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

quote:

---

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

---

Homicide is when one human being causes the death of another. I'm not sure how you would get someone's head on a like without them being dead.

quote:

---

why wouldn't I be justified in war time?

---

You may be. But what you just did was fantasize about homicide when we are not at war.

quote:

---

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

---

- Sherman

quote:

---

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

---

- Lee

quote:

---

Then how do nations become nations if it was always illegal to break away? 

---

Through war. Governments are self-perpetuating. The ideals of natural rights and individual liberty don't mean jack shite to people whose sole purpose is to exert power over you and control you. The United States is good at lecturing the rest of the world about these platitudes but, in reality, they don't practice a bit of what they preach.

The South isn’t one type of person, despite what this board would lead you to believe. It’s an eclectic mix. I don’t hate “my people” because that’s an oversimplification.

quote:

---

lands

---

Why would I hate the lands? You sound like a simpleton.

quote:

---

culture

---

I love most of the cultural aspects of my home, just not that 2nd place trophy of a flag you guys like waving around

quote:

---

ancestors

---

My ancestors didn’t own slaves. That being said, if someone’s did or fought for the right of others to, I find that shameful.

No one from West Point, military intelligence, or any foreign military in 1860s would have made that odd, bastardized cartoon.

There was a good reason R E Lee was offered full command of Union army and good reason Lincoln had to burn through several political military appointees before he stumbled upon men of substance in Grant and Sherman; also was at the time the North’s resources and the original Anaconda plan was outlasting and overmatching inferior Southern manpower and logistics.

The north fought that war with one hand behind its back and if it weren’t for superior generalship, the south would have been beaten long before.

quote:

---

men of substance in Grant and Sherman

---

Men of substance? Sherman was a piece of shite.

quote:

---

The buffalo were a critical part of those traditions. Plains Indians relied on bison for food and housing, and the wild buffalo was seen as a sacred animal. At the time,between 30 and 60 million buffalo are thought to have roamed the plains—and Sherman knew that if the buffalo went, so would Native Americans. “The government realized that as long as this food source [and] key cultural element was there,” anthropologist and Native American studies professor S. Neyooxet GreymorningtoldIndian Country Today, “it would have difficulty getting Indians onto reservations.”

---

quote:

---

Destroying the buffalo meant destroying Native Americans, so Sherman honed in on the animals. As long as the buffalo roamed, he wrote to fellow general Philip Sheridan in 1868, Native Americans would follow them. “I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America…this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt,” hewrote, “and make one grand sweep of them all.”

---

quote:

---

By the time Sherman retired in 1884, he had succeeded in forcing Plains Indians onto reservations. As historian David D. Smitswrites, “With the mainstay of their diet gone the Indians had no choice but to accept a servile fate on a reservation where they could subsist on government handouts.” And in the words of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull, “a cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell—a death-wind for my people.”

---

Sherman's take on the Native Americans:

quote:

---

General William Tecumseh Sherman’s letter to John Sherman Sept. 23, 1868 “…But the more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war. For the more I see of these Indians the more convinced am I that they have all to be killed, or be maintained as a species of paupers.”

---

quote:

---

I was referring to Sherman as being a force to be reckoned with militarily, not commenting on morality or ethics.

---

Only because he lacked morals to not go scorched earth. Anybody can do that but few are willing to go that far. Most people abhor the thought of killing women and children.

quote:

---

Sherman wrote to Grant: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." Writing two days later to his brother John, General Sherman said: "I suppose the Sioux must be exterminated . . ." (Fellman, p. 264). This was Sherman’s attitude toward Southerners during the War for Southern Independence as well. In a July 31, 1862 letter to his wife (from his Collected Works) he wrote that his purpose in the war was: "Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [Southern] people." His charming and nurturing wife Ellen wrote back that her fondest wish was for a war "of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like the Swine into the sea."

---

And if you think that Sherman's army was trying to fight for black people and equality, think again.

quote:

---

Sherman himself certainly did not believe that "each man is as good as another." For example, in 1862 Sherman was bothered that "the country" was "swarming with dishonest Jews" (see Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 153). He got his close friend, General Grant, to expel all Jews from his army. As Fellman writes, "On December 17, 1862, Grant . . . , like a medieval monarch . . . expelled u2018The Jews, as a class,’ from his department." Sherman biographer Fellman further writes that to Sherman, the Jews were "like ni**ers" and "like greasers (Mexicans) or Indians" in that they were "classes or races permanently inferior to his own."

---

You're right. I think Sherman was wrong to burn his way to Atlanta. The war should have been fought more politely by dragging on for a few more years and killing a few hundred thousand more people.

quote:

---

This board is rife with Confederate sympathizers. Don’t be shocked if your upvote/downvote ratio is arse

---

I was totally ignorant of defenses of the Confederacy until fairly recently and I grew up in the Deep South. It wasn’t until I got into libertarianism that I’d encountered it, and from the mouths of a man from New Jersey and another from Massachusetts. This shouldn’t be so. Southerners should be able to defend certain aspects of their history, and I’m glad people on here do.

quote:

---

That a-hole wanted to kill all of the Native Americans as a genocide.

---

Sherman's actions would speak differently. Sure, he privately wrote to Grant and his brother that he wanted to kill every Sioux indian he could find, regardless of gender or age, after Fetterman Massacre of 1866. However, he never seriously thought about putting that policy into practice. In fact, he went out of his way to protect natives from being swindled by white traders who moved into the area. It cannot be denied that Sherman was a racist and a white supremacist. His writings on the subject of blacks and American indians speak plainly enough on that subject. However, he was no genocidal mad man as you are trying to make him out to be.

Also...while Sherman encouraged and supported the idea of killing the buffalo, he never actively pursued a campaign to systematically kill them all. No orders or dispatches exist telling any of his subordinate commanders to kill the buffalo. It also must be remembered that the U.S. Army was at war with various Native American tribes during his tenure in the regular army after the Civil War. It was his duty to protect American settlers on the Great Plains and the railroads that were under construction that were considered vital to U.S. Army operations in that part of the country.

The Indian Wars weren't one sided, genocidal affairs. There was give and take on each side. The strong, united and more industrious nation won the final victory and, as terms of their defeat, the natives were forced onto reservations. It sucked for them but to the victor go the spoils.