re: On this day 157 years ago, William T. Sherman presented Savannah, GA to Lincoln...

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Coolidge would be up there for sure.

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Coolidge would never have been president if not for Lincoln keeping the Union together.

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This is a fricking horrid take.

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Explain, please. You can't call Sherman a war criminal for burning through the Deep South and, in the same breath, praise generals such as LeMay, Spaatz, and Doolittle as war heroes when their strategic air bombing campaign killed millions of innocent civilians. If you are willing to excuse the latter but not the former then you are nothing more than a hypocrite.

In fairness, I will grant you that Spaatz wasn't purposefully trying to kill German civilians. Though there are exceptions to this (Dresden). LeMay, however, was absolutely trying to terror bomb the Japanese civilians into submission.

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You don't really know what you're talking about.

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Look in the mirror. Where did the cotton that was used in Northern textile mills come from? My statement said that those folks had no problem getting rich off Southern cotton, not that the majority of it went there. The fact is, Northern industrialists got filthy rich off the institution.

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Northern industrialists got filthy rich off the institution.

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Another Project 1619: Everything you love about America is because of the Man keeping the Soul Brother down proponent.

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Another Project 1619: Everything you love about America is because of the Man keeping the Soul Brother down proponent.

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Lol. I'm probably farther away from Project 1619 than you are. This is about abject hypocrisy. You can't complain about the institution of slavery when it's made you filthy rich. It's akin to someone with a Free Tibet sticker whose entire wardrobe and personal property collection come from China.

Agreed, the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were gratuitous and brutal.

Reality is that Sherman has a lot of things attributed to him that simply did not happen. He was moving fast towards Savannah and his Army overall was not stopping in place for too long. They left a trail of destruction, no doubt, but shite like that happens in war. Napoleon destroyed towns and villages on his way to Russia. The British were no angels, the French would relocate whole populations in Algeria. Germans...well they were masters

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I'm on the team that intends to put heads on pikes

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And how long have you been having these homicidal fantasies?

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They left a trail of destruction, no doubt

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And even that is overstated - in Georgia:

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Sherman did not burn Atlanta to the ground when he began his march, and he did not destroy everything in his path through Georgia. His army systematically destroyed only property connected with the Confederate war effort, Union prisoners of war, or slavery. However, Sherman's Union soldiers, Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, deserters from both sides, fugitive slaves, and pillaging Southern civilians wantonly destroyed property. The anarchy aided Sherman's psychological cause and resulted in heavy though not total damage. Military and civilian casualties were extremely low.

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...if not in South Carolina:

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Sherman had realized the potential for terror his army would bring to bear on the state that was the cradle of the Confederacy. “The truth is the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance on South Carolina,” he had written on Christmas Eve, 1864. “I almost tremble at her fate but feel she deserves all that seems in store for her.” Sherman's men—his “bummers,” as they styled themselves—shared in this contempt for Confederates, especially those of the South Carolina gentry. “Nearly every man in Sherman's army say they are ready for destroying everything in South Carolina,” one private wrote home from Savannah before the campaign resumed, while another confirmed after they had finished that “in South Carolina, there was no restraint whatever in pillaging and foraging. Men were allowed to do as they liked, burn and destroy”
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Seven years after the war, Sherman testified that he had not ordered the burning of Columbia, but that “If I [had] made my mind to burn Columbia I would have burnt it with no more feeling than I would a common prairie dog village.”

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nah. Obviously that was a joke.

But I'm not sure why you would describe what I wrote as homicide fantasy.

All is fair in war, right?

If Sherman was justified, why wouldn't I be justified in war time?

Was Quantrill justified? Was Bloody Bill Anderson?