In August of this year, I was taking a class in American Military History. One of the assignments was to write about Sherman's March to the Sea, in which William Tecumseh Sherman led his troops from Atlanta to Savannah in November and December 1864, pillaging and plundering, destroying military and civilian properties indiscriminately in a way not seen again until the George Floyd riots fiery but mostly peaceful protests. I originally thought the assignment was to cover how the Union justified Sherman’s March, so I wrote about revisions to the Union Army’s rules of conduct.
Upon rereading the assignment, what was required was a fictional account, from the point of view of a soldier in the Sherman’s Army of Tennessee. Thus, I wrote some fiction. Here are both parts of my submission.
Fact
The atrocities committed by the Union throughout the Civil War in general, and Sherman's March to the Sea in particular, were not the unsanctioned actions of individual soldiers but "came from above" through national policy.
Possible justifications for unleashing total war (war against both an enemy's military and civilians) include:
- Collapse of the distinction between military and civilians
- Use of total war to quickly end the war.
Both justifications were used by the Union, even early in the Civil War.
General Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan from the start of the war involved a general blockade of Confederate ports and disruption of commerce along the Mississippi River. The Confederacy was to be deprived not only military supplies (weapons and munitions) but also supplies used by the general population, like food and medicines. The Anaconda Plan was abandoned because it was not producing quick results.
Grant, in an 1862 letter to Sherman, explicitly equivocates civilians with military personnel when he states that "we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people and we must make old and young, rich and poor feel the hard hand of war."
Subsequently, new rules for the Union Army's conduct were codified in 1863 in the Lieber Code. This military law replaced time-tested laws of war coming from Emer de Vattel and Hugo Grotius. Among the articles of the Lieber Code was Article 21: "The citizen or native of a hostile country is thus an enemy, as one of the constituents of the hostile state or nation, and as such is subjected to the hardships of the war."
Article 15 reads in part "Military necessity... allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy." Raiding of Confederate farms is also covered in that same article which continues "the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the army."
The use of total war tactics to quickly end a war is explicitly permitted in the Lieber Code under Article 29: "...The more vigorously wars are pursued, the better it is for humanity. Sharp wars are brief."
While total war was advocated from above, implementation during the March to the Sea was carried out by Sherman's soldiers, earning those who looted, vandalized, and destroyed Southern civilian infrastructure the moniker "Sherman's Bummers."
The Indemnity Act of 1863 (amended in 1866) shielded Union officials against charges of violating habeas corpus, which is the legal recourse victims would use to seek restitution. This proves that the concept of "CYA" existed even during the Civil War.
For all the destruction that the March to the Sea caused in Georgia (the South's breadbasket), Sherman felt that it was justified, writing that for the South "to whine and complain of the natural and necessary results is beneath contempt."
Fiction
Since the start of this accursed war, my brother and I have argued over its causes and how Lincoln gathered and wielded power supposedly forbidden to him by the Constitution. We’re both hunters, and we’ve defended our homes against Indian raiders, and we have no problem fighting for what is right. He once told me that “fighting does not merely sate bloodlust, but rather it enriches the soul, for conflict brings out the very best of us - courage, valor, and honor” and I must agree with that. Where we disagree is when he says that “conscription has no place in the land of the free.” I disagree even more when he says that “if Lincoln’s cause be wrong, our obedience to him does not wipe the crime of it out of us.”
When conscription came to central Pennsylvania, we took different paths. I joined and then later transferred south to serve under General Grant. My brother resisted actively, not like Mark Twain, and was in the gunfight at Bloody Knox in Graham County, the skirmish where Tom Adams was killed. One thing my brother doesn’t believe in is proportionate response, and while no one ever said that he took the scalps of the enforcement officers, no one ever said that he didn’t. Last I heard, he was working with draft resisters in Texas, fighting with the unholy terror of a man who wishes only to be left alone, certainly adding to his scalp collection.
I believed in Mr. Lincoln’s war, but when I saw what Sherman’s Bummers did, my convictions were rattled. When Confederate Lieutenant General Wade Hampton complained to Sherman about his Bummers, Sherman replied that he was keeping 1000 Confederate prisoners of war specifically to “dispose of” when the Grays defended themselves against the Bummers. But that Confederate general was correct, that while the wartime right to forage upon the enemy is as old as history, “there is a right older, even, than this, and one more inalienable--the right that every man has to defend his home and to protect those who are dependent on him; and from my heart I wish that every old man and boy in my country who can fire a gun would shoot down, as he would a wild beast, the men who are desolating their land, burning their homes, and insulting their women.”
The Bummers are like the Vikings of yore, defiling and eviscerating their victims, and not necessarily in that order. Considering that they and I are both of the same army, and that they act with impunity, I knew that I was on the wrong side, and my continued participation would be a crime that can never be erased from my soul.
Last night, I freed three of Sherman’s prisoners (hostages) and saw to it that they escaped from camp. Today, I caught my first two Bummers, looting the farmhouse of an aged couple. After they looted it, they set it ablaze. Too late for the farmhouse, I “disposed of” those Bummers, and acquired my first two scalps.
I thought desertion was an action taken only by cowards and would be a difficult thing, but it wasn’t after seeing that Sherman not only permitted his men to act as vandals, but that he encouraged such shameful behavior. All that hunting my brother and I did allows me to live off the land and not to raid civilians’ homes and businesses. If I need something that can’t be hunted, I will deal honorably with the civilians, either purchasing what I need or trading my services.
My brother and I started out with opposing views, but now are on the same side - we are now the left and right hands of Vengeance. When this war is over, I will meet my brother in Pennsylvania, and we will compare stories and our collection of scalps. Who will have the larger collection? I don’t know, but he has an early start, and I must make up for lost time.
