An Op-Ed from this week's New Yawk Times, a noted publication known for its Yankee sympathies:
QuoteDisunion
Rethinking Sherman's March
By W. Todd Groce
November 17, 2014
The March to the Sea has come down to us as an act of savage brutality perpetrated by one of the great villains of American history. Just the mention of William Tecumseh Sherman's name conjures images of burning cities, ransacked plantations and terror stricken women and children, à la "Gone with the Wind." Even after the passage of 150 years and dozens of scholarly books on the general and his march, most conversations about Sherman continue to generate more heat than light.
After three years of fighting and over half a million dead, by the fall of 1864 the United States still had not suppressed what Union leaders considered a slaveholders' rebellion and arguably the most potent threat ever posed to the nation's existence. Faced with continued resistance and climbing casualty figures, Sherman decided that the time had come 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.
Sherman believed that forcing noncombatants to feel what he called the "hard hand of war" was a military necessity. Making the war as harsh as possible would bring victory more quickly and with a minimum loss of life on both sides, undermine Confederate morale on the home front, trigger a wave of desertions from the insurgent armies, destroy the Confederacy's ability to wage war and prove to the rebels that their cause was hopeless and their government impotent to protect them and their property.
This new "hard war" doctrine was fully sanctioned by the United States government. The previous year, President Abraham Lincoln had approved the creation of the Lieber Code, a set of rules based on accepted practices that authorized the Army to destroy civilian property, starve noncombatants, shell towns, keep enemy civilians in besieged cities, free slaves and summarily execute guerrillas if such measures were deemed necessary to winning the war and defending the country. "To save the country," the code's author, the Columbia law professor Francis Lieber, stated, "is paramount to all other considerations." Like other wartime chief executives right down to the present day, Lincoln was willing to take drastic measures to ensure the survival of the United States.
So on Nov. 15, 1864, Sherman's army set out from Atlanta on its infamous March to the Sea, cutting a swath of destruction toward Savannah on the coast. Sherman swore to "make Georgia howl," and in his Special Field Order No. 120 he laid out the rules of destruction and conduct for the march. The army was to "forage liberally on the country" with details of men and officers sent out each day to gather food. Soldiers were instructed not to enter private homes and to discriminate between the rich, "who are usually hostile," Sherman observed, and the poor and industrious, who were usually "neutral or friendly."
To be sure, there was more destruction than allowed by these orders. Sherman's soldiers, as the historian Joseph Glatthaar has written, saw this "as a golden opportunity to teach the people of Georgia ... the hardships and terrors of [a] war" which they blamed Confederates for starting and continuing, despite repeated defeats on the battlefield. Some homes, especially those of wealthy slaveholders considered guilty of bringing on the war, were burned; private dwellings were entered and personal property was taken or ruined; and civilians were stripped of more food than the army needed or could possibly consume. Beyond food and livestock, high-value targets included anything that could be used by the Confederates to continue the struggle: factories, mills, cotton gins, warehouses, train depots, bridges and railroads.
Still, in Georgia relatively few private homes, like that of Howell Cobb (a former federal official deemed a traitor by Sherman) or those adjacent to factories and mills, were burned. One study conducted during the 1930s comparing wartime maps with existing antebellum structures found that most along the route of the march were still standing and those that were gone had been lost largely due to postwar accidents. And despite the commonly held belief, reinforced by the movie "Gone with the Wind," that Sherman reduced the entire city of Atlanta to a smoldering ruin, approximately half of it was completely destroyed, roughly the same proportion of Chambersburg, Penn. that had been burned by Confederates the previous July.
As its author intended, the March to the Sea was harsh on civilians. Losing crops, food stores and livestock left non-combatants with little to eat as winter approached. But the fear Sherman created was as powerful as his acts of destruction. The sight of federal troops, marching across the state destroying property and pillaging virtually unopposed, had a demoralizing effect on white Georgians who supported the Confederacy.
By waging war against the minds of his opponents, Sherman's march achieved its creator's goal of hastening an end to the conflict: the wives of Confederate soldiers along the route of the march or who feared they lay in the path of Sherman's advancing legions begged their husbands to come home, and desertions increased significantly during the fall and winter of 1864-65. This hemorrhaging from Gen. Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia further depleted his already thin ranks and allowed Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to deliver the knockout blow in the spring of 1865.
From the vantage point of the 21st century, Sherman's way of war seems a dramatic departure from earlier methods and has prompted some historians to characterize his March to the Sea as the birth of modern total war. But "hard war" was not total war. While the march destroyed property and infrastructure and visited suffering and fear on the civilian population, it lacked the wholesale destruction of human life that characterized World War II.
Sherman's primary targets — foodstuffs and industrial, government and military property — were carefully chosen to create the desired effect, and never included mass killing of civilians, especially those law-abiding noncombatants who did not resist what Sherman described as the national authority. Indeed, Sherman always claimed that his war on property was more humane than traditional methods of conflict between armies. He even told one South Carolina woman that he was ransacking her plantation so that her soldier husband would come home and Grant would not have to kill him in the trenches at Petersburg. He was fighting to bring rebels back into the Union, not to annihilate them.
At the end of his march, when the people of Savannah surrendered virtually without a fight — they were "completely subjugated," he wrote — he saw no need to wreck the city's military and industrial facilities or destroy private homes. Five months earlier, Sherman had told the mayor of Atlanta, "If you and your citizens will give up, I and this army will become your greatest protectors," and it was a lesson not lost on Savannahians. The fate of the city where the March to the Sea ended was different from the one where it began.
Sherman demonstrated for the first time in the modern era the power of terror and psychological warfare in breaking an enemy's will to resist. This concept would come into full bloom during World War II when both Axis and Allied powers deliberately and indiscriminately bombed civilians in order to create terror and win the war by any means at their disposal — including dropping two atomic bombs. It would be seen again during the Vietnam War when America bombed Hanoi, dropping on a single city more ordnance than the United States dropped in all of World War II.
Indeed, America in the 20th century waged total war to such a frightening extent that one wonders: If Sherman had commanded in World War II or Vietnam, would his detractors be so repelled by him, especially those white Southerners taught to hate him as a war criminal? If he had served in the same army a century later and had worn khaki or green rather than blue, and if his targets had been Germans, Japanese, Vietnamese or Islamic terrorists rather than Confederates, would we still loathe him to the same degree?
Francis Lieber's words written in 1862 — "To save the country is paramount to all other considerations" — could have been spoken by the generals Omar Bradley or George Patton as they smashed their way through another German town, or Curtis LeMay as he ordered the firebombing of Japanese cities. History has deemed them heroes because their actions were against their country's foreign foes, while Sherman has been vilified as a terrorist because his actions, although less severe, were against his country's domestic enemies.
Rightly or wrongly, Sherman did what he deemed militarily necessary within the rules laid down by his government to win the conflict and save his country. Rather than an aberration, his "hard hand of war" fits well within the American military tradition. Like the total war tactics of his 20th century successors and the "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed more recently, the March to the Sea reveals the moral ambiguity of war and the extent to which Americans are willing to go when our national existence is at stake.
Yankees to the right of us! Doodles to the left!
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F4.bp.blogspot.com%2F-9SVQYKZkgXU%2FU_m6M_oqhAI%2FAAAAAAAAJxg%2F8LIhedqLA-8%2Fs1600%2FDog%252BGone%252BSouth%252B%2848%29.jpg&hash=4808ce1f6ce81d13e305ee15ed8b8984860e3397)
:lol:
The south got what it deserved. A Buckeye burning the motherfucker down.
Yep.
I don't think modern scholarship on the ACW considers Sherman's actions to be particularly heinous anyway.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 10:23:34 AM
An Op-Ed from this week's New Yawk Times, a noted publication known for its Yankee sympathies:
QuoteDisunion
Rethinking Sherman's March
By W. Todd Groce
November 17, 2014
.....
Sherman demonstrated for the first time in the modern era the power of terror and psychological warfare in breaking an enemy's will to resist. This concept would come into full bloom during World War II when both Axis and Allied powers deliberately and indiscriminately bombed civilians in order to create terror and win the war by any means at their disposal — including dropping two atomic bombs. It would be seen again during the Vietnam War when America bombed Hanoi, dropping on a single city more ordnance than the United States dropped in all of World War II.
.....
.
I'm very much doubt it was that much.
Linebacker II alone dropped over 20,000 tons in about ten days or so, IIRC.
United States dropped what, 2+ million tons of bombs in WW2, I'd be very surprised if more than that was dropped on Hanoi, which remember for large parts of the war was off limits, depending on how you define the cities boundaries.
If the argument is US forces used more ordnance in Vietnam, North and South than in WW2, then yes that's believable.
Quote from: mongers on November 19, 2014, 01:47:20 PM
I the argument is US forces used more ordnance in Vietnam, North and South than in WW2, then yes that's believable.
I could go along with that. I could also go along with the entire North. But not just Hanoi.
I read somewhere that a Vietnam era fighter bomber carried as big a bomb load as a B17.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 02:02:35 PM
Quote from: mongers on November 19, 2014, 01:47:20 PM
I the argument is US forces used more ordnance in Vietnam, North and South than in WW2, then yes that's believable.
I could go along with that. I could also go along with the entire North. But not just Hanoi.
QuoteDuring the 12-day-and-night campaign, codenamed Operation Linebacker II, starting on December 18, the US Air Force and Navy dispatched 729 B-52 sorties and nearly 4000 tactical aircraft sorties to drop 80,000 tonnes of bombs onto military and industrial targets in North Vietnam, especially Hanoi and Haiphong. Hanoi alone suffered 40,000 tonnes of bombs, many of which hit the centre and densely populated areas.
And that was just Operation Linebacker II by Christmas, 1972. Anybody know how many tons we dropped on the Hanoi area before and after?
We had the misfortune of having southerns writing our histories. Sherman, unlike Lee did not kidnap people in the territories he marched through and then sell them into chattel slavery.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 02:19:55 PM
And that was just Operation Linebacker II by Christmas, 1972. Anybody know how many tons we dropped on the Hanoi area before and after?
I guess this would be a start: http://afri.au.af.mil/thor/index.asp
Don't know how accurate this is, given its wiki sourced from a book, but it says:
Quote
By the time the United States ended its Southeast Asian bombing campaigns, the total tonnage of ordnance dropped approximately tripled the totals for World War II. The Indochinese bombings amounted to 7,662,000 tons of explosives, compared to 2,150,000 tons in the world conflict.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombs_in_the_Vietnam_War)
Quote from: Razgovory on November 19, 2014, 02:20:58 PM
We had the misfortune of having southerns writing our histories. Sherman, unlike Lee did not kidnap people in the territories he marched through and then sell them into chattel slavery.
In fairness, Northern troops did press escaped slaves ("contraband") into service as laborers when the Northern army went south. Not quite as bad as enslaving (or re-enslaving) them, but it bears mentioning.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 03:07:24 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 19, 2014, 02:20:58 PM
We had the misfortune of having southerns writing our histories. Sherman, unlike Lee did not kidnap people in the territories he marched through and then sell them into chattel slavery.
In fairness, Northern troops did press escaped slaves ("contraband") into service as laborers when the Northern army went south. Not quite as bad as enslaving (or re-enslaving) them, but it bears mentioning.
Thank you for mentioning that in fairness. derdixie.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 03:10:15 PM
Thank you for mentioning that in fairness. derdixie.
:rolleyes: I'm a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
I just think some of you let your hatred of all things Southern cloud your judgment sometimes. Yes, we Yankees were the good guys and the Rebels were the bad guys. But not everyone on the Southern side was evil.
http://youtu.be/7TQugc8_Htg
But enough about you Marylanders.
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
Quote from: Kleves on November 19, 2014, 03:43:04 PM
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
2/10.
What if he had continued the march?
Quote from: Habbaku on November 19, 2014, 04:46:19 PM
Quote from: Kleves on November 19, 2014, 03:43:04 PM
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
2/10.
That would have been a high enough ratio, but Sherman never approached that.
:o
Should've split his column further and made a March to the Rio Grande as well. Texas goofs.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 04:58:12 PM
Should've split his column further and made a March to the Rio Grande as well. Texas goofs.
That would have been as self-defeating as Napoleon marching to Moscow. Why bother with that wasteland?
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 03:21:12 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 03:10:15 PM
Thank you for mentioning that in fairness. derdixie.
:rolleyes: I'm a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
I just think some of you let your hatred of all things Southern cloud your judgment sometimes. Yes, we Yankees were the good guys and the Rebels were the bad guys. But not everyone on the Southern side was evil.
By all means, why don't we talk about how bad Americans were in Vietnam and Korea and the positives of the N. Vietnamese and N. Koreans.
Screw that.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 03:21:12 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 03:10:15 PM
Thank you for mentioning that in fairness. derdixie.
:rolleyes: I'm a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
I just think some of you let your hatred of all things Southern cloud your judgment sometimes. Yes, we Yankees were the good guys and the Rebels were the bad guys. But not everyone on the Southern side was evil.
And Hitler was kind to his dog. So what.
Well, there's kind of a difference, Raz. The Civil War was a civil war. The other two weren't.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 05:52:39 PM
Well, there's kind of a difference, Raz. The Civil War was a civil war. The other two weren't.
Indeed. Needed more Southern purges. :weep:
Quote from: Kleves on November 19, 2014, 03:43:04 PM
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
Not necessarily during actual campaigning, but the Union was too kind to the rebels after the war. There should have been several hundred thousand hung as traitors.
Quote from: dps on November 19, 2014, 06:55:50 PM
Quote from: Kleves on November 19, 2014, 03:43:04 PM
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
Not necessarily during actual campaigning, but the Union was too kind to the rebels after the war. There should have been several hundred thousand hung as traitors.
Yeah, it was definitely a tragic mistake that we're still paying for to this day.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 05:52:39 PM
Well, there's kind of a difference, Raz. The Civil War was a civil war. The other two weren't.
Well, they all could be a considered civil wars. The difference I suspect is that you find one confederates more sympathetic then the Viet Cong.
Quote from: DGuller on November 19, 2014, 07:02:36 PM
Yeah, it was definitely a tragic mistake that we're still paying for to this day.
We should have nuked the USSR in '45. ;)
Quote from: DGuller on November 19, 2014, 07:02:36 PM
Yeah, it was definitely a tragic mistake that we're still paying for to this day.
:hmm:
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 19, 2014, 10:23:34 AMCurtis LeMay as he ordered the firebombing of Japanese cities. History has deemed them heroes
:yeahright: Ide maybe
Quote from: dps on November 19, 2014, 06:55:50 PM
Quote from: Kleves on November 19, 2014, 03:43:04 PM
I think we can all agree that, in the end, the main criticism that can be levelled at the March to the Sea was that Sherman didn't kill enough southerners.
Not necessarily during actual campaigning, but the Union was too kind to the rebels after the war. There should have been several hundred thousand hung as traitors.
I can see the argument for former federal officials who served in the Confederate congress/cabinet/etc, and federal officers who served in the Confederate Armed Forces, but this is just genocidal crazy talk.
Quote from: Caliga on November 19, 2014, 07:45:16 PM
Quote from: DGuller on November 19, 2014, 07:02:36 PM
Yeah, it was definitely a tragic mistake that we're still paying for to this day.
:hmm:
I was commenting on the "too nice" part, letting the South install Jim Crow laws and such. I didn't mean to comment on the optimal number of Southerners needed to be hanged to achieve that.
DG is the voice of reason here. We did let the South off too easily with Reconstruction ending way too soon. But mass executions? Yeah, great way to heal the nation.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 08:25:02 PM
DG is the voice of reason here. We did let the South off too easily with Reconstruction ending way too soon. But mass executions? Yeah, great way to heal the nation.
His inner Beria is peeking out.
Quote from: garbon on November 19, 2014, 06:13:02 PM
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 05:52:39 PM
Well, there's kind of a difference, Raz. The Civil War was a civil war. The other two weren't.
Indeed. Needed more Southern purges. :weep:
We should have turned over all of Alabama to the Kingdom of Jones.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 08:25:02 PM
DG is the voice of reason here. We did let the South off too easily with Reconstruction ending way too soon. But mass executions? Yeah, great way to heal the nation.
We've executed people for less.
Mass executions sounds like a roadmap to ensuring Southern Independence, although it may take a few generations.
If standing in arms against the government on the field of battle isn't treason, then what is? From a legal POV (and Americans love law shit) at least every Confederate combat veteran should have been executed. There is a time for leniency, and there is a time for taking a huge dump on states' rights.
There's a time for trolling and that's every time the ACW is mentioned. <_<
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 08:25:02 PM
DG is the voice of reason here. We did let the South off too easily with Reconstruction ending way too soon. But mass executions? Yeah, great way to heal the nation.
Meh, targeted and select executions would've been better. Like Lee at Appomattox, left to rot in the sun for the vultures as an example of what not to do. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO SECESSIONISTS AROUND HERE
Certainly many of them deserved to hang, but that doesn't mean it would be the right thing to do at the time.
Yeah, I mean it's not as if someone like Nathan Bedford Forrest would do any more damage.
Or let the Missouri Ruffians off the hook for all the atrocities they committed in Kansas before the war.
Um guys the goal was to reunite the nation and end slavery, not create a desert and call it peace.
But granted there would have been many acres and mules to go around.
Meh, I suppose it turned out as best it could, all things considered. The sustained romanticism of the "Lost Cause" mythos turns my stomach, though. Squee. Mew.
Quote from: Valmy on November 20, 2014, 01:34:15 AM
Um guys the goal was to reunite the nation and end slavery, not create a desert and call it peace.
But granted there would have been many acres and mules to go around.
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling. Or I hope they are. Maybe they just think they're playing a strategy game and people's lives are just bad POPs they wish they could get rid of.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed at the time. Guys like Forrest, though, should have been imprisoned at the very least.
I'm interested why you feel that way in Forrest's case in particular.
Granted, he almost certainly merited arresting on a postwar case of ax-murder, but that was so well concealed it still is not public knowledge, and I assume you refer more to either A) the events at Fort Pillow, or B) the activities of the Klu Klux Klan. In either case, I feel he is much less culpable than you may believe.
At Fort Pillow he certainly gave no massacre order, and is on record as having to try and stop it once it became clear post-surrender killings were taking place. If any confederate commander is culpable it would be Chalmers, who appears to have turned an initial blind eye as the man on the spot where it first broke out.
As to the Klu Klux Klan, his membership was largely an honorary one; Grand Wizard and Leader were in practice very distant things. Due to the enormous prestige of his name in Tennessee, he was asked to join and, giving his consent, was given the highest title to be had. Once the Klan's unsavory practices became clear, he called for them to be curtailed, and attempted, in fact, to disband the Klan.
Besides this, he turned down ideas of continuing the conflict in Mexico as he had been expected to do; Sherman was surprised by Forrest's willingness to reconciliation. Forrest in fact urged his men to be good citizens of the Union in his farewell address, and subsequently gave a very progressive speech on race-relations to the precursor of the NAACP in Memphis. His time and energy (such as it was, for the war very much broke his health) were dedicated to private industry that helped folks in the region.
Quote from: Habbaku on November 20, 2014, 02:17:34 AM
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling. Or I hope they are. Maybe they just think they're playing a strategy game and people's lives are just bad POPs they wish they could get ride of.
Stupid rebels always get the higher morale factors.
Quote from: Habbaku on November 20, 2014, 02:17:34 AM
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling.
They're not murderous sentiments, they're executionist sentiments. I'm sure the North would've given them a fair show trial before their hanging.
Quote from: DGuller on November 20, 2014, 09:56:15 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on November 20, 2014, 02:17:34 AM
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling.
They're not murderous sentiments, they're executionist sentiments. I'm sure the North would've given them a fair show trial before their hanging.
After the unspeakable slaughter that took place during the war, I'm not sure the North would have had the stomach for it.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on November 20, 2014, 01:31:22 AM
Or let the Missouri Ruffians off the hook for all the atrocities they committed in Kansas before the war.
They should have hung those as well. A lot of them became bandits after the war.
Quote from: derspiess on November 20, 2014, 10:02:11 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 20, 2014, 09:56:15 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on November 20, 2014, 02:17:34 AM
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling.
They're not murderous sentiments, they're executionist sentiments. I'm sure the North would've given them a fair show trial before their hanging.
After the unspeakable slaughter that took place during the war, I'm not sure the North would have had the stomach for it.
Why? The south still did. The Union threw blacks under the bus to keep the peace.
Quote from: derspiess on November 19, 2014, 08:25:02 PM
DG is the voice of reason here. We did let the South off too easily with Reconstruction ending way too soon. But mass executions? Yeah, great way to heal the nation.
A wound needs to be cleansed for it to heal properly. We didn't clean this one well and let it get infected. Took it a century just to scab over good, and it's still not fully healed.
A wise man once noted that people can forgive you for killing their parents but they will never forgive you for taking their inheritance. If the Union had killed the traitors instead of taking their property any wound would have healed long ago.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 11:22:13 AM
Quote from: derspiess on November 20, 2014, 10:02:11 AM
Quote from: DGuller on November 20, 2014, 09:56:15 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on November 20, 2014, 02:17:34 AM
Most of the chuckleheads posting murderous sentiments are, fortunately, merely trolling.
They're not murderous sentiments, they're executionist sentiments. I'm sure the North would've given them a fair show trial before their hanging.
After the unspeakable slaughter that took place during the war, I'm not sure the North would have had the stomach for it.
Why? The south still did. The Union threw blacks under the bus to keep the peace.
DS, you have a stalker.
Quote from: The Brain on November 20, 2014, 12:09:24 PM
A wise man once noted that people can forgive you for killing their parents but they will never forgive you for taking their inheritance. If the Union had killed the traitors instead of taking their property any wound would have healed long ago.
What wise man was this? :yeahright:
Anyways, the whole war was over their right to hold human "property"
The Union should have punished the Planter class by confiscating their land and redistributing it amongst poor whites and former slaves.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 09:01:31 PM
The Union should have punished the Planter class by confiscating their land and redistributing it amongst poor whites and former slaves.
Yup. Not only would it be much more moral, it would be much more effective than mass executions.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 20, 2014, 08:29:52 PM
Quote from: The Brain on November 20, 2014, 12:09:24 PM
A wise man once noted that people can forgive you for killing their parents but they will never forgive you for taking their inheritance. If the Union had killed the traitors instead of taking their property any wound would have healed long ago.
What wise man was this? :yeahright:
Machiavelli. :wub:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 20, 2014, 11:32:24 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 09:01:31 PM
The Union should have punished the Planter class by confiscating their land and redistributing it amongst poor whites and former slaves.
Yup. Not only would it be much more moral, it would be much more effective than mass executions.
Wait, maybe that's not such a good idea anyway. :hmm:
It's a terrible idea. It would have guaranteed the permanent hostility of the governing class of the South.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 12:44:14 AM
It's a terrible idea. It would have guaranteed the permanent hostility of the governing class of the South.
Yeah, except they wouldn't be the governing class anymore. Their basis of power was the wealth that land gave them. No land, no power. As it was the US gained the hostility of the ruling class who launched insurgencies and guerrilla war till they got what they wanted: The withdrawal of federal soldiers, restoration of Southern governments, and suppression of blacks.
How hostile are they now?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 01:39:38 AM
How hostile are they now?
Exactly as hostile as they would be if they lost their land. They are all dead now. Dead people are very agreeable. I am a bit curious as to where you are going with that question. If they lost their land, they could be as hostile as they wanted. Wouldn't do them any more good then the hostility of the Russian nobility had toward the Reds in the 1930's.
Done.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 12:44:14 AM
It's a terrible idea. It would have guaranteed the permanent hostility of the governing class of the South.
There would be a new governing class if that was done.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 02:00:16 AM
Done.
I also don't get where you were going with this. :huh:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 21, 2014, 02:31:55 AM
There would be a new governing class if that was done.
Sure, carpetbaggers. Who would be even more distrusted by the commons than they were historically.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 21, 2014, 02:32:55 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 02:00:16 AM
Done.
I also don't get where you were going with this. :huh:
Presumably only the monied classes can keep the Peace that was the South. Even if the peace meant the murder of thousands of innocents, and the repression of millions. And even if the monied class were traitors who made their fortunes on stolen labor.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 01:39:38 AM
How hostile are they now?
Not nearly as hostile as Raz & co. Sheesh.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 01:39:38 AM
How hostile are they now?
I don't know that hostility is the issue today, so much as the current (which is just a continuation of its historical standing) beleaguered status of the South. Maybe a more radical approach would have helped, who knows?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 20, 2014, 11:32:24 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 09:01:31 PM
The Union should have punished the Planter class by confiscating their land and redistributing it amongst poor whites and former slaves.
Yup. Not only would it be much more moral, it would be much more effective than mass executions.
The only problem is the tricky thing called the US constitution that guarantees property rights. So how would you pull that off for planters that did not take up arms in rebellion.
The comparison to the Reds in the 1930s (i.e. Stalin) highlights the problem.
Planters that did not take up arms in the rebellion? What, both of them?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 21, 2014, 11:13:07 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 20, 2014, 11:32:24 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 09:01:31 PM
The Union should have punished the Planter class by confiscating their land and redistributing it amongst poor whites and former slaves.
Yup. Not only would it be much more moral, it would be much more effective than mass executions.
The only problem is the tricky thing called the US constitution that guarantees property rights. So how would you pull that off for planters that did not take up arms in rebellion.
The comparison to the Reds in the 1930s (i.e. Stalin) highlights the problem.
The US had already superseded property rights of slave holders when it freed slaves (or destroyed property during the war). Keep the states under military law till you have made the necessary changes. Or you could require that slave holder reimburse all slaves back pay for their service. That should be enough to bankrupt the planter class, and force them to sell the land to the government at very low rates. The problems of the 1930's was not rebellious nobles, which is the point.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 21, 2014, 02:32:10 PM
Or you could require that slave holder reimburse all slaves back pay for their service.
Not that I'm a lawyer, but I fail to see how this would have worked.
Slavery was legal until 1863. Only on 1st January of this year was it made officially illegal.
The war ended in 1865. So that's 2 year back pay. I doubt very much that black citizens of the North earn the exact same pay as the white male at the time, so you'd have to make it, realistically, at half the pay of a white worker at the time.
That means roughtly 1 year of service owed by plantation owners who employed slaves.
From that, you deduce the cost of living: food&shelter offered to paid workers, cost of doctors&medicine. Another half of the pay. You got 6 months wages, realistically, and by the end of the war, 64-65, many slaves would most likely either have been freed or deserted their plantation by themselves due to the lack of an organized militia/army/police force to hunt them down.
So, on average, for all of the US southern states slaves, you got maybe 3 months pay that wasn't paid. Hardly enough to break the system and make it fair&square to the slaves.
Quote from: viper37 on November 21, 2014, 03:12:27 PM
From that, you deduce the cost of living: food&shelter offered to paid workers, cost of doctors&medicine. Another half of the pay. You got 6 months wages, realistically, and by the end of the war, 64-65, many slaves would most likely either have been freed or deserted their plantation by themselves due to the lack of an organized militia/army/police force to hunt them down.
So, on average, for all of the US southern states slaves, you got maybe 3 months pay that wasn't paid. Hardly enough to break the system and make it fair&square to the slaves.
I don't really see why one would have to factor in any of that.
Make it retroactive from the time the slave was born. Or because the government is making the demands, they can consider what ever price the want as fair. I imagine the price of murder, theft and rape is quite high. There are of course lots of other ways to break the southern aristocracy. They could be fined for every member of the family that fought against the Union, fined for failure to appear before Union draft boards, forced to pay back taxes, etc. The goal is to destroy the Slave Power. That's the way to true reconciliation. Allowing the local elites to terrorize and tyrannize the black population is undesirable.
Hey Raz, does your newfound interest in alt history mean you'll give Newt's books a shot? :P
Your proposal has the disadvantages that it would have caused massive rioting - in the North. Followed by Democrats sweeping the elections and reversing it.
It is interesting to hear the theory that if only the South had been treated more harshly, things would have turned out better.
Quote from: Berkut on November 21, 2014, 05:49:15 PM
It is interesting to hear the theory that if only the South had been treated more harshly, things would have turned out better.
Yeah.
I think it is one of the most glorious chapters in American history that we fought a bloody civil war and were able to reconcile afterwards.
Quote from: viper37 on November 21, 2014, 03:12:27 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 21, 2014, 02:32:10 PM
Or you could require that slave holder reimburse all slaves back pay for their service.
Not that I'm a lawyer, but I fail to see how this would have worked.
Slavery was legal until 1863. Only on 1st January of this year was it made officially illegal.
The war ended in 1865. So that's 2 year back pay. I doubt very much that black citizens of the North earn the exact same pay as the white male at the time, so you'd have to make it, realistically, at half the pay of a white worker at the time.
i think this would be deemed unconstitutional.
the emancipation proclamation had no actual authority as congress did not enact a law during the war to affirm the proclamation. the 13th amendment ended slavery in the US, and the states ratified the 13th after the war ended. if the government imposed back-pay on slave owners for those two years, i think the slave owners could have successfully appealed to SCOTUS. there wouldn't be back-pay owed to ex-slaves for when they were still technically property.
nobody challenged the emancipation proclamation IRL, probably because the emancipation proclamation only encouraged more of what the US already practiced -- seizing and freeing slaves from rebellious states. rather than leave it to the discretion of the US occupying forces, the proclamation essentially ordered those forces to seize/free all slaves in their area.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 06:08:36 PM
I think it is one of the most glorious chapters in American history that we fought a bloody civil war and were able to reconcile afterwards.
Yeah, if you ain't black. Otherwise it's not so good.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 21, 2014, 06:37:40 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 06:08:36 PM
I think it is one of the most glorious chapters in American history that we fought a bloody civil war and were able to reconcile afterwards.
Yeah, if you ain't black. Otherwise it's not so good.
Yeah...
Quote from: LaCroix on November 21, 2014, 06:09:11 PM
Quote from: viper37 on November 21, 2014, 03:12:27 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 21, 2014, 02:32:10 PM
Or you could require that slave holder reimburse all slaves back pay for their service.
Not that I'm a lawyer, but I fail to see how this would have worked.
Slavery was legal until 1863. Only on 1st January of this year was it made officially illegal.
The war ended in 1865. So that's 2 year back pay. I doubt very much that black citizens of the North earn the exact same pay as the white male at the time, so you'd have to make it, realistically, at half the pay of a white worker at the time.
i think this would be deemed unconstitutional.
the emancipation proclamation had no actual authority as congress did not enact a law during the war to affirm the proclamation. the 13th amendment ended slavery in the US, and the states ratified the 13th after the war ended. if the government imposed back-pay on slave owners for those two years, i think the slave owners could have successfully appealed to SCOTUS. there wouldn't be back-pay owed to ex-slaves for when they were still technically property.
nobody challenged the emancipation proclamation IRL, probably because the emancipation proclamation only encouraged more of what the US already practiced -- seizing and freeing slaves from rebellious states. rather than leave it to the discretion of the US occupying forces, the proclamation essentially ordered those forces to seize/free all slaves in their area.
Fine, confiscate the land as penalty of treason and execute them.
Quote from: garbon on November 21, 2014, 06:53:59 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 21, 2014, 06:37:40 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 21, 2014, 06:08:36 PM
I think it is one of the most glorious chapters in American history that we fought a bloody civil war and were able to reconcile afterwards.
Yeah, if you ain't black. Otherwise it's not so good.
Yeah...
I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 11:22:13 AM
Why? The south still did. The Union threw blacks under the bus to keep the peace.
They threw blacks under the bus to win the 1876 Presidential Election.
Quote from: Valmy on November 21, 2014, 10:33:25 PM
They threw blacks under the bus to win the 1876 Presidential Election.
Clearly that was because the Republicans were too moderate and weren't getting their base of rebel-haters energized enough.
I figure we worked out that frustration on the Lincoln assassination conspirators.
Quote from: Valmy on November 21, 2014, 10:33:25 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on November 20, 2014, 11:22:13 AM
Why? The south still did. The Union threw blacks under the bus to keep the peace.
They threw blacks under the bus to win the 1876 Presidential Election.
And peace was assured. Or in the words of D. W. Griffith, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright".
http://open.spotify.com/track/1puBX04LSrA0g96NCjGDlv
Tried to link to "Marching Through Georgia" by Old Crow Medicine Show but I guess it linked the whole album.
Quote from: Razgovory on November 22, 2014, 03:03:27 AM
And peace was assured. Or in the words of D. W. Griffith, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright".
Somebody with a firm grasp on the facts of reconstruction to be sure :P
The fact was the Northern Whites (those who did not already sympathize with the Southerners) just got tired and further saw they were unlikely to win Reconstruction, so they stopped supporting it. The Republican Party thus moved on.
Quote from: derspiess on November 22, 2014, 10:57:06 AM
Tried to link to "Marching Through Georgia" by Old Crow Medicine Show but I guess it linked the whole album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nEf2nuH_Xc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nEf2nuH_Xc)
I like how the Union adopted this song to add insult to injury. Take that Johnny Reb. :)