Civil War curators walk through minefields

[Sequoia]

The Union general who promised to "make Georgia howl" glares at visitors from a tiny room in the Marietta Museum of History.

General William Tecumseh Sherman, the commander whose army burned Atlanta and plundered Georgia, is featured in a Civil War exhibit that displays his portrait along with a caption that praises his tactical brilliance.

But there's an unofficial tribute to the general tucked away in a nearby room that some visitors will never see. Two portraits of Sherman overlook the urinals in the men's bathroom.

The guns fell silent 142 years ago, but the Civil War can still make people howl. Debates over Sherman — war criminal or war hero? — and arguments over the war still inflame passions.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/arts/content/arts/stories/2007/10/08/cobbcurate_1009.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. But Sherman was kind enough to spare Savannah, one of the most

beautiful and stroll-able cities I've ever visited. Amazing that there is still so much controversy about how to portray and present the Civil War and its characters. Interesting article--thanks!

[Faygo Kid]

2. It WAS about slavery, and the South lost. And war IS hell.

From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. These words are incredible, and worth reading, in the pit of our darkness that is George W. Bush:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation.

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.

And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

[Virginia Dare]

7. While Lincoln's cause was a noble one..

however, I have my doubts about those that were behind pushing the country into the war.

It was really like any other war, a money grab and a land grab, and one in which nobody but the rich had anything to gain.

Ironically, most of those who fought and died in the war never owned a slave, and if you asked the typical soldier on the field, I doubt very many of them, even the southerners, would have given slavery as the reason why they fought. It was certainly a cause, but an ad hoc one, much like "terrorism" in the war in Iraq.

[Faygo Kid]

9. What?

"Money grab and land grab?"

Have you ever even read anything about the Civil War? I recommend McPherson's Pulitzer-prize winner, "Battle Cry of Freedom," as the best single volume.

And anything by Bruce Catton to capture the heart and soul of the conflict.

You are wrong to compare the lies about Iraq to the expansion of slavery. I appreciate your nom de plume of the first white child born in the Americas, but open your eyes, and expand your knowledge, despite your love for the Old Dominion.

[Virginia Dare]

26. The vast majority of my reading is about the Civil War..

and I've expanded my horizons beyond the lofty academic and intellectual historical studies. I suggest you read the diaries of soldiers in the field and citizens who lived through it.

My informed opinion is that it was not necessary to put this nation through such a bloody and gruesome war in order to end slavery. We were manipulated into it, much like we were manipulated into the Iraq war.

[TwilightGardener]

23. I think you're right that the average Confederate soldier was fighting

more for native pride than for slavery (probably an abstraction to most poor Southerners) or states'-rights. The ones who would have gained the most from a Southern victory were the landowners and businessmen who depended on slavery to maintain the economy of the South.

[Virginia Dare]

27. The average Confederate soldier was fighting against..

their perceived tyranny by the U.S. Government. Most Union soldiers were fighting to keep the union together.

Racism was deep and pernicious on both sides. I've read diaries of Union soldiers who were angry when Lincoln made it about slavery. I know of at least two that deserted to the Confederate side after the Emancipation Proclamation.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Hmm.

Compare Sherman to the Allied bombing campaign of WWII.

[FARAFIELD]

4. he was brilliant

he realized civilians were the backersup of things and so took the war to them, anyone that has driven from atlanta to savannah should be in awe of those 60K men, marching without reinforment or supplies just living off the land. To the Victors go the spoils for sure, but Sherman (like shinsekki in this war) tried to tell people how hard it would be and was called MAD for it. Read his Memoirs its all in there.

[Sequoia]

5. What book would you recommend?

I read a bio of him and Grant the summer before 9-11 and while I don't hold to his very racist views I admired him for the person he was. His troops and family adored him and when his child died he was devastated.

[Virginia Dare]

6. Sheridan actually began this tactic in Virginia..

the people of the Shenandoah Valley certainly have never forgotten "the burning"..

In Sheridan's words: ``I have destroyed over 2,000 barns, filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements; over 70 mills, filled with flour and wheat.... When this is completed, the Valley from Winchester up to Staunton, ninety-two miles, will have but little in it for man or beast.''

[Faygo Kid]

11. Sheridan didn't begin it. Good book is available, though.

He didn't hit the Shenandoah until 1864, when Sherman marched off to the sea.

Actually, it was inevitable. Lincoln nailed it in the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural.

Great book about the Shenandoah campaign that my late (and greatly missed) ex-father in law bought for me: http://www.rockbpubl.com/bks_RPC/burning.htm

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51TQHZEE08L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

[Mudoria]

8. If I were in that bathroom I'd definitely try and spray

a stream over Sherman's picture. With any luck he's roasting in hell now.

[Sequoia]

15. You must be from Georgia.

[Rhythm and Blue]

10. War criminal or war hero? Probably both.

He was a brilliant leader who believed that complete brutality was a greater evil than prolonged lesser brutality. He engaged in tactics that would get him hauled in front of the ICC today.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. What tactics would those be?

You're arguing in favor of dropping the A-bombs in the other thread, I'm wondering what Sherman did that was worse than that.

[Rhythm and Blue]

13. Deliberately targeting civilian food supplies.

World War II, being from its outset a total war, was something of a special case. Realistically, the A-bombs were less destructive than the conventional strategic bombing and firebombing raids that all parties engaged in, and were certainly less destructive than invasion would have been. However, had we lost, those would have been considered war crimes.

Sherman brought total war to Georgia. I don't know enough history to say if what he did cost lives or saved them. Worse? I wouldn't say worse. But at the same time, what Sherman did was somewhat unprecedented in American land warfare in both severity and scale, while strategic targeting of civilian populations was engaged in by all combatants of World War II.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. LOL

:rofl:

[Rhythm and Blue]

16. Care to discuss what I wrote?

I don't think I've yet seen you actually attempt to refute anything I've written.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. What's to discuss? It's ludicrous.

In trying to worm your way out of the corner you painted yourself into, you actually tried to argue that targeting civilian food supplies was worse than targeting whole cities.

:spray:

[Rhythm and Blue]

18. No, I made no such claim.

I never claimed it was worse; in fact, I specifically said it wasn't worse. I claimed that what Sherman did was unprecedented for its time, whereas that atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no more destructive than the strategic targeting of civilians that all sides were continuously engaging in.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Heh.

"He engaged in tactics that would get him hauled in front of the ICC today."

[Rhythm and Blue]

20. I stand by that statement.

Today, deliberately starving an entire civilian population would get you hauled in front of the ICC (assuming you went on to lose the war, or assuming your nation bowed to international pressure and surrendered you), possibly on genocide charges. Similarly, today dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population would as well. So would firebombing cities and midnight raids targeting civilian population centers.

That does not change the historical context in which the acts occurred, which I already provided, and in which both actions must be considered.

Keep trying.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. So now you're saying Hiroshima was a war crime?

"Keep trying."

Keep trying yourself. You ain't fooling anybody any more than Zandor is.

[Rhythm and Blue]

22. Were it committed today, it would be.

At the time of the war? That's a difficult question. I might say, "yes," stating that all criteria for war crimes should be universally applied, but if I do, I also include every single bombing raid carried out by all belligerents, as well as a good number of land operations. This is dangerous, because when you declare virtually all acts that occur during a war to be a "war crime," you remove the distinction between the Rape of Nanking and daylight bombing of weapons factories.

I might say, "no," but with the caveat that it would have been a war crime if it were carried out in any other war. This is dangerous, because when you condone the deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands, no matter the context, you risk losing the distinction of context and condoning it occurring again.

If I must declare it to be one or the other, I would say that it is not, but strongly emphasize the unique context in which it occurred, and reaffirm that in virtually any other context it would be a crime against humanity.

Again, World War II was a special case. It was universal brutality on an unprecedented scale, and as a result of that we got many of the international institutions intended to prevent it from happening again. It's not as simple as "The dropping of the A-bomb was a war crime" or "The dropping of the A-bomb was not a war crime."

[Blackhatjack]

24. I have lived in the South all my life and the hatred for Sherman is still alive and well today

The brutality and the massive destruction that Sherman wrought with his march through Atlanta went way beyond mere military tactics, and in fact inflicted such human suffering that some Southerners felt they had nothing to lose by continuing to fight since Sherman would destroy everything and everyone anyway.

As for the passage of 147 years, that is a mere blink in time regarding events in history. There are still families and individuals living today who can trace their lineage back to the time of Sherman and recall the stories of how their relatives were treated, handed down from one generation to the next.

Just like the Ken Burns series on WWII shows, incidents of extreme brutality are not forgotten and tend to be remembered and handed down from one generation to the next. The same is true about Sherman and his actions in the South.

[Rhythm and Blue]

25. There's an incredibly relevant point in there.

He inflicted such human suffering that some Southerners felt they had nothing to lose by continuing to fight since Sherman would destroy everything and everyone anyway.

That is exactly why our policy of fighting terrorism with missile strikes, invasions, and bombs is counterproductive.