William Tecumseh Sherman: Hero, or Villain?

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15 Dec 2012, 10:31 am

The "Scorched Earth" procedures helped to bring a quick conclusion to the war. The Ku Klux Klan made things especially tough for ex-slaves, as did President Johnson's revocation of Field Order 15, as did another century of racist persecution.

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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15 Dec 2012, 10:37 am

It's sad, Arrant, everyone in this country profited off the sick, evil institution and people in parts of the world are still benefiting off trafficking now. The banks in the industrialized cities of the North had slaves listed as collateral on southern debt so they panicked the war would jeopardize this. It was institutionalized slavery throughout the country even though outlawed in some areas. Every place was affected. And yes, the institution of slavery has left it's impact on the southern psyche as well with this lazy attitude that others should do the hard labor. Southerners can be really lazy and it has it's origins in this idea the other guy must do all the work. Comes from the era of widespread slave ownership. US government should have halted it right after the constitution was signed. Ever notice how much more industrious northerners are compared to southerners?

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15 Dec 2012, 10:39 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

The cloth mills up in Lowell, MA made their fortune on cotton fiber grown in the south and picked by slave labor.

Without slavery the textile industry in the North would never have become as big and rich as it did.

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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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15 Dec 2012, 10:39 am

ruveyn wrote:

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

So true. Slavery was indeed a blight on the entire nation at the time.

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15 Dec 2012, 10:42 am

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

So true. Slavery was indeed a blight on the entire nation at the time.

Quite so. And black folk were not particularly loved north of the Mason Dixon line either.

Consider the New York City draft riots. The Irish in New York went on a tear beating up Negroes (and even killing some) and busting up their good.

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15 Dec 2012, 10:50 am

ArrantPariah wrote:

Raptor wrote:

Lee is renowned for being a gentleman.

He also owned a huge plantation and a ton of slaves.

Raptor wrote:

I've never read that about Sherman.

"Sherman is renowned for being a gentleman."

There! Now you have!

Raptor wrote:

The same people that praise Sherman for his March to the Sea swath of destruction would cry bloody murder if we did that to an enemy now.
Makes you wonder.....

Unlike our brave soldiers in Vietnam, Sherman didn't massacre civilians and leave the corpses to rot in the road

He also probably never raped anyone. Rob Lee owned a bunch of slaves, whom he could rape whenever he felt like it.

Sherman's freeing of slaves in his wake was the moral equivalent of allied soldiers freeing inmates of Nazi concentration camps.

Where to start.....
Lee was not a slave holder and was actually opposed to it. You might be thinking of General Nathan Bedford Forest who not only owned many slaves but was also a slave trader.

The My Lai massacre is the only one credited to the United States and that was solely the work of one wayward US Army platoon, not US or US Army policy in Vietnam.
It's no surprise to me that you fail to recognize the handiwork of the NVA and Viet Cong who's SOP is was to murder. They murdered thousands of unarmed political prisoners in Hue alone during the Tet Offensive as just one of many incidents. These always seem to somehow be ignored by the left.

Comparing southern plantation slaves with nazi concentration camp prisoners is like comparing apples to oranges. They have similarities but are at the same time diffident.

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15 Dec 2012, 11:01 am

ruveyn wrote:

Misslizard wrote:

I bet he would steal the good silver off the table at dinner.
Really,who would most people rather have for a supper party,Sherman or Lee?

Lee obviously. He was a -gentleman-. Robert E. Lee would never go around burning civilians out of house and home. By the way, Lee lost.

ruveyn

Lee was offered command of the Union troops.he turned it down because he would not take up arms against his beloved Virginia.
IF he had taken that offer who knows what would have happened,Perhaps the war would have been over sooner with less destruction.He was a brilliant commander and his men loved him.
Just an interesting tidbit,he is suppose to have had a hen that travelled with him and she laid an egg every day.
And a little joke,
What was Robert E. Lee's favorite mount besides Traveller,his horse?
Mary Custis.

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15 Dec 2012, 11:08 am

Raptor wrote:

Lee was not a slave holder and was actually opposed to it. You might be thinking of General Nathan Bedford Forest who not only owned many slaves but was also a slave trader.

http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/slavery.htm

Quote:

When Custis died in 1857, Robert E. Lee—the executor of the estate—determined that the slave labor was necessary to improve Arlington's financial status. The Arlington slaves found Lee to be a more stringent taskmaster than his predecessor. Eleven slaves were “hired out” while others were sent to the Pamunkey River estates.

Raptor wrote:

Comparing southern plantation slaves with nazi concentration camp prisoners is like comparing apples to oranges. They have similarities but are at the same time diffident.

"Diffident", you say?

Quote:

dif·fi·dent /ˈdifidənt/ Adjective: Modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence.

Yes, I would imagine that most Southern slaves were careful to practise the art of diffidence.

androbot2084
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15 Dec 2012, 11:29 am

So how come the former slaves had their 40 acres stolen from them?

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15 Dec 2012, 11:38 am

androbot2084 wrote:

So how come the former slaves had their 40 acres stolen from them?

Because President Johnson was a Conservative who had the interests of rich White people at heart.

Non-white people ended up in conditions that weren't much improved over slavery.

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15 Dec 2012, 11:42 am

ruveyn wrote:

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

Arrant, they were trying to survive then. Everyone. The south had it's problems. Sherman might have made it tougher for ex slaves by his acts of scorched earth.

Sherman himself was no all the fond of Negroes. He considered the slaves following behind his army as an impediment and a nuisance.

This is what Sherman thought of Negroes: His own words:

At Governor Moore’s dinner party, in fact, Sherman had if anything actually understated his views. For one thing, Sherman was a white supremacist. “All the congresses on earth can’t make the negro anything else than what he is; he must be subject to the white man,” Sherman wrote his wife in 1860. “Two such races cannot live in harmony save as master and slave.” In a letter to his antislavery brother-in-law about plans to bring his family to Louisiana, Sherman crassly joked about becoming a slave master himself. Making light of the problems he anticipated in keeping white servants, he wrote that his wife Ellen “will have to wait on herself or buy a n****r. What will you think of that — our buying n****rs?”

Blinded by his implacable racism, Sherman could see no worthwhile moral or legal debate to be had over slavery. History had forced this institution on the South, Sherman thought, and its continued prosperity depended on embracing it. “Theoretical notions of humanity and religion,” he flatly declared, “cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with.” Further, Sherman believed that slavery benefited both races. In 1854 he assured his brother that blacks thrived in the Southern heat and later told David F. Boyd, one of his professors at the Louisiana military academy and eventual friend, that he considered slavery in the South “the mildest and best regulated system of slavery in the world, now or heretofore.”

Sherman's beef with the South was NOT slavery. It was secession which he considered treason.

ruveyn

He must have experienced some sort of epiphane as he was marching through Georgia.

Or, he saw the freeing of slaves and giving them the masters' land to be a simple part of his scorched-earth procedures--to make it impossible for the South to win the war.

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15 Dec 2012, 11:53 am

ArrantPariah wrote:

Raptor wrote:

Lee was not a slave holder and was actually opposed to it. You might be thinking of General Nathan Bedford Forest who not only owned many slaves but was also a slave trader.

http://www.nps.gov/arho/historyculture/slavery.htm

Quote:

"Parke Custis stipulated that all the Arlington slaves should be freed upon his death if the estate was found to be in good financial standing or within five years otherwise. When Custis died in 1857, Robert E. Lee—the executor of the estate—determined that the slave labor was necessary to improve Arlington's financial status. The Arlington slaves found Lee to be a more stringent taskmaster than his predacessor. Eleven slaves were “hired out” while others were sent to the Pamunkey River estates. In accordance with Custis's instructions, Lee officially freed the slaves on December 29, 1862."

He complied with the will as a matter of honor by 1857-62 standards. He did not buy slaves for his own use and is on record as being opposed to it.
What is meant by "stringent" in this case is not clear. Robert E. Lee, however, was never been known to be cruel or sadistic so it's safe to say that it's not what you're hoping for; use of the whip. :roll:

I could go and research the validity of that NPS article but I have other things on my plate today.

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15 Dec 2012, 11:55 am

Raptor wrote:

ArrantPariah wrote:

Raptor wrote:

The same people that praise Sherman for his March to the Sea swath of destruction would cry bloody murder if we did that to an enemy now.
Makes you wonder.....

Unlike our brave soldiers in Vietnam, Sherman didn't massacre civilians and leave the corpses to rot in the road

The My Lai massacre is the only one credited to the United States and that was solely the work of one wayward US Army platoon, not US or US Army policy in Vietnam.

Crying "Bloody Murder!", are we?

Raptor wrote:

It's no surprise to me that you fail to recognize the handiwork of the NVA and Viet Cong who's SOP is was to murder. They murdered thousands of unarmed political prisoners in Hue alone during the Tet Offensive as just one of many incidents. These always seem to somehow be ignored by the left.

Isn't the topic American soldiers? If Gen. Sherman had done anything similar, then Lincoln would have had him hanged.

A lot of people in Vietnam also got killed and maimed indiscriminately by American napalm and bombs. There was also quite a lot of property damage. All for nought.

The Total War concept was subsequently used ruthlessly in the American Indian wars, and in the Philippine-American War, where civilians were targeted and about 200,000 people killed. Whole villages were slaughtered. But, the American Indians and Filipinos have largely gotten over it. Our White Southerners love to nurse their wounds, for centuries on end.

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15 Dec 2012, 12:01 pm

Conservatives freak out over the concept of land reform especially when land reform is practiced in the Bible. Conservatives say 'thou shalt not steal' which to them means no land reform.

ruveyn
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15 Dec 2012, 12:02 pm

androbot2084 wrote:

Conservatives freak out over the concept of land reform especially when land reform is practiced in the Bible. Conservatives say 'thou shalt not steal' which to them means no land reform.

Stop with the bible already! This has absolutely nothing to do with current law.

ruveyn

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15 Dec 2012, 12:12 pm

Sometimes conservatives pay lip service to land reform saying that if the former slaves were still alive they would be entitled to their 40 acres. However what the conservatives fail to realize is that ownership of land is a right and an eternal inheritance that is passed down from generation to generation. When land is foreclosed on it not only punishes the current occupier but it also punishes all his future generations for an eternity.

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