sheridan! Sheridan wiped out the base of the prosperity in the Shenandoah - the people were left so impoverished they simply couldn't restart for quite a long time. Sherman didn't do that.

What Sherman's real crime was, if he committed one, was waging too good a psychological war. He was an American general operating on American soil against Americans. Nothing like this had happened before, not even during the Revolution. He succeeded in striking a killer blow at the confidence and belief of the Southerners but he also left a psychological trauma that is still being dealt with today.
 
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