re: Why did the Union not allow the Confederacy to secede without a war?

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The tales of devastation in the Mississippi Delta and of course in Georgia are appalling.

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And inexcusable and criminal in my opinion.

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Sherman understood that to defeat the South, it meant taking the war to its people. And he did with no mercy.

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That is, of course, the mantra justifying his crimes, and what is trotted out to this day to justify Federal war crimes during the Civil War.

The case that Sherman, his CO Grant, and Lincoln, the Commander in Chief are war criminals is strong.

The Mises Institute has a provocative article, Revionist History and Sherman’s War Crimes bearing on the topic.

Quoting the article:

In his article Why They Raped, Looted, and Plundered, Tom DiLorenzo reviews the evidence of war crimes in “General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous ‘march to the sea’ at the end of the War to Prevent Southern Independence,” observing that: “The Lincoln cult – especially its hyper-warmongering neocon branch – has been holding conferences, celebrations, and commemorations [of the march to the sea] while continuing to rewrite history to suit its statist biases.” The dominant historical narratives admire Sherman’s “total war” policies as a corollary of their admiration for Lincoln’s war. Sherman’s war crimes are well-documented, and the aim of this article is not to revisit the evidence of his war crimes but to examine some of the justifications that are often advanced to exonerate Sherman.

DiLorenzo continues; The Lincoln cult, far from regretting the horrors of that war, continues to view the burning of the South as worthy of celebration. The triumphalist view of Lincoln’s war is reflected in an opinion piece published in the New York Times in 2015, which argued that Sherman’s war crimes were intended “to widen the burden and pain of the war beyond just rebel soldiers to include the civilian supporters of the Confederacy, especially the common folk who filled the ranks of the rebel armies.”

The Mises Institute article also quotes relevant passages from Walter Brian Cisco’s book, War Crimes Against Southern Civilians .