Tex McSwain wrote:
Quaama wrote:
If you use a weapon (gun, Molotov cocktail, whatever) in a war then you are a combatant.
If you are in a hospital, taking cover in a theatre/shopping centre/non-militarised residential area/etc or fleeing a city via an agreed evacuation corridor then you are a civilian. [Some documented war crimes are listed here -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.]
There was no official 'rules of war' in the 19th century but you can rely on Sherman's own words to show his intentions and actions:
[he proposes the] "utter destruction of its [Georgia's] roads, houses and people";
"I can make the march, and make Georgia howl";
"prefer to ... move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea";
"we ... must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies";
we left Atlanta "smouldering and in ruins";
"the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance";
"she [South Carolina] deserves all that seems in store for her";
"I doubt if we will spare the public buildings there [Columbia] as we did at Milledgeville"; and last, but not least
"We quietly and deliberately destroyed Atlanta".
It's quite clear what Sherman was targeting. It wasn't the Confederate armies and you shouldn't get 'stars' for beating civilians.
That is some dumb reasoning. I'm a southerner and objectively even I know Sherman was right. Sherman's actions probably saved lives in the long run by ending the war sooner.
You need to reassess the consequences of a prolonged war versus an earlier termination of the war. Then re-read your statements and
see if Sherman didn't likely save more men, more innocent lives, more land, and more cities, from destruction. If the war drags on to 1866 and 1867, does the south win? No. Lincoln was reelected on a war platform. With each passing month the south's manpower was reduced to the point of breaking.
What might have been if the war dragged on longer? More cities would have fallen. More battles would have been fought with northern units armed with ever more powerful weapons. We aren't even going to get into the possibilities of millions of former slaves being armed and "let loose" on the south (officially or unofficially). The south was lucky the war ended at the time it did and in the way it did. Lee allowed them to end it with more dignity than it deserved and he unintentionally helped create the lost cause mentality which still breeds morons to this day.
All Sherman did was capture Atlanta, crush Hood, and then prove beyond any doubt that the Confederate armies were no longer capable of defending their own homes and people. Once he did that, desertions spiked, morale was gone, and the end was at hand.
Mostly conjecture.
As for "the possibilities of millions of former slaves being armed and "let loose" on the south" I don't think Sherman would have been keen on having a single one of them.
After all, in 1864 Hood said to Sherman:
"you fired into the habitations of women and children for weeks, firing far above and miles beyond my line of defense" and then adds in the next sentence:
"I have too good an opinion, founded both upon observation and experience, of the skill of your artillerists to credit the insinuation that they for several weeks unintentionally fired too high for my modest fieldworks, and slaughtered women and children by accident and want of skill."
Such things are not accidental, especially when done over a period of days let alone weeks.
Sherman in his reply does not dispute Hood's description of the shelling simply saying that he "was not bound by the laws of war to give notice of the shelling of Atlanta".
However, Sherman does dispute Hood's accusation that he [Sherman] has "negro allies" and argued that point saying "we have no “negro allies” in this army; not a single negro soldier left Chattanooga with this army or is with it now".
After those two points have been made, Sherman terminates the correspondence with Hood.
To Stanton on October 25 1864:
"I do not wish to be considered as in any way adverse to the organization of negro regiments, further than as to its effects on the white race. . . . If negroes are to fight . . . they will not be content with sliding back into the status of slave and free negro.
I much prefer to keep negroes yet for some time to come in a sub- ordinate state, for our prejudices, yours as well as mine, are not yet schooled for absolute equality. . . . I would use negroes as surplus, but not spare a single white man, not one."
To Stanton on December 13, 1864:
"My first duty will be to clear the army of surplus negroes, mules, and horses."
And a general comment from his memoirs:
"I assured him that General Davis was an excellent soldier, and I did not believe he had any hostility to the negro; that
in our army we had no negro soldiers, and, as a rule, we preferred white soldiers, but that we employed a large force of them as servants, teamsters, and pioneers, who had rendered admirable service."
Sherman is damned by his own actions and his own words.
Far better, especially from a moral point of view, to wage war on armies not on civilians. The historian's rating gives "3 Stars = A winning commander". I am adamant that "you shouldn't get 'stars' for beating civilians."