American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

ACWGC Forums

* ACWGC    * Dpt. of Records (DoR)    *Club Recruiting Office     ACWGC Memorial

* CSA HQ    * VMI   * Join CSA    

* Union HQ   * UMA   * Join Union    

CSA Armies:   ANV   AoT

Union Armies:   AotP    AotT

Link Express

Club Forums:     NWC    CCC     Home Pages:     NWC    CCC    ACWGC
It is currently Fri Mar 29, 2024 9:09 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 115 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  Next
Author Message
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 2:23 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2021 10:45 pm
Posts: 114
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.


Difficult to find an argument to that.

_________________
Lt. Colonel JJ Jansen
3rd Calvary Brigade, 4th Calvary Division
Army of Tennessee

CSA


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:56 pm 
Offline

Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:52 am
Posts: 60
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.

_________________
LtC Thomas "Tex" McSwain
Kansas Raiders

Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:12 pm 
Offline

Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 8:52 pm
Posts: 59
Could not agree more Tex. The Rebs seem to forget they burned Chambersburg, slaughtered soldiers at Fort Pillow, and starved thousands at Andersonville, BEFORE Sherman ever destroyed one military arsenal in the city of Atlanta. The great fires and pillaging were the result of mass panic, wind, and rebel looters and not Sherman's men lighting torches and going from home to home.

_________________
Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER

Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 5:34 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:42 pm
Posts: 668
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."

_________________
Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:44 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Sun May 14, 2017 1:55 am
Posts: 936
Location: Tennessee
If an army takes up a position in a city, then they have to accept that civilian casualties will occur. If the army (any army) is concerned about civilian deaths and private property being destroyed, then they should not defend the city at all. Hood, Lee, Johnston, and others knowingly defended cities with miles of trenches and forts knowing that innocent civilians were being put in harm's way. Your argument doesn't take into account their actions which placed the armies there in the first place. I am sure Sherman would have loved it if Johnston chose not to defend Atlanta out of concern a civilian might be harmed. But he did not abandon the city. He turned it into a fortress and brought the war to the civilians. Sherman would not have fired on the city if there weren't enemy soldiers there to begin with.

The Confederate commanders chose to defend major cities (Vicksburg, Atlanta, Richmond, Petersburg) and so the Federals had no choice but to take them. Each was significantly damaged by the act. Fortunes of war. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But I have no ax to grind with Sherman. In his place I'd have done the same.

In another post you praised Patton as your favorite WW2 commander. How is he different than Sherman?
“We have caused death and injury to 93,000 civilians. The result was achieved with a fraction of the bomb-load we hope to employ in 1943.”

“Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo.”

_________________
Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 9:41 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:42 pm
Posts: 668
Blake wrote:
If an army takes up a position in a city, then they have to accept that civilian casualties will occur. If the army (any army) is concerned about civilian deaths and private property being destroyed, then they should not defend the city at all. Hood, Lee, Johnston, and others knowingly defended cities with miles of trenches and forts knowing that innocent civilians were being put in harm's way. Your argument doesn't take into account their actions which placed the armies there in the first place. I am sure Sherman would have loved it if Johnston chose not to defend Atlanta out of concern a civilian might be harmed. But he did not abandon the city. He turned it into a fortress and brought the war to the civilians. Sherman would not have fired on the city if there weren't enemy soldiers there to begin with.

The Confederate commanders chose to defend major cities (Vicksburg, Atlanta, Richmond, Petersburg) and so the Federals had no choice but to take them. Each was significantly damaged by the act. Fortunes of war. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But I have no ax to grind with Sherman. In his place I'd have done the same.

In another post you praised Patton as your favorite WW2 commander. How is he different than Sherman?
“We have caused death and injury to 93,000 civilians. The result was achieved with a fraction of the bomb-load we hope to employ in 1943.”

“Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo.”


Hood did not put civilians in danger with his defences. As he said to Sherman:
"you fired into the habitations of women and children for weeks, firing far above and miles beyond my line of defense".
Sherman chose to attack the civilians rather than the Confederate army. As this map (https://www.loc.gov/resource/gvhs01.vhs00311/?r=-0.312,0.341,1.747,1.074,0) shows the Confederate defences were not located near residential areas.

Of course then Sherman ordered the burning of Atlanta when he told his engineering officer. 0. M. Poe, to destroy “all depots, car-houses. shops, factories. foundries, . . . fire will do most of the work" (https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/079/0680). Then after he had wrecked Atlanta he took glee from such destruction as he wrote:
"Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Away off in the distance, on the McDonough road, was the rear of Howard's column, the gun-barrels glistening in the sun, the white-topped wagons stretching away to the south; and right before us the Fourteenth Corps, marching steadily and rapidly, with a cheery look and swinging pace, that made light of the thousand miles that lay between us and Richmond. Some band, by accident, struck up the anthem of "John Brown's soul goes marching on;" the men caught up the strain, and never before or since have I heard the chorus of "Glory, glory, hallelujah!" done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time and place."

Patton is my favourite Allied general. Patton targeted enemy armies, not civilians. I think you are misquoting him as he didn't say “We have caused death and injury to 93,000 civilians. The result was achieved with a fraction of the bomb-load we hope to employ in 1943.” I think that you'll find that quote is from Charles Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford. He was instrumental in the indiscriminate area bombing by night of all large German cities (including Dresden).

[Edited to include link to Sherman order.]

_________________
Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 7:52 am 
Offline

Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:52 am
Posts: 60
Not worth arguing with Paul. He is obviously a lost causer.

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..."

_________________
LtC Thomas "Tex" McSwain
Kansas Raiders

Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 8:53 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:36 pm
Posts: 592
...and still, nobody gives Sherman's most famous quote BEFORE the war even started!

"You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.
War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail."
William T. Sherman

_________________
Colonel Jason "Skeedaddle" Campbell
The Mahoning 4th Brigade
3rd Division
2nd Corp

AoT
"Let's fill up our canteens, boys. Some of us will be in hell before nightfall and we'll need the water"


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:30 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2014 3:24 pm
Posts: 1145
Location: Bouches-de-l’Elbe
To Paul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZ9xFFLbL0

_________________
Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac
Image
"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:54 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue May 22, 2001 10:10 pm
Posts: 1035
Location: USA
I always liked Rhett Butler's comment, "All We Got Is Cotton, Slaves, and Arrogance."

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller

Image

The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
AotP


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:57 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Sun May 14, 2017 1:55 am
Posts: 936
Location: Tennessee
Nathan Bedford Forrest

Like John Hunt Morgan, Nathan Bedford Forrest was brilliantly self-taught in the military art. Both were remarkably inventive practitioners of asymmetrical warfare, leveraging meager resources to great effect against superior forces. Yet, while Morgan saw himself as a latter-day knight without armor, Forrest regarded himself as a soldier and a leader of soldiers. He was not a knight or a crusader, but a man of war, and "war," he said, "means fighting, and fighting means killing." Such was his stock in trade.

Adversaries such as Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman thought Forrest the most dangerous man west of the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies. Sherman, whose approach to war at times more closely resembled than differed from Forrest's, called him a "devil." The word may not have been tossed off casually. Like the devil, Forrest knew how to sow chaos and destruction with consummate craft, and his method relied as heavily on intimidation, bluff, and deception as it did on sabre's edge and gunpowder. All that kept him from joining the ranks of the very greatest generals of the Civil War was his subordinate position, which confined him to a wholly tactical role, albeit one that sometimes had a strategic impact.

HISTORIANS RATING: THREE STARS




Forrest... the most fascinating Civil War general? Probably. Whereas Sherman had Grant's unwavering support, Forrest had none. Forrest was shunned by the West Point crowd and regulated to secondary roles when he operated with, or near, the main army. His anger at this slight caused him (more than once) to lash out at his superiors for their prejudices against him. Forrest just didn't know how to play well with others. I'm not saying Bragg and Hood didn't deserve the criticism he heaped upon them, but it didn't help his own cause at all. What might have been if Forrest was ever supported properly? Three stars works for me.

_________________
Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Image


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:33 am 
Offline

Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2003 9:52 am
Posts: 1324
If Forrest doesn't deserve four stars, no general in the Civil War does.

First witness: General Sherman

"After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side."-William Tecumseh Sherman

True, Forrest didn't get along with Bragg, but neither did anybody else.

He led Hood's cavalry during the Nashville campaign and is responsible for saving what was left of the army after the battle.

Don't have time to list all of his many accomplishments during the war, but promotions from private through lieutenant general indicates to me that his services were appreciated by the people in charge.

_________________
MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:12 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:42 pm
Posts: 668
Tex McSwain wrote:
Not worth arguing with Paul. He is obviously a lost causer.

"There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..."


I put forth verifiable quotes and source documents to support my ascertain that Sherman was not "a winning commander" against armed men. You, while hiding behind a pseudonym, only offer slurs against my character ("Not worth arguing with" "obviously a lost causer") and a quote from a novel designed to imply that I am dreaming.
If you have any arguments in support of Sherman having military prowess against armed men you should present any such facts that support that view.
If you are a supporter of Sherman's aggression against civilians you should consider whether you belong on our side of the Club.

_________________
Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:16 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:42 pm
Posts: 668
C. Hecht wrote:


Why direct this to me personally?
I am from Australia. With the possible exception of our military support for the USA in Vietnam, we haven't been on the losing side of a war.
What does that have to do with Sherman's capabilities as a military commander, or lack thereof?

_________________
Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:17 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:42 pm
Posts: 668
krmiller_usa wrote:
I always liked Rhett Butler's comment, "All We Got Is Cotton, Slaves, and Arrogance."


What is the point of this? Are you implying something about me in connection with the McSwain post?

_________________
Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia


Top
 Profile Send private message  
Reply with quote  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 115 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8  Next

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 116 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group