William Tecumseh Sherman: Hero, or Villain?

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I remember reading somewhere , probably can't find it now, where right after Sherman's march that the University of Georgia (I think) was tasked by the state to do an assessment of the damage caused by Sherman's handiwork in Georgia. The results of that study were that it would take approx 100 years for economic and psychological healing to be complete. That appears to have been a fairly accurate assessment......

My mostly German forebears didn't always have it easy, either; especially during the First World War. But the fact remains, they had white skin, and that alone ensured them eventual acceptance. Blacks didn't ever have the luxury to switch their skin color.
And while I don't doubt there are conflicting opinions among blacks about the actions of liberals toward them, no one can deny the legacy of the Civil Rights legislation, which was the work of the American left.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I should've just written your reply for you since I knew almost word for word what it would be.....

.....
In the postwar South, the legend of Yankee ruffians waging campaigns of fire and vandalism was surely useful in several respects. First, it helped Southern conservatives to convince their fellow white Southerners that a terrible wrong had been done them--a conviction that resonated well with the humiliations of military Reconstruction. Second, it played into the myth of a South beaten down by brute force, not defeated by military art and certainly not by internal divisions or a failure of national will.

Third, the myth of Yankee atrocities accounted for the economic disaster that gripped the South after 1865. As historians have since pointed out, the destruction of Southern crops, livestock, factories, and railroads, and other infrastructure was anything but complete; much of the damage was repaired within a few years. The really serious economic losses can be traced to two things: the emancipation of slaves, which wiped out billions of dollars in Southern wealth, and the worthlessness of Confederate scrip, bonds, and promissory notes into which many Southerners had sunk most of their savings. Both, of course, could be better traced to the South's decision to secede--and so begin the war--than to anything that Union soldiers did. Thus the emphasis on hard war, as an explanation for the economic devastation of the South, may have diverted attention from Southern responsibilities in bringing on the war, and thus for the outcome.

I suspect the mythology served less political purposes as well. Imagine that you are a woman living in the 1880s or 1890s, and that you are telling your grandchildren what it was like to live through the passage of Union armies through your village or farm. Obviously you survived the encounter, and probably so did the house you lived in. You may tell your grandchildren that the slaves ran off, that a Yankee soldier pilfered the silverware, that other soldiers tracked mud through the parlor, that they ransacked the smokehouse and burned the cotton gin. All these details will be accurate enough. But how can you satisfactorily convey the mortal peril you remember having felt, the fear that you might be assaulted, raped, or killed? It seems to me that you could hardly expect to convey this by pointing out that Yankee soldiers rarely did such things. Instead you would have every reason to repeat stories, however dubious, of assaults, rapes and murders that occurred elsewhere. This mythical retelling would serve an important purpose: It would keep alive a sense of the terror you felt, whereas a fully accurate retelling would make your fears seem misplaced. Further, the sense of violation that attended the invasion of your house by Union soldiers and the loss of precious family heirlooms would be undercut if you were to emphasize, for example, that in fact only a few soldiers got inside the house and that an arriving officer soon ordered them to leave.

Let me give you an example of this private myth-making at work. It comes from the unpublished reminiscences of a woman, Grace Pierson Beard, who lived about eight miles from Winnsboro, South Carolina. Her postwar account, now preserved in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, consumes fifteen typescript, single-spaced pages. In it she describes how, returning to her home in February 1865, she encountered soldiers in her house, seated on benches taken from her piazza. They were roasting potatoes taken from her potato bank in a fire they had built in her fireplace. "I shall never forget that sight!" she writes dramatically--but then goes on to say that these men turned out to be members of Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, and nothing in her narrative suggests that she was in the least disturbed by their trespassing into her home.

Instead, the purpose of the men in her narrative is to convey a message about the danger she is in. Sherman's men were coming, they told her, and when she informed them of her plan to leave before their arrival, they responded that leaving would only guarantee the destruction of her house. "Sherman's orders are to burn all vacant houses and all provisions." Thus Grace decided to remain.

Next day, a group of Union soldiers arrived, killed a dog, and ate everything at her table, but left without assailing anyone. The day after a major force passed through--they ransacked her house for provisions and allegedly told her slaves not only that they were free, but also entitled to their mistress's possessions. (No one acted on this, however.) Her barn and outbuildings were burned. Some soldiers said threatening things, but another soldier deterred them with, "The first man who attempts to enter that house will have his brains blown out." Subsequently a second, self-appointed guard appeared, followed by a soldier who looked so much like her husband that her toddler son ran up to him, leaped into his arms, and called him Pa. The soldier "seemed to be much affected" by this. So was she: "I felt as if my baby was everlastingly polluted."

That was the extent of Mrs. Beard's experience with the coming of Lucifer's legions: vigorous foraging, the destruction of outbuildings, the liberation of slaves, and repeated efforts to extort possessions from her--which were never pursued to the point of assault and were, in any case, countered by soldiers who actively protected her family and herself. All this information is in her reminiscences, but the tone is one of fear and outrage, and the tone governs what an uncritical reader takes away from her reminiscences. In effect, Mrs. Beard--like thousands of other white Southerners--has constructed a mythical reading of her experience that emphasizes the harshness and injustice of that experience.

The influence of this myth can hardly be exaggerated. Even educated Southerners, far removed in time from the conflict, accepted it uncritically, indeed passionately. Eventually the murderous severity of the Union armies' attacks on civilian property became an article of faith. By the 1940s, one Southern historian could write, in a scholarly monograph, that "the invader did not limit himself to the property of people," but evidenced "considerable interest also in their persons, particularly the females, some of whom did not escape the fate worse than death"--without feeling the slightest need to document his lurid (and largely inaccurate) claim.

The myth of indiscriminate Union attacks on Southern civilians has served other agendas as well. For persons revolted by the slaughter on the Western Front, Sherman's marches and similar episodes aptly illustrated the brutalizing effects of war. Its utility in this respect has proven durable. Paradoxically, the image of a sweeping campaign of fire and sword also fits snugly into the "realist" image of war. The Union hard war measures resonate well with those who believe that in war one must do whatever is necessary to win. There is thus an admiring quality to some of the literature on William T. Sherman, the best known of the hard war advocates, whom Lloyd Lewis called a "fighting prophet." T. Harry Williams admired Grant's willingness to wage economic warfare, and called him the first of the great modern generals. Bruce Catton invariably discussed the Union war against Southern property as a case of "doing what has to be done to win."

Few of these characterizations did great violence to the facts. They simply emphasized certain facts at the expense of others. The Federal effort against Southern property was indeed widespread and quite destructive. But an effort was also made to direct destructive energies toward certain targets and away from others. Neither Southerners, "realists," nor those antipathetic toward war had any reason to emphasize the substantial restraint shown by Union forces in their operations against civilian property. For Southerners, to do so would have undercut their sense of righteousness and comparative lack of responsibility for the debacle that engulfed them. For realists, it would have qualified their belief that one must do whatever must be done to gain victory in war. For those repulsed by war, it would have seemed to mitigate the brutalizing effects that war assuredly has on both societies and individuals.

But perhaps the most pervasive reason for the emphasis on the destructiveness of Union military policy has been the way in which it seemed to anticipate the sweeping struggles of the twentieth century. Especially after the Second World War, the Civil War appeared a clear prototype of modern, total war. It had witnessed the early development and use of trench warfare, ironclad warships, rapid-fire weapons, and even airships and crude machine guns. Its soldiers had traveled to the battle front aboard railroad cars and steam-driven transports; its generals had communicated with one another via endless miles of telegraph wire. It was one of the first struggles in which manufacturing and mass politics significantly affected the fighting and the outcome. The conflict's most striking modern aspect, however, was the Union attacks on Southern civilians and property. What happened to them no longer seemed merely atrocious; it foreshadowed the strategic bombardment of civilians during the two world wars. Thus it seems to me that historians bear considerable responsibility for perpetuating the mythology of Sherman's march.....

Who says I'm motivated by guilt? I'm motivated by what I think is right.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

No, I'm just suggesting all citizens need to be treated fairly. Pity has nothing to do with it. And I'm certainly not threatening anyone with a gun.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Lucky for me, that's not my job to determine that.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer