This month is the 150th anniversary of Sherman’s infamous March across Georgia to the Sea. After years of war, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman had the opportunity to strike through the heart of Confederacy. His goal was to undermine the Confederate war effort by breaking the civilians’ will to fight. As he wrote after the march to Henry Halleck, the Union’s Chief of Staff:
We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience.1
Today many, especially in the south, remember Sherman as a cruel man who burnt the homes and crops of Georgians, forcing them into poverty and starvation. Debates continue to rage today whether he should be considered a war criminal, or simply as a general who knew now to end the war. In this article, we will consider the legend that has grown up around Sherman’s march, and how we can separate the myth from fact.
How Bad Was it?
First, what did the Union troops actually do? How bad was it? Before the march began, Sherman issued Special Orders No. 120. In it he gave strict instructions for how his men were to conduct themselves on the march. They were allowed to “forage liberally” from the countryside, and were given nearly free reign to take or destroy food, horses and livestock. However, they were not to enter homes or burn any buildings without express orders from the corps commanders.2 These orders were often violated with impunity, and the Federal generals did little, if anything, to stop it. The problems began even before the army even left Atlanta. Sherman had ordered that military targets, such as the railroad depot, be destroyed. But the men disregarded regarded these orders, and about half the town was burnt. “Can’t save it,” Sherman commented to a staff officer, “Set as many guards as you please, [the men] will slip it and set fire.”3
The Federal troops, Bummers as they were called, routinely violated orders along the march and burnt many houses along the way. However, they did not destroy everything in their path in a scorched earth policy as many believe today. In the 1930s a survey found that many, if not most, houses were left standing in the wake of the Yankee march.4
This does not mean there was no suffering for the civilians involved. Sherman and his men were determined to make the southern people feel the cost of the war, to “make Georgia howl,” and they were successful. One woman’s experience was typical:
Happening to turn and look behind, as we stood there, I saw some blue-coats coming down the hill. … I hastened back to my frightened servants and told them that they had better hide, and then went back to the gate to claim protection and a guard. But like demons they rush in! My yards are full. …
To my smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves they come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. The thousand pounds of meat in my smoke-house is gone in a twinkling, my flour, my meat, my lard, butter, eggs, pickles of various kinds – both in vinegar and brine – wine, jars, and jugs are all gone. My eighteen fat turkeys, my hens, chickens, and fowls, my young pigs, are shot down in my yard and hunted as if they were rebels themselves. Utterly powerless I ran out and appealed to the guard.
‘I cannot help you, Madam; it is orders.’ …
As night drew its sable curtains around us, the heavens from every point were lit up with flames from burning buildings. … My Heavenly Father alone saved me from the destructive fire.5
Was it Unusual?
How unusual was the March through Georgia, versus any other Civil War era army marching past? No Civil War era civilian would have wanted an army to march through his property, even if he sympathized with their side. He could still expect to have animals go missing and his fences be turned down and used for firewood. Some commanders, such as Robert E. Lee, tried to stop this. When invading Pennsylvania he reminded his troops they made, “war only upon armed men,” and exhorted them to “abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property.”6 Other armies used harsher tactics were also used. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania was burned by Confederates after the townspeople failed to pay a $500,000 ransom.
What distinguished Sherman from most other armies was the intentionality of his destruction. His actual orders were not far from the ordinary, but in his correspondence made his intentions clear. Although other armies wrought similar kinds of destruction, Sherman was different. He launched a campaign for the sole purpose of making war on civilians and turning them against the war. Where other generals tried to constrained the depredations of their men, Sherman encouraged them.
Was He a War Criminal?
Some today argue that Sherman was a war criminal. He was, of course, never prosecuted for his crimes – victors rarely are. In 1863 Lincoln had signed what is called the Lieber Code – the laws of war for the United States armies in the field. This order required that private property be respected, and if military necessity required it to be seized, that the owners be given receipts so they could be indemnified.7 Sherman may have technically been in a gray area. But he said he intended to bring “the sad realities of war home to those who have been … instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities.”8 He clearly was in violation of the spirit of the Lieber Code, the intention of which was to preserve private property whenever possible, not destroy it. If Sherman did the same thing today he could be considered a war criminal. The 1977 Geneva Conventions, which the United States has not ratified, prohibits targeting civilian food, livestock or water.9
What about Other Wars?
It would be easy to condemn Sherman’s actions against the southern people, but it is important to remember how they fit into the future actions of the US Military. The March to the Sea is considered to be one of the first instances of modern warfare, where a scorched earth policy is used and the enemy civilians are a valid and legal military target. Sherman’s actions were child’s play compared to the United State’s policy during World War II, where the enemy countryside was freely bombed. The attacks on Germany and Japan were not, like Sherman’s, on only the supplies and infrastructure of the country. The attacks, culminating in the atomic bombings were intended to kill as many noncombatants as possible. It is ridiculous to even think of comparing Sherman’s march, where the civilians had a few years of hardship while recovering from the destruction, to the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima or Nagasaki, where hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were killed. Rejecting what Sherman did requires the rethinking most of the United State’s wars in the 20th century.
1. Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series I, vol. XLIV, part 1, p. 798.
2. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, by William T. Sherman (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1875), p. 174-176.
3. Marching with Sherman by Henry Hitchcock (University of Nebraska Press, 1995) p. 53.
4. Rethinking Sherman’s March by W. Todd Groce, (New York Times)
5. A Woman’s Wartime Journal by Dolly Sumner Lunt (New York: The Century Co., 1918) p. 21-23, 30-31.
6. Official Records, vol. XXVII, part 3, p. 943.
7. Instruction for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field by Francis Lieber section, 2, paragraph 38.
8. Official Records, vol. XLIV, p. 13.
9. Geneva Conventions, Protocol I, Article 54.
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As an ancestor of a Yankee soldier, I agree that Sherman was a war criminal. We can try to rationalize his behavior and actions, but in the end we can only judge what happened. He did not follow the law of the time and he sought out to hurt women and children. You cannot compare actions of WWII with his actions as you are comparing apples to oranges. Different time, different means, an existing law, and not American against American. Shame on Lincoln for supporting him.
Lisa, You are a descendant, not an ancestor. You have a right to your opinion, but while he certainly was no more perfect than any other human, he was right in one essential thing. The only way to stop a war is to make those both fighting and supporting it want to do that. He would have done better by history if he had made efforts to recruit Atlanta's business community to take charge of the city, prevented actions such as Ebenezer creek and if Pres Andrew Johnson had not nullified his 40 acres and a mule field order. But could he personally constrain an Army that had endured the depredations of three years of hell ? I think not, even if he had wanted to (which is debatable), it was a battle no General could have won. As told in this piece, most of the homes along the route of march, from Atlanta to Savannah, were not burnt or destroyed. The prisoners of war, both at Andersonville (which I recommend be visited) and the northern prison camps bore the worst of the suffering. In the case of most southerners, as a result of supporting the minority (white plantation owners) and fighting their war for them, while many were exempted from service based on the numbers of slaves owned. This war was not about slavery, some say, I say read the record and judge them for their acts, both during the war and for the next 100+ years.
The stories of how Sherman's soldiers raped women is not even mentioned in this article.
"A few years of hardship" is not what a woman lives with after her home has been burned, her food stolen and her very soul has been torn from her through rape.
Not starting the war in the first place would have ended it much sooner, i.e. before it began. Fighting for the aggressor* affords Sherman no room to complain about how long the conflict had lasted or how brutal it had been.
This isn't even up for debate. 3 States (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) only ratified the Constitution explicitly on the condition that they could secede, secession was not among the constitution's restrictions on the states, the constitution grants the federal government no power to stop secession, and the power to dissolve their membership is naturally among those reserved to the states by the tenth amendment. Whatever their reason for exercising their right is completely immaterial. They could have seceded because they didn't like the new drapes in the capitol building and the federal government would have been equally unauthorized to do anything.
Well put Jacob. I am generally blown away by the intellectual gymnastics which are deployed by those who argue against the constitutionality of secession. What Lincoln was doing was a redefining of the relationship between the federal government and the states, and he was doing so with the barrel of a gun.
Slavery was a deplorable institution and had to go, but the war actually had much less to do with the specifics of slavery than most people think. The war absolutely was a war of northern aggression in so far that Lincoln and his cadre were spoiling for it and eventually got what they were after.
My Dad explained Lincoln's objective by focusing on the word "UNITED". Prior to the Civil War we were the united States of America with the word UNITED being an adjective. It describes the relationship of the States with each other. Similar to the word Southern when applied to the States in that region. After the Civil War we changed to the United States of America with the word United now taking the role of a Noun describing the joint states with a proper name.
My Dad is long since dead, and I miss those talks, but this shift from lower case u to upper case U pretty well sums up what happened. It was not like the Constitution changed, just a redefinition of what the terms meant.
TFilsom, sophistry aside, your reply to Lisa is essentially a justification for Sherman's actions, which were criminal in their day and certainly so by today's international legal corpus which governs how armies and their commanders should conduct themselves. To be fair, you are merely elaborating upon the sophistry which forms the basis for Mr Horns argument found throughout this article.
If the question really is "Was Sherman a war criminal?", then the answer is clearly in the affirmative. Period. Full stop. But both you and Mr. Horn seem more interested in providing justifications for Sherman's actions.
Yes, Sherman was and remains a war criminal. And more Americans would follow in his footsteps. Heck, it is too bad that there was no CIA in the 1870s, perhaps Sherman would have made a great director, much like that much more recent immoral criminal, Gina Haspel.
Hi Raymond,
I think you may have missed the point of the article. While I did try to lay the facts out in such a way that someone can come to their own conclusion, I actually agree with you. I think Sherman's actions were immoral and were war crimes, as were far too many actions perpetrated by representatives of the US government, military and civilian, throughout our history.
God Bless you Lisa!
This coward then turned this "tactic" upon the Lakota Tribes. Using his Total War to reduce the Buffalo Herds from 60 million to just under 2 thousand to commit genocide on the Plains Indians.
He should be dug up, stripped of all rank and honors, and buried in a unmarked grave not with real military men.
Sherman is not buried in a military cemetery, so you don't need to worry about that. But if we are going to start digging up every general who ordered and allowed immoral activities in our country's wars, what about the soldiers who participated in them? How many graves would be left?
That's not an accurate analysis in any way. Sherman freed tens of thousands of slaves, from hellish lives of forced labor, rape, and sale far away from their families. Perhaps more than any other General, he is respoinsble for saving as many as perhaps 75,000 people. And, you copletely ignore the fact that the orders for the march were to bring destruction to plantations which had enslaved those people, so I have no sympathy whatsovever for them. Finally the CSA army tried to stop him through what I would describe as scrimishes, but they lost because Johnston's army had been drastically reduced by desertion, to a level of many 20% left. The deserted because they realized that preserve slavery was not worth their lives, and because the war was nearly over. Read Mary Chestnut's Civil War diariers. She was based in Charleston, and was incredibly grate ful that Sherman did not burn the town or kill the plantation owners who felt free to enslave thousands.
Finally 3100 casculaties were incurrred in total, 2100 of those were USA soldiers. Very few civilians died - so we're only talking about property damage. If destruction of property were a war crime (now or then) , the CSA army should have been charged for burning down Chambersburg in 1864, where no USA army was anywhere near to defend them, just because they could not raise the money the CSA army demanded. During the Gettysburg campaign, Confederate troops restrained themselves from destroying non-government property. By the Rebels' next raid into the North, however, the policy had changed.
On July 30, 1864, Brigadier General John McCausland and 2,800 Confederate cavalrymen entered Chambersburg and demanded $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in greenbacks. The residents of Chambersburg failed to raise the ransom, and McCausland ordered his men to burn the town. Flames destroyed more than 500 structures leaving more than 2,000 homeless. One resident died of smoke inhalation. Damage was estimated at more than $1.6 million. To make matters worse, many inebriated Confederate soldiers looted homes and abused civilians. Mobs of angry townspeople looking for retribution killed several Rebels.
Good Samaritans in the Rebel ranks helped citizens escape and save their valuables; a Confederate captain even ordered his company to douse the flames. One officer, Colonel William Peters, staunchly refused to take part in the burning. McCausland had him placed under arrest.
Chambersburg was the only Northern town the Confederates destroyed. The attack inspired a national aid campaign and spurred the Union Army to the aggressive approach that finally won the war.
So, Sherman may not have been a saint, but he was certainly no war criminal. He learned a lesson from the CSA, that bringing war to innocent civilians could bring the Civil War to an earlier end. In that way, he saved untold lives.
The Confederate staes made a serious mistake in seceding. They made a worse mistake in starting the war. If there is ultimate blame to be assessed, it is the plantation owners/politicians like Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens who should have been tried for treason.
But, after sudden and total slave release, what happened to those slaves? Many had nowhere to go and nothing to do. At least before the war they had work, food and shelter. Your jutifucation of Sherman is very "ends justify the means" which is a pretty poor argument to keep Sherman up on.
Yours, Caleb.
If the south "made a mistake" in seceding, what about the North and their tariffs that punished the south before the war ? Did not you hero "Ape Linchrome" order 75,000 Federals to INVADE the south. Lastly as per another poster, seceding was actually CONSTITUTIONAL or allow by it. You need to read more or post less
if you think he was a war criminal you're no yank
Yup, I ain't a Yank.
Thank you for your moral compass, which can be unconditionally supported by the word of God which came to a prophet Shemaiah, who single-handedly told Solomon's heir that he dare not go up to fight against his brothers, the sons of Israel in the northern kingdom. One man stood and said, Go home, Rehoboam, you and your army. "So the Judahites obeyed the word of Yahweh and went home again, as Yahweh had ordered" (1 Ki 12:24). This incident does not say much for American religious culture, backed by pompous fools and clerics who found a way to justify Lincoln's barbarous means to justify their ideals, untempered by wisdom. I would not want to stand in their shoes on judgment day. I am from PA; my ancestors refused to join Lincoln's forces, along with the rest of the Anabaptists and Amish, and were blessed for their civil disobedience.
Sherman was a hero. He brought the war to the rebs, and showed them the cost.
Amen brother
Why don't the Yankees quit retiring south to make us pay the same as their union cities they turned into an expensive poop hole they couldn't wait to leave. You love the north, stay and keep your communist democrat ideas.
Americans can move wherever in the country they want to. It's all the same country, idiot. That was the conclusion of the Civil War after all. It's been 156 years, give it up.
Shame on you. Sherman was NO hero. For example, his troops burned down mills near Roswell, GA. The young, naive and illiterate women who worked at the mills were sent 12 miles away to Marietta, GA. There the 400 young women were put on railcars and sent to Kentucky and Indiana. Then, they were abandoned. Many were unable to find jobs, return home and some had to give up their children as they could not care for them. READ the book "The women will Howl" (Mary Deborah Petite) which documents this kidnapping. The comment "The women will Howl" was a cruel and insensitive remark made by Sherman. His troops also burned down hundreds of homes, churches, businesses, schools, and stole silver, jewelry and anything of value. They destroyed crops and stole livestock. They threw dead animals into wells, so as to cause death or illness to others who drank the water. I'm sure Sherman is playing scrabble with Lucifer.
He freed tens of thousand of slaved people from their horrible lives in the south from labor, rape, and or being sold away from their family’s. If that’s not a hero I don’t know what is
Just look at his photo he looked like a terrible hateful man today he would be a war criminal Grant was no different for what he and Andrew Jackson did to the Indians.
Jackson? Hero. Lee? Hero. They fought tyrrany. Meclellan? Coward. Pope? Braggart. Sheridan? Marauder. Sherman? Marauder. They fought to keep the south under yankee control, not to promote freedom and justice.
Way to go!
You should probably remove that profile picture then, nearly every Serbian American of the 1860s fought for those "rebs" you so shamelessly insult.
Sherman was a War Criminal and should have been hung. My grandmother told me stories, passed down by her mother, about having to eat rats, boiled roots, acorns and hickory nuts. She said not a squirrel or anything remained after Sherman's men came thru. There were also stragglers that came thru, raping and robbing, afterward that were even more dangerous than the main army. Take a ride thru Georgia some day and try to find an old plantation house,, there's a few, but most were burned.
I do believe, when Lee was in the north, he gave strict orders not to harm anything that was not a military target
The winners write the history books.
Sherman came through parts of Bryan County...farms were only the women, children and elderly stayed. Their homes and any form of shelter burned, all food destroyed or taken and anything of any value for that matter. Sherman even sent scouts out to throw the killed livestock down every water well. Old timers still speak of haunted roads were weaker people by the thousands fled and died upon in search of food and shelter. Criminal to say the least.
Frank, I called Bryan County for 21 years, so it is not unknown to me. there were some 4000+ total residents, including those away in the CSA, during those years, according to the 1860 census. I am not an authority on the census, but since the number of southern congressmen depended partly on the 2/3 of a man rule, I would say that includes slaves. There are a number of homes, still standing in Bryan County, from those days, the Mansion at Hardwick being the most impressive, how many were destroyed when much of Bryan, including the county seat at Clyde, became Camp / FT Stewart, I am not sure. It does seem to me you are expressing myth, rather than fact. Peace be with You and all of us.
War as grant said is hell, but sherman went above and beyond to make it worse than hell. Today sherman would be tryed for war crimes and rightfully so.
Sherman fought the war the way it needed to be fought.By making war so terrible it would help Southerners think twice before turning to it again as a tool of political expediency. The story of one southern woman’s experience in Georgia that was said to be typical, in losing all her fated turkeys, pigs, chickens and thousand pounds of meat in her smoke-house showed her and fellow southern citizens just how horrible war actually is.
If that's how to fight a war, Sherman did it well, and the Nazis did it better.
Yours, Caleb.
We condem him for his actions, but he helped bring a quicker end to a war that the Confederacy started. The only rule in war is winning. Putting rules on it is like trying to put in a new ten commandements. People do what the have to do to win. And if it is demoralizing the civilian population so bed. Notice please that I said demoralize and not murder. But the USA has done eay worse since then.
The only rule in war is winning?
You, sir, are a cad, as well as a coward.
War by Sherman, if Really studied, was an outright war on civilians, whom most had no part in the war. They had no slaves. The government of the US would have you believe that Lincoln was freeing the slaves. Poppycock.
The US government sold us up the river to communist China, where most products are made by forced adult and CHILD labor.
Do your homework before opening your piehole.
really now, I'm in China but I see 0 child labor and paid labor, you idiot. know your facts before you type online, and truly open your eyes as well, they are deceived by biased news, which, all news is biased, you cannot trust anyone but yourself. so next time, don't rely on your pathetic daily news to your sources, **** use your own brain.
Joe, if what you say were true, how is it there were so many (almost all) of those civilians, who survived his march to the see. You are correct though, in saying most had no slaves, so why were they fighting for the slave-owners, who were doing their best to avoid the carnage ? Read the debate in the GS statehouse, prior to the vote for secession. Lastly, I've never known anyone who was persuaded by insult. Maybe 150+ years later, it is time to end the debate and wish that the Words of the US Declaration of Independence (celebrated wonderfully in Georgia, by the way) had been meant, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT of Happiness..." Peace to us all.
Your jutifucation of Sherman is very "ends justify the means" which is a pretty poor argument to keep Sherman up on.
Yours, Caleb.
If you're going to view the Civil War through a modern era lens and classify Sherman as a war criminal for waging war in a manner that made the South "feel the cost of war" in order to hasten the South's surrender, you might as well classify President Truman as a war criminal, as well, because hastening WWII's Pacific theater war's end and saving American lives were a couple of major motivations for his decision to drop the bomb. Just saying.
It has been argued that Truman did not use not one, but two, atomic bombs against the Japanese to save American/Allied troops' lives, but to show the Soviet Union what the United States had in its arsenal.
The United States actions to end the war in Japan RAPIDLY were a great benefit to Japan as well as the USA. Have you ever wondered why there is a North and South Korea? The Soviets waited until the bomb was dropped to attack down the peninsula.
If they had done this with Japan you would have had at least 2 countries instead of one. Come to think of it they did take 2 relatively small islands for over 60 years. Look at the 2 Koreas, and ask which one you would rather live in. Then consider if the Soviets took 40% or so of Japan and wonder which country you would want to live in.
Even with the double bombing the Emperor's own palace guard tried to stage a coup to keep the war going. Would this have succeeded if only Hiroshima had been bombed? Another consideration was Japan's own Nuclear program which was hampered by getting enough fissionable U235. But there are alternatives to the explosion bomb including one that tries to poison the target via dirty radiation. Japan's team claimed to be making great strides in 1945, and a year or so extension into the future may have made their bombs a reality, complete with the huge submarines they had produced as a delivery means.
Finally, I am very happy that my Dad did not need to join McArthur's proposed landings. I I don't care if the figure was 1,000,000 dead or even just 10,000 dead. You see, I was born after WW II and kind of needed him to live. Call me selfish if you want, but I am sticking to my relief.
Oh, by the way I had 2 Aunts and 5 JapaneseAmerican cousins from woman 2 Uncles courted and married after the war.
Truman *was* a war criminal.
Sure, Truman killed thousands of innocent civilians, so he's a war criminall, too.
Yours, Caleb.
As a southern born American,taught in southern schools. Sherman has been recused a criminal in all southern teachings. Upon my own research, Sherman was ahead of his time by causing the Concederacy to want an end to war. But on the same hand he did nothing to control his men in the field from destroying targets without due orders from ranking officers. Or those officers freely and knowingly disobeying Sherman's own directive. Turning a blind eye made him a war criminal in his own time.Truman had his own demons and should be judged by rules at that time. We should forget about justifying causes by today's standards. Hindsight is NOT 20/20, it is written by the victor.
Britain's "Bomber" Harris and US General Curtis LeMay...and Truman...war criminals? Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. War criminals.
As we have read so many times, history is written by the victor.
If you're going to contemplate whether Sherman is guilty of war crimes, it should also be pointed out that he - as Commanding General of the Army - used those same methods against Plains Indians in the years following the Civil War.
Buffalo were slaughtered wholesale in order to force starving Indians onto reservations, the government violated countless treaties when mines, railroads, or settlers desired the land, and Native Americans were coerced into abandoning their language, religion, and semi-nomadic ways - all at the point of a gun.
Despite being a southerner, I have very little sympathy for the Confederacy and I think that using such tactics against the indigenous inhabitants of this land was a far worse crime than anything Sherman did during the Civil War.