Sherman and South Carolina

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Sherman and South Carolina

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1Urquhart
Editado: mayo 22, 2015, 11:17 am

What is the real history of Sherman's March to the Sea and later on through the Carolinas?

My guess is that the following version is the real one and that being selective in his targets, as has been suggested, was not one of his over riding concerns.

Feel free to review this material either in print or video format.

In print:

http://www.knappagency.com/shermansmarch.html

In video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvD0abNnomY

Maybe there was a reason Ken Burns did not include this material in his Civil War documentary.

2Muscogulus
Editado: mayo 21, 2015, 5:52 pm

>1 Urquhart:

Before devoting the time to this, I notice that the video was produced by this guy — an adman, political consultant, and former journalist. It suggests to me that it may be long on persuasion and low on balanced reading of sources.

But then I too am a former journalist and PR hack. So nemmine what I say. ;-)

3BruceCoulson
mayo 21, 2015, 6:29 pm

Sherman's Ghosts covered some of this material, but I didn't care for the book. (It was all over the place, with the author making so many exceptions and exemptions that his thesis was pretty much obscured.)

4Urquhart
Editado: mayo 21, 2015, 7:23 pm

Well, I read through the transcript and it pretty much agrees with what many historians, for better or worse, have said.

If you get a moment, check out

Sherman's March: Final Revenge 5/5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHGF8nbkNW0

It's got the photos that prove that the destruction simply was not "selective."

Or would you disagree?

5TLCrawford
mayo 22, 2015, 10:59 am

In Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea Trudeau wrote that high winds spread the fire in Atlanta eventually causing much wider destruction than Sherman and his officers intended. Not knowing the conditions in South Carolina, Trudeau was focused on the march to Savannah, I can only speculate about what happened there. Sherman's intention was to win the war but he also wanted to win the peace. He wrote that it was necessary to be harsh in order to force southerners to abandon the radicals that started the war. He also wrote that it was important not to "poison the well", to intentionally harm civilians and cause lasting resentment of the Union. IIRC the tales of atrocities originated long after the battles and not with people from the area. It is important to remember that southerners were hard a t work to change history and paint the Union as the aggressors, they still are.

6DinadansFriend
Editado: mayo 31, 2015, 6:28 pm

5:
Yup, the moral and intellectual children of that awful man Edmund Ruffin, who committed suicide when the war was over, are still with us. It seems that eleven of them have declared their candidacies for the Republican presidential spot.
I sorrow for a country that doesn't understand Abraham Lincoln's message today. Lincoln wasn't a lone voice in the USA of his time, but the actions of Sherman are seen as out-weighing his message of equality and moral freedom. Makes no sense to me, but I'm not an American.
Here's a quote from Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s first black president, a man while of Indian, Black and Hispanic origin, fought cleverly and freed his country from the Spanish Empire. “If we succeed in spreading the guarantees of the individual, if equality before the law destroys the efforts of power and gold, if the highest title between us is that of citizen, if the rewards we bestow are exclusively for talent and virtue, we have a republic, and she will be conserved by the universal suffrage of a people solid, free and happy.” Of course, after he abolished Slavery in Mexico April of 1829, he was driven from office and assassinated. The slaves in Mexico stayed free, and the settlers in Texas from the USA eventually rose against this "Mexican Tyranny".
As Texas fought free of Mexico, they kept their slaves.

7TLCrawford
Jun 1, 2015, 9:02 am

# 6 Both the Texas War of Independence and the US Civil War were fought for the "freedom" to keep slaves. The US south has never given up on that goal. When Volkswagen opened a factory they invited the union to come in and organize. State politicians fought the effort, against the wishes of VW, and the vote failed http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/labor/200355-how-the-gop-ambushed-the-vw-... But VW and the UAW appealed to the Labor Relations Board, complaining about "outside influences". The appeal was dropped to allow VW some stability in determining productions costs. The Tennessee state government was threatening to revoke the incentives they had granted to get the factory. http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2014/apr/22/uaw-pulls-appeal-talk...

9davidgn
Editado: Jun 18, 2016, 6:18 am

I personally appreciated The War Nerd's take. ETA: It's rather polemical... to say the least!

10Urquhart
Jun 18, 2016, 6:19 am


In the biographies I have read on him, he literally, as your article said, before the South joined the Civil War:

"tried to tell these idiots, over and over, that they were stupid and deluded."

Note:
In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, a position he sought at the suggestion of Major D. C. Buell and secured because of General George Mason Graham. He proved an effective and popular leader of the institution, which later became Louisiana State University (LSU).
In effect he was living and working in the deep South at the time of the outbreak of the War and he still tried to tell them what he knew to be true.

He was one very intelligent man who knew his history.

11DinadansFriend
Jun 18, 2016, 4:35 pm

>10 Urquhart::
And Sherman did come to realize what to do with a flank when his enemy offered him one. Every now and again like Kennesaw mountain he fell prey to the Lee Complex and tried to smash his way through an opponent, but in the main, Sherman was a good soldier, and I think the best strategist on the Federal side. And John Bell Hood was the gift of a Beneficent Providence to Sherman.