"Wrestling With a Revised View of Sherman’s March " Topic

"ATLANTA — This city would seem a peculiar place for sober conversation about the conduct of William T. Sherman.
To any number of Southerners, the Civil War general remains a ransacking brute and bully whose March to the Sea, which began here 150 years ago on Saturday, was a heinous act of terror. Despite the passage of time, Sherman remains to many a symbol of the North's excesses during the Civil War, which continues to rankle some people here.
Yet this week, Atlanta became the site of a historical marker annotating Sherman folklore to reflect an expanding body of more forgiving scholarship about the general's behavior. One of the marker's sentences specifically targets some of the harsher imagery about him as "popular myth."…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

good

Very valid points – and there certainly remains lingering bitterness; an old teacher of mine, a proper Virginia gentleman, used to talk about things going very wrong as "just like Sherman went though Georgia" – and he certainly still sounded ticked off

Certainly the March to the Sea has become the best-known example of the hard conduct of the War by 1864. Here in Virginia we tend to think of the burning of the Shenandoah Valley (like Sherman, Sheridan did not burn residences). Lest we think it was all one-sided, the burning of Chambersburg PA by Confederates under McCausland comes to mind.

Not to make light of anyone's feelings, but compared to war in the 20th Century the Civil War was a church picnic in terms of civilian hardship.

While it is true that compared to many of the 20th century wars the civil war was "tame", there were parts of it (the Missouri-Kansas stuff, the aboriginal element of the war, and the nasty fighting between the Confed government and deserters in Florida ) that would fit fine in Bosnia in the 1990s, or Russia in the RCW.

Sherman's March to the Sea was the "nuke" that quickened the end of a very brutal war. Think August 1945--two planes, two bombs,two cities destroyed and the War in the Pacific ended. Both tactics saved further loss of life. Some of Sherman's current day critics might not be alive today if the war had continued past April 1865. Embrace Sherman--live with it!

Best, Lowell D. Hamilton

From what I've read, including some of the authors mentioned in the article, most private homes were left untouched by Sherman's men, with one caveat. If they were still occupied by their owners. If the families left and abandoned their homes, than they were usually ransacked and could be torched. Rarely was a home destroyed if the occupants were still there. Now, of course, everything could be stolen and confiscated.

I think the key here is that while Sherman laid down orders protecting private property, he did not enforce any punishments against those who violated orders and destroyed property. He had laid down the law, but he wasn't going to enforce it. Case in point, yes, Sherman did officially order Confederate and industrial property to be destroyed in Atlanta before evacuating on his March to the Sea. He even had his engineers do it properly. However, he didn't punish any of the other soldiers who took matters into their own hands and burned property without orders to do so.

I tend to side more with the "revisionists" than those who say Sherman just ordered everything burned indiscriminately.

I did just finish reading Steve Davis' What the Yankees Did to Us, mentioned in the article. A great book focusing on the bombardment of Atlanta, the civilian perspective, and the damage done during the siege and afterwards. Great book.

I think it was Sherman who stated that, "War is hell."

I was born in Columbia, SC, a town which that Limb-of-Satan Sherman burned to the ground. Reimagining the Northern Invasion as less than a tragedy is proof that States Rights verses an overreaching Federal Government has not diminished with time.

You know, you are correct. I was speaking mostly about Georgia. I think Sherman did cut loose in the Carolinas with no pretense at anything but revenge. But again, I think it falls even more toward stating an official policy and doing nothing to punish or censure those who disobeyed them. I mean really, the war will be over in a few months. Do you really think Sherman was going to destroy any careers at that point over a few rebel houses or towns. After all, they brought it upon themselves. That's my opinion of his mindset.

And Morgan's raiders were such nice fellows on their ride through Indiana and Ohio?

Sir Walter,
Be aware that Wade Hampton burned cotton and other supplies as he retreated from Columbia. Columbia was on fire as Sherman's armies approached and entered the city. His soldiers even tried to extinguish some of the fires. All of the burning was not of Federal origin. Besides, the Confederates started the War of Southern Suicide in South Carolina--didn't they think that they would "get their hair mussed" as a result?
Best, Lowell

Please let us not get any more into the whole who did what and why. It is obvious that Sherman's depredations have been exaggerated by the Lost Cause historians and advocates, but also clear that bad things did happen.

It is good that it is reevaluated. Myths are bad for history.

War is brutality and killing, and destruction. As Sherman said one might as well send appeals to the thunderstorm as to decry the wastage of war. Regardless of Sherman's "Bummers" or Southern guerillas, or policy or purposeful intent to "make Georgia Howl" there were burnings, and lootings, and murders and rapes aplenty in all wars. As the Romans said, "Inter Armes, Leges Silent." In time of arms the law Is silent. Read Shakespeare's Henry V, prologue, or his appeal before the gates of Harfleur.

It would be best if we did not do it at all.

This is one of the reasons I game primarily in the 18th Century and in Imagi-nations. There we can indulge our fantasy that armies engaged in a complicated minuet of maneuver, of long lines of supply of scrupulously leaving the peasants alone, and of waging a war almost incognito.

Having just come back from Remembrance day at Gettysburg this has a certain currency for me. I went with a re-enacting unit I belong to and support, though I am not a re-enactor. Each year they place flags on the graves of the New Jersey dead at the cemetery in Gettysburg. There are also many other dead from other wars buried there and on a cold, somber overcast day it is somewhat moving to walk slowly and reverently between the markers, reading the names or the "Unknown" from the Civil War and other wars and reflect on the MAN that lays below the ground. To read his name, to try and conjure up what he might have looked like, to wonder on his life, his home and his family that never saw him again.

The re-enacting unit comes up with drum and fife and banners flying. They are all old men, most of them way out of shape with gray hairs and beards, too old to even have been let in to the army had they been back there, and with them a gaggle of wives and friends, and children and grand children. One man a sergeant steps out after a brief speech and "recruits" the kids to place the flags on the grave, the state flag and the stars and stripes, and even the youngest try to do it. Eleven and 13 years olds usually so exhuberant in youth are subdued and silent. They perform their duty swiftly and reverently. A beautiful little three year old girl does so and gazes down at the small head-stone. She sees someone has put a penny on one of the stones nearby and she turns her head up to ask her mother if she can have a penny to put on the stone of her soldier. The mother, her eyes brimming with tears of love for her daughter gives her the penny, and she places it, and tears now run down her cheeks too.

Her older brother jams down his kids-sized kepi square on his head and stands by her for a moment.

And so it is.

It is at this point that I mutter a prayer that these two beautiful children will never have to experience the pain of war, and loss, and a loved one never coming home- or them never coming home.

If you read the newspapers of the time, the books of the time, you will find out that the American Civil War was prosecuted with white-hot heat on both sides. This was a bitter war to both North and South. The words and sentiments expressed at the time were not bland and gentle pieties but white hot. That the people who spoke these words did not transmit them into action, so that there was no American Magdeburg, No American "Sacco De Roma" is a tribute to those people who lay beneath the cold sod on this November morning, and the people more than a century and a half ago who lived and carried on.

I think it was Sherman who stated that, "War is hell."

"War is cruelty. The crueler we make it, the faster it will be over."

Or

"War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it;"

"War is hell" quote comes from an address he gave in 1879. The war is cruelty quotes come from 1864. The sentiment is still the same.

@Cleburne1863. Sherman hung a number of his men who violated his orders and General Order 100 (aka the Lieber Code). Read the records: link

The link is bad, but I'd love to read it!

In many parts of the south, the destruction by Hunter, Sherman and Sheridan was every bit as bad as southern tradition has described. In a few areas it was even worse. In other areas it was far less. Southern tradition does not usually distinguish between damage done pursuant to official policy, and what was simply tolerated. It also does not usually distinguish between damage done by troops in the ranks or by hangers on. This could include troops out of the ranks and thus outside the control of officers. It could also include deserters from both armies, escaped slaves and criminal elements.

Wars have not been kind to civilian populations and businesses that found themselves in the path of armies. The ACW was no exception. The Confederates engaged in some of this, such as Jackson's looting of the B&O at the beginning of the war. Hunter, Sherman and Sheridan did ramp things up though, and they did so after the Confederacy had largely lost its ability to retaliate in kind. Chambersburg was an exception, and U.S. officials did not look on McCausland's actions with the same approval as what their armies were doing in the south. It is no comfort that what happened in Missouri-Kansas and what happened in other wars before and since demonstrates it could have been worse for the Confederate civilian populations of Georgia, South Carolina and the Shenandoah Valley.

Southern outrage over this is all part and parcel of their 150-year attempt to deny any responsibility for what happened. They secedded from the Union to safeguard their own selfish interests, they started a war that killed 620,000 people. But if a few of their homes get destroyed--how barabaric! Those savage Yankees! Yeah, right. It's the same sort of arrogance that brought Southern congressmen and senators back to Washington in the fall of 1865 expecting to just resume their old seats in Congress as if nothing had happened.

War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

William Tecumseh Sherman

I like Sherman's 'they started it and I'm going to finish it' attitude, particularly in the Carolinas.

Wilson's Raid through Alabama and Georgia has to be worthy of mention too!

A bit shrill Mr. Washburn. To be precise, the South did not want a war, they wanted to secede. That this necessitated a war was obvious to us, but not necessarily so to many in both the North and South in 1860. Like all wars, the Civil War soon gathered a momentum and will of its own that neither could control.

Thus it is well for us to remember the words of the Athenian Envoys to the Spartan Ephors at the start of the Peloponnesian War.

"Do not be hasty therefore in involving yourselves in the interest of others, and consider, while there is still time the inscrutable nature of war, and how it often ends by being a matter of mere chance."

Call me old, call me senile, call me soft hearted but while these things didn't bother me when I was young, I find that now that I am old I can no longer look on pictures of the dead, even the dead of a despised enemy, with equanimity and a clear conscience. Always I ask when I see some mangled corpse the question "What sis did you do, or your parents do that caused you to be killed in such a horrible way?" The dead are perhaps serving in a reprehensible cause, but their mother, father, sister, brother, etc will mourn their passing and their bodies may be destroyed in such a way that they can never have the last embrace, the last kiss of a grieving family.

Please understand, I am completely in agreement with Sherman, BUT there must be a humanity to this, but at some point we must cease to despise the despised enemy and see the human being.

I remember a story of World War II in the last days when the German Army in France was smashed up and many German fortifications simply dissolved. A German captain staggered up to a French farmhouse. He was just about done in. He was wounded. He asked the French woman in there to please give him some food. She took him in, gave him food, dressed his wound, and let him sleep in a bad for the evening. When he thanked her profusely, she said to him that her son was among the prisoners in Germany and she hoped that he would receive some kind treatment from some mother on the other side just as she had done for him.

I recall an incident where a group of Union Soldiers were despoiling a southern farm. A colored Sergeant came up and ordered the white soldiers to "Move along, you've had your fun!" He brought the cow they had taken back to the woman so the children would have milk.

Go read "The man he killed" by Thomas Hardy.
The Man He Killed

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because—
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like—just as I—
Was out of work—had sold his traps—
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.

or Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Otto

Otto,

You act as if Sherman's army slaughtered every living thing in its path. I've yet to read anywhere that Sherman's men murdered unarmed civilians during its march.

So perhaps I'm shrill, but it's shrill truth.

Can we calm down? These acts if done, were done to people long dead. Not to me, not to you, not to us. At most to your grand-parents, and probably great-grand parents.

I think that Otto is simply saying that we must try to temper cruelty with humanity. While Sherman is right on many things he is wrong on one. War is not a storm or the sea. War is a choice. A conscious choice made from the leaders who order armies to march, to the soldiers who march, to the civilians you drive them on. And cruelty in war is also a choice. Some is unavoidable, but one can up the ante by a lot. Maybe you have to, maybe you do not, but one must not just accept it as unavoidable, let alone celebrate it.

Yes I to get tired of Southern Apologists. I remember when I visited Chickamagua a poor park ranger that with a smile had to hear a certain Southern Gentleman harangue him about how good blacks had it in the Confederacy , how the South was the noblest fight ever, and how the blacks would had been better off if the south had won. Emetic. Let us not emulate such pathetic examples.

The Union won. The Union was preserved. Slavery in North America was killed. We should be happy with that.

and frankly this has crossed the war-gaming line to what is essentially politics.

Dear Mr Washburn

At no time did I say that or imply that. I am not apologizing for the south. I am simply saying that not everyone in the South wanted war and wanting war does not mean they warrant the brutalities of war. In most cases those who wish war are usually exempt from its brutalities and those who had no choice in it are those upon whom they are visited.

It is wise to remember that the man across the way is a man too.

As I said before in time of war the law is silent.

Southern outrage over this is all part and parcel of their 150-year attempt to deny any responsibility for what happened. They secedded from the Union to safeguard their own selfish interests, they started a war that killed 620,000 people. But if a few of their homes get destroyed--how barabaric! Those savage Yankees! Yeah, right. It's the same sort of arrogance that brought Southern congressmen and senators back to Washington in the fall of 1865 expecting to just resume their old seats in Congress as if nothing had happened.

Yes, same with the whole "States Rats" thing – it was the rights of a state to allow slavery within it boarders.

Trouble is Otto, once the genie of war is out of the bottle you can't really put it back.

Sherman ended the war in the most effective manner by hitting at the remainder of the Southern economy. If the South could not produce the materials of war or transport them to the front then war could not be fought and certainly not one. Same with Sam Grant, I have ten men, you have three, you kill 6 mine, I kill all three of yours, I've four left I win.

The morale of this story is 'don't bring a knife to a gun fight' – the South misjudged the situation and paid the penalty. The only up side is we get to refight it on the tabletop 150 years later. Northerns also get to wear our "Uncle Billy's Dixieland Tour" t-shirts and to have "You lost – get over it" bumper stickers.

Dear 138 Squadron RAF

But we do don't we? We do put it back.

No one forces anyone to do evil. Regardless of the causes and laws of war it is individual choice and action that does either good nor evil. The quality of mercy is not strained.

We are not in this cast talking about rules of war or grand principles, or over-arching themes we are speaking of the actions and courses of men in their day to day actions where they have volition and choice.

At the heart of it, in the very root of it, the poor woman of France on one level helped the starving German captain to live and even to escape. She did it, she said, because her boy was a prisoner and she hoped some stranger would help him. But beyond that I am convinced that in the midst of evil, in the midst of degradation and pain and suffering and madness, people will sometimes do good only because they wish to do good in a world that is falling apart. It is, perhaps the ultimate rebellion and protest against what is "au courant" around them. In his great work "End of the World " By Otto Friederich, in the chapter "The Kingdom of Auschwitz" Taddeaus Borozelski (pardon if I spelled it wrong) an inmate of Auschwitz noted that men do evil and cruelty first out of compulsion, then out of duty, then out of indifference, and finally because they like it. But in some people there comes a time, even among the evil ones, when they say enough is enough and they yearn to do good for others, for the world, for themselves. Where the law is silent it is our own actions and deeds that define us.

In this world you are free to be as evil or as good as you wish to be.

Otto,

The Southern Apologists put Sherman's march as one long version of the 2nd SS Division's march through France in June and July of 1944. There is, of course, one difference; every Southern settlement suffered the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane.

I am reminded of Voltaire's "Candide" and the description of the fight between the Bulgars and the Abares that took place tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes.

In war there is good and evil but ultimately one philosophy must dominate – pragmatism. (Sorry my Myers-Briggs type indicator comes on as INTJ)

link

There is, of course, one difference; every Southern settlement suffered the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane.

Every Southern settlement had all their men machinegunned, then immolated? And every Southern settlement had all of their women and children burned alive in a church?

I must have missed that class.

There is, of course, one difference; every Southern settlement suffered the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane.

Delete "every" insert "no". I think that covers it.

Dear Squadron 138 RAF

The Southern apologists will do what they wish. It's no point arguing with them, it's a matter of faith. It's like atheists and creationists arguing. NEITHER is going to accept as authoritative the sources both will bring to buttress their arguments. Therefore, debate on the matter is impossible.

An example of the reverse of this are ScottS and Trajanus, who are taking to task your sentence, taking it out of the context you put it in, namely that is the assertion of Southern Apologists.

The problem of your position of alleged "pragmatism" is that if you are gong to be rigorously pragmatic, then the assertion that in devastating the Southern lands in Georgia and the Carolinas you would shorten the war, falls apart because Sherman DID NOT behave to the peoples in the South as the Nazi's did in Oradour-sur-Glane or elsewhere. If you are going to destroy the Southern ability to wage war, then he should have shot the 13 to 17 year olds who would be the future recruits, their mothers too as the place from which new Southerners sprung, the fathers who were too old to till the farms and so forth.

Second, the justification of "pragmatism" requires you to prove that what Sherman did actually, materially, physically, and morally shortened the war. That's a tough job.

My own opinion is simply that what happened, happened and there is no point in trying to put a moral justification on it. Nor is there any point in trying to condemn or excoriate it on a wide scale basis. Much the same with slavery. Slavery may be an institution but it was dependent upon there being people actually in bondage for its moral force. Having a society which has the institution of slavery, but no slaves, is a morally vacuous point. It's the obverse of having a "theoretical liberty" which cannot be practiced. So the institution of slavery derives is abhorrentness from the ACTUAL possession of slaves. That is by empowered moral "actors" upon powerless "patients", the slaves.

But to return to Sherman. Pragmatism implies, nay necessitates a clear cause and effect, that the actions done (regardless of their moral content) will be the cause of the desired effect. If they are not then pragmatism on its own definition collapses.

My point in this is again. What was done was done, and there is little else you can say about it. Like slavery it depends on deeds and actions.

I think that Sherman's March contributed not one bit to the ending of the war. All those hogs and hams, butter and berry pies were never going to reach the army anyway because the Southern transportation system, and the very means to collect and send them to the armies had by 1864 collapsed entirely. I do think it was an act of pure vengeance and spite, vandalism and hooliganry. As such it was absolutely necessary and useful to show in every real sense how the North felt about the Rebellion and what the possible results of a punative peace would be if carried to the extreme. That is, if the South was going to fight to the last man on the battlefield and carry it on as a guerilla movement. I do not believe this was the stated intention, or the purpose of it-- consciously-- but the South got the message. The bad part of it was the talking points it gives the Southern Apologist as to how the South was defeated, and to give them a few straws of victimhood to cloak themselves with to hid the utter moral evil of slavery.

Indeed! What is staggering about Sherman's march was the overwhelming degree to which the Union Soldiery did not take advantage of the situation and push to the ultimate the possibilities they had as empowered moral actors over the defenseless patients. Had they wished to they certainly could have behaved as the 2nd SS did on it's march through France. That was done NOT from any policy or pragmatism or general orders, it was done on an individual person to person basis of moral action arising from within the heart of the participants themselves.

An example of the reverse of this are ScottS and Trajanus, who are taking to task your sentence, taking it out of the context you put it in, namely that is the assertion of Southern Apologists.

I understand perfectly well that the comparison was attributed to "Southern Apologists," thanks.

Nonetheless, I think that the assertion is so off-base that it deserves to be countered and refuted regardless of whether is a direct statement or a quote.

OSchmidt, your logic is making my head hurt :)

So you are saying that a society that permits slavery is okay as long as it doesn't own any slaves? Is a society that allows murder and rape also okay as long as no one commits any murders or rapes?

At the same time you are lauding the men of Sherman's Army for not committing those excesses even though they have the power to do so. Isn't it possible that they controlled themselves precisely because their society (and in this case their commanding officer) had taught them that such things were abominable?

Nonetheless, I think that the assertion is so off-base that it deserves to be countered and refuted regardless of whether is a direct statement or a quote.

I'm up that end of the market. I don't like Oradour-sur-Glane being held up as an example of anything other than what it was.

Nor do I like its use, intentionally or otherwise, by moronic Hollywood film directors – but that's another story.

Burning a bit of Georgia (just the 60 mile wide part) did make the soldiers and officers in the ANV worry about the safety of their people left at home and about their wealth and possessions. As long as the war was far away and couldn't hurt their position in society and their wealth- they would continue to fight. But personal loss!!!! Bombing the dickens out of Germany had a similar effect in WWII. Why would the Union not attack the parts of the Confederate country that they were not strong enough to defend?

Dear Scott Washburn

Not at all.

A society which permits these things in theory is still deficient in its theory and in allowing for the theoretical existence of these things creating an incipient evil. Saying these things are right is a type of evil, but it is not the ultimate evil of actually committing and doing them.

One may harbor murderous thoughts against another, but so long as they remain thoughts alone, no crime is committed. Thus a society that may accept of slavery, may commit a horrible deed, in ones mind, but if no one is actually a slave or enslaved then no other person is harmed by this. That is, enslaved or kept in slavery. There must be this dichotomy otherwise mere thought would be punishable rather than deeds.

Now laws are slightly different from thoughts, but of the same order. There are many laws still on the books that are cruel, unjust, and perhaps absurd given our modern condition. But these laws are never enforced and no one would think of every doing so simply because we have not done so in ages and do not even consider them laws any more. This is the genius of the Common Law system, which is that a law may be written in platinum letters on granite and if no one considers it a law, it's not a law, and if it isn't written down anywhere, but everyone considers it a law, it is a law as if it were written down in platinum in granite.

Consider the above in a historical sense.

The South was a slave holding society which considered the holding of slaves just for whatever reason they did. The Exact reason need not concern us. Mushmouth supports the idea of slavery and the society that pronounces it just, but he owns no slaves, and never had. What is the moral culpability of Ole Mushmouth. On the other hand, there is Punkinpuss who lives in the South and does not believe in slavery and owns no slaves himself, but he will support the South for the simple reason it is his home. What is his moral culpability? It would seem even less than that of Mushmouth, yet even Mushmouth owns no slaves so he is neither benefitting by the unfair appropriation of the slaves labor, and certainly he is not whipping or mistreating or raping his slaves.

So Unka billy comes thorough in 1864. The homes of Mushmouth and Punkinpuss are destroyed and devastated because they are not home (they are off serving in the army) but that of Lucius T. Cornpone, the local plantation owner who made Simon Legree look like Mother Theresa is not because he remains at home with his family, and even though his slaves have run away.

Now the point is not to dream up a contrary case, as I have but to illustrate there is a difference between what one believes or allows (man or state) an the actual commission of those allowences.

In fact, you realize that the shoe is very much on the other foot with the Northerners. John Mack Farragher in his Sugar Creek: Live on the Illinois (or is it Indiana) frontier demonstrates quite clearly that most of the middle Midwest was not settled by foreigners from Europe, but from poor whites from the Georgia and Alabama uplands squeezed out by the plantation and slave-holding south.
This meant that while they may have hated slavery, at the same time they had no love for the slave.

It is a complicated matter.

But it should be simple to see that again, while certain thoughts might be unpleasant and even reprehensibe, even criminal, they are not punishable unless actuated upon. but itHowever that they do not have or do these things in action, that is, have slaves or commit rape and murder, even though they consider it allowable is another thing entirely.

Otto

Dear Scott Washburn

I bifurcated my reply for clarity.

The men in Sherman's army who did not do these things did not do them because they thought they were abominable. That was my point. That in the end it is the personal decision to do good or evil that separates the good from the evil.

Each person makes a decision of what they shall and shall not do.

Unlike us who are swayed by considerations of expediency and pragmatism, virtually all of these people also believed that they would answer for their deeds before a supreme God who would know the motivations of their deeds and would judge them by words of their savior as to what they did.

To delve into their minds, they were a people very much swayed by the words of Christ who said "I tell you on that day many shall call upon me saying "Lord, Lord" but If you call me "Lord" why do you not do what I say? I tell you truthfully on that day I shall say "I do not know you."

Head… still… hurts…

So, you are saying that a person who doesn't agree with the bad policies of the nation they live in, nor actually engage in those policies, but who also takes no action to change those policies, nor even speak against them, and who also indirectly supports those policies by performing productive labor and paying taxes to support the economy of that nation should somehow be exempted from the military actions of another nation which is making war to stop those bad policies?

I can't agree with that. Nor is it practical in the real world. It's like saying that during World War II, Germans who didn't agree with Hitler's actions should have painted "Not a Nazi" on the roofs of their houses and thus be spared the attention of Allied bombers.

It's like the old saying: "All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

There is also a question of morality.

It doesn't matter if this mythical state has a permissive attitude to slavery that no one takes advantage of, there is immoral intent on behalf the state in the acceptance of possibility.