Great Decisions Class 8. THREAT ASSESSMENT Friday, 29March2013
WAGING WAR ON CIVILIANS
Upon entering Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of
1863, Sherman ordered a systematic bombardment of the
town every live minutes, day and night. Similar bombardments occurred in other Southern cities under the orders of
Sherman and other Federal generals. After Jackson was all
but demolished, Sherman’s army entered the town, where
the soldiery proceeded to sack the town completely. Pianos
and articles of Furniture were dragged into the streets and
demolished. The aroused soldiers entered residences, appropriating whatever appeared to be of value . . . those articles
which they could not carry they broke .... They thrust their
bayonets into pictures and knocked out windows and even removed doors from their hinges.28
Fires set by Sherman’s soldiers destroyed the entire
business district of Jackson, and the city was thoroughly
sacked and destroyed. Federal soldiers under Sherman’s
watchful eye sacked all the finest plantations as well as the
lowliest slave cabins. Federal soldiers routinely robbed citizens at gunpoint during the mayhem. When it was all over,
Sherman boasted to General Grant, "The inhabitants are
subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around."29
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Sherman always blamed the citizens of the South for
their fate and took no responsibility for the damage and
death to civilians caused by his army. If they hadn’t resisted
the Lincoln administration, he would argue, they would not
have found themselves in such a predicament. He also rationalized the pillaging, plundering, and destroying of cities
with socialistic or egalitarian rhetoric, such as "a woman
who has fifty loads of fine furniture deserves to lose it."30
Entire towns in Mississippi ceased to exist after Sherman’s army passed through, with the women and children
who had lived there rendered homeless and fearful of starvation. As Sherman described the total destruction of
Meridian, Mississippi, long after there was any Confederate army presence near the town, "For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work
of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and
with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists."31
Sherman was rewarded to Commander of all the Western [actually South] Union Armies, then proceeded to Atlanta and to the sea and up through the Carolina's destroying everything of value along the way.
These were not Soviet troops throwing back the Nazi invasion.
These were good Northern boys acting upon fellow Americans.
It can happen.
URL: http://www.manorweb.com/creative/2013/8wagingwar.html