posted by the u.s. capitalist oracle society. >> thank you very much and thank you all for coming. merchant of terror, demon, attila -- if you type "was sherman a" into the google. hero or villain or a couple more. urban dictionary describes sherman as having employed tactic of targeting civilians. such tactics have previously

been demonized and morally unacceptable. the deliberate targeting was taken up in world war ii and ended in the deaths of millions. the bombing of european cities by both sides of the war and japanese cities by the u.s. as well as civilians and china and the philippines and korea by japan were consistent with and encourage by sherman's precedent. the logic of saving lives and the long run seems to be refuted by history. finally, if you scroll through this entry, the words related to william sherman tags at the bottom includes collateral damage, murderer, terrorist, and war criminal. let me be a little bit more honest and fair. this not the best source out there. it was written by somebody named

text. it misquotes sherman at one time. if you look at the word association, it includes war hero. what it does represent is a popularly held view that william t. sherman and the march through georgia and the carolinas through the final months of the civil war have something to do with the creation of total war. and the millions of civilians' deaths in the wars of the 20th and 21st century can somehow be put at his feet. nor does this view reside entirely on the internet, noted repository of crackpot theories. a history of henry county, georgia explains simply that "sherman's march to the sea was the first hint of the concept of

total war which was to come to full fruition and in which a civilian infrastructure is considered a legitimate military target." later writers tried to connect sherman's march to the sea atrocities of vietnam and said that "when a rash confederate, his way to the courthouse, the courthouse is burnt. when a lady burned her core crib, she lost her house. the proportionality of the retaliation was roughly the same, geometrically less as hostile fire of a jungle rifle." one of the issues that comes into play when we talk about sherman and his questions of total war is that people seem to have a slippery definition. often sherman seems to be judged by the standards of today than his own time.

often, not as much, people use total war, they seem to be referring to the degree of mobilization rather than the range of targets. what i want to do today is take a closer look at sherman's march in the context of changing union policies and see if that does not paint a more nuanced picture of what he was doing and whether it was civilized warfare. so, in 1864, there were no geneva conventions to govern the actions. it is not to say that when no guides for military behavior and conduct. these rules were very fluid and evolving and changing at the very nature of the civil war changed. initially, union policies toward the confederacy that the civilians was known as conciliation. the idea behind it was lincoln

believed there was a silent majority of the unionist and the confederate states and all he needed to do was animated that and they would rise up. this conciliation policy therefore meant a very narrow focus on targeting the confederate army rather than antagonizing southern civilians. southern civilians were being treated as though they were american citizens rather than the citizens of a belligerent nation. but this early as 1862, that had begun to change. during that summer, union soldier pope issued a series of orders that allowed virginia to subsist on the produce of the local countryside. lincoln, he was frustrated by the progress of the war and he approved the orders. pope's soldiers went on a tear of destruction. the story that will come out of georgia and the carolinas two

years later and so great were the abuses perpetrated on civilians that pope had to backtrack and condemn his men for being so out of control. that happened. at the same time in the summer of 1862, lincoln has come to the realization he needs to use emancipation as a war measure. once he issued the proclamation in september of 1862, the opportunity for this policy of conciliation to work was pretty much over and the war would be "hard handed." at the same time, all of this is happening simultaneously at different levels, the union war department had begun consulting

with a prussian-born professor named francis about devising a military code. leber in turn called his work a cold for the government of army. the war department issued it as generals order number 100 and it was known as the leber code. it was designed to codify the laws of war and particularly as it pertained to the interactions between civilians and soldiers. one of the most significant sections of the code are articles 14 through 16 which are very carefully delineate military necessity. leber has a broader definition of that that deplores acts of vengeance and cruelty but allowed for the making of war on civilians in specific situations. there is a tension internal to the code over what is military necessity and what is going to far.

he does explain further in article 17. war not carried on by armies alone, it is lawful to starve the hostile, belligerent armed or unarmed so it leads to the speed your subjection of the enemy. he talks about also in a later article, the citizen or native of a hostile country is thus an enemy as one of the constituents of the hostile nation. and is subject to the hardships of war. it is clear from his code, there are ways that civilians can be targeted because of the fact civilians are presumed to be inherently military. that being said, among the prohibitions where the destruction of artwork and the like.

and under punishment of death, leber's language, all ask against the invaded country, all destruction of property not commended by the authorized officer, all robbery and pillage even after taking place by main force, wounding or maiming such inhabitants. so there is a line and that line seems to be physical violence against civilians. you can destroy their property, some of it, not their art. which is nice. but, there is limits. now, confederates when they read the code, it is so broad. also by 1864 when sherman is preparing for the march, lincoln and the union in general have become comfortable with a high degree of destruction of private property. cotton could be burned.

the contents of homes. the homes themselves in areas like missouri and the shenandoah valley. one can argue that the leber code as to the treatment of civilians and their property was probably honored more in the breach than to the letter. just after the war, something called a field service in war was published. a manual specifically on military logistics. he also leans on the doctrine of necessity to justify. he argues that "a well established by a war." he does concede that there need to be constraints placed on forging because as he put it "to do otherwise would be to bring dishonor honor upon the

country." lipid's work, demonstrates the complexity of the moral issues that surround the forging. by very nature, would you seize supplies from civilians you are inflicting hardship on that civilian. and so in order to inflict sort of the magical right amount of hardship, enough but not undo to operate within the moral boundaries of warfare, officers need to maintain tight control. lipid explains without foraging parties and centralized distribution systems, chaos could ensue. the army could really descend into an armed mob.

so, what is interesting is that you would have expected lipid to use a sherman's march as an example as he is making this complicated case. he does not. he goes back to napoleon's russian campaign. in fact, he does not ignore the march when he is talking about how an army should dissented to chaos. he actually defends sherman's march and he claims at first when seizing household goods, the men discriminated, this is the language from sherman's orders "discriminated but when the rich who were general hostile to us meaning the union and the poor and industrious who are usually friendly or at least neutral." he describes sherman as having an organized system and the rules and receipts. he claims that any deviation

from this is nice, orderly forging system of the march as he put it where the fault of a few bad apples, stragglers and the like, not the main force of marchers. we'll talk about that in a minute. the other piece i want to include any here is white southerners during the march and immediately after june compared to his between sherman's march to the sea and robert e. lee's invasion of maryland in 1862 in pennsylvania. they often quoted lee's general order in which he reminded them that the duties expected of us by civilization and christianity are not less obligatory in enemies than our own. and lee's language "we make war only upon armed men and we cannot take vengeance for the

wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all the atrocities." he is often praised. that is a pretty selected reading of course of what actually happened and many of these defenders of lee. ignoring the many roads are betrayed by his men, especially they kidnapped african americans to sell into slavery. we will set that aside. i got a little ahead of myself. let's talk specifically about sherman and his march.

despite many allegations to the contrary, sherman himself was very well aware that war was governed by rules. these charges against sherman, is sherman a war criminal? generally focus on two events. the march obviously which i will talk about and also focus on his expulsion of civilians from atlanta. so, sherman's army took control of the city of atlanta on september 2, 1864. they were not planning to stay for very long, but he didn't want his men to use their time in the city for recharging to rest a little bit after the rigors of the campaign to take atlanta. he did not want his man distracted by confederate operatives or women and children. he did not want to feed women and children and you do not want to have to leave any man behind to hold onto the city of atlanta when he pulled out of the city. he famously ordered civilians, unionists, and confederates out

of the city and gave them 10 days in which to comply. it was about 1200 people who were affected by this. many people have used his september 12, 1864 letter to the mayor of atlanta and was sherman famously wrote that war is cruelty and you cannot refine it to make the argument that he was willing to do what ever worked to recall kinds of havoc on civilians in order to end the war. in other letters are written at the same time, sherman is quite explicit about following the rules and laws of war. he was quite angry when confederate general john bell hood challenged the legitimacy. he wrote to hood, "i think i

understand the laws of civilized nations and the customs of war." he suggested that maybe the confederates ought to be taking better care of union prisoners. in his final letter to hood, sherman proclaimed that "he was not bound by the laws of war to give notice of the shelling of atlanta because he said the city had been fortified and was being used for military purposes." see the books he concluded. what of the march itself? before sherman left atlanta on november 15, he set some ground rules for his men. he did it in special field order 120. there are nine articles all together in the first several described how he will divide up the army and a marching orders. and there's this intersection that in fact deals explicitly

with what the army could and couldn't do along the march. the men were instructed to forge liberally and to destroy houses, cotton gins, etc. but within limits. the forging parties were supposedly regularized and other difficult role a discreet officers. soldiers were not supposed to enter homes as long -- if the army was left unmolested, southern property was supposed to be left alone. essentially what sherman is saying the group reviewed forgers came onto a farm or plantation and they were allowed on and nobody was shooting at them or smarting off to them i'm

a that were not supposed to leave all of the property. -- to them, they were not supposed to leave all of the property. he said the men ought to discriminate between the rich who were usually hostile and the poor and industrial usually neutral or friendly. if the army was well treated, they were instructed to "leave each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance." he is setting parameters. now, most of these rules were more honored in the breach of a reality. they are pretty elastic. i think the very existence of these rules gave sherman and a lesser extent his men a degree of moral cover or at least that's what sherman trying to achieve. they allow for certain elasticity. you can treat some people more harshly and some people more leniently. there's evidence that the march does have an evan flow -- ebb

and flow. it is harsh in georgia and the men are ordered to pull back and be less destructive in north carolina because it was perceived to have allotted unionist. i do not want to, away from today seeking i am an apologist for sherman's march -- i do not want to come a way from today like i am an apologist for sherman's march. what i am trying to say is the men were bound by rules and they knew they were bound by rules. sherman certainly believed that he was operating within the laws or parameters of civilized behavior. he is willing to push exactly to

those boundaries of those rules. frightening people, stealing their supplies, burning their barns and houses were one thing for sherman. i sing the wholesale killing, sexual violence as happened in areas by guerrilla violence like missouri was really beyond the pale for sherman's men, by and large. a sherman biographer has argued that while the march "stopped well short of total war in the 20th century nazi sense, his rhetoric a distraction mean he could make war on who ever he chose as otherwise would be powerless to stop him." sherman is well aware of the psychological impact of what he allowed his men to do and encourage them to do. does that make sherman a terrorist? he used his calculated brutality

to terrorize the southern population. spellman tries to split hairs as much as possible and described sherman as having terrorist capacities. i also think there are some responsibilities clearly for both destroyed and raining themselves in. part of the reason that the march was not total in the 20th century says is because the veterans limited themselves held back a binder on a sense of morality. i have done a lot of reading on sherman's march because i have a book coming out this summer. i will tell you, there are very few instances -- there is not murdering or killing or lining people up and shooting them. there's definitely some violence, but not the kind of violence associated with wars and the 20th and 21st century. sherman, himself, may have overstepped the legality a few times.

each time in retaliation for confederate action and these charges again are regarding his use of prisoners of war. in the first instance, sherman learned torpedoes had been buried and he called for prisoners of war to be brought up to clear the mines, not wanting to risk his own men. a group of union forgers had been captured and killed in south carolina. sherman ordered a group of prisoners of war to draw lots and have one of the men executed to set an example. but, i would argue, what keeps sherman for being a terrorist in the modern sense of the word is

he was operating during wartime with the full sanction and support of his government. and when the war ended thomas so did his hostility and the destruction. in many ways i think, a better analogy in the wake of the civil war would be the waves of violence that confronted african americans or during reconstruction as they sought to exercise their new freedoms. this notion that sherman brought forth some new kind of war, the march only makes sense in retrospect. at the time, people do not perceive it as such. as the 19th century became the 20th and wars increase in debt increased deadliness, the march seem to reappear again and again. often the analogies surrounded, they reveal with the notion. the march but comes destructive -- but comes destructive as it is compared -- becomes destructive as it is compared to more modern wars.

i will give you a few examples. sherman's march was involved with germany march into belgium in 1914. often to remind americans of the costs of war even when justifiable. once of the united states became involved in world war i, sherman's march to the sea and to be a significant point of discussion. although, it'd did reappear after the war. i am excited to talk about this in this room. it was during testimony before the senate committee on propaganda in 1919, grant squyres, a new york lawyer who had visited belgium, testified about the cruelties he saw.

men and women beaten with rifle butts and families starving without shelter. he was asked to counter testimony given earlier by a german survivor to be in fact that sherman's march had also been a very cruel expedition. this enraged senator newt nelson. he angrily proclaim that american soldiers "had never killed women and children, what ever they did, did -- and they did not do that." nelson specifically asked squyres to address the charges and that sherman's men were no worse than the germans and nelson said the germans were different from sherman. what i see coming out of this is the sense that there is a new standard is set for violations of civilians that were once the worse that people could imagine, the great war issues a different

order of magnitude. interestingly, there are very few mentions of sherman's march of world war ii i was able to, cross. in the vietnam era, because -- it raised all kinds of analogies to sherman's march. proponents of the vietnam war compared sherman's actions in georgia to the actions of american soldiers in vietnam. the most detailed and culturally significant of this relationship between sherman and vietnam came in james rustin jr.'s book where rustin retraces the march through georgia and he looks at the path. he seems at times to draw a

straight line, straight connection between 19th and 20th century violence. here is a passage. "general sherman is considered by many to be the author of this total war. to carry it to its ultimate extreme. the first to wreck an economy to starve his soldiers. he was our first merchant of terror as spiritual father. the spiritual father as some content is our vietnam conflict of search and destroy, pacification, re-fire zone. as such, he remains a figure of our history. a monstrous archvillain. an embarrassed to northerners

who wonder if civilized war died with him. if it were not for sherman, the atom bomb may not have been dropped." rustin can see that maybe, it is more metaphorical. he is really trying to argue that, once you lose the bounds, the bounds that are constantly loose -- he is trying to make an argument that sherman's veterans, sherman's soldiers had important things in common. being animated by desire for vengeance. and where they differed was just in matters of scale which he says is more a function than a desire year. it seems worse and the 20th

century because men had weapons of mass destruction. i do not buy it completely. in order -- let me conclude by invoking something what is today. where does sherman fit today? he is sometimes invoked in the iraq war and support -- in support of a more total war. this is the dark reaches of the internet where people were saying if only sherman had been in iraq or afghanistan. just the other day, on tuesday actually, my trusty google alert for sherman's march pointed me to a column written by ricks. ricks argue that sherman was embarking on a counterinsurgency, not a mines campaign which he pooh-poohed.

you are either with us or against us approach, clear political and psychological dimension. i read his column over a bunch of times. i am not really convinced by his argument. but, where i think his work is useful and what i am convinced of is that sherman's march and its relationship to what americans think of war is still very much alive and relevant today. thank you very much. [applause] i am happy to answer any questions. there we go. oh.

>> can you address a little bit -- you talk a lot about the topic from the standpoint of what sherman ordered. can you address what actually was happening on the ground when the union troops, in particular as they marched through the swath of the south, they obviously disrupted the society that was going on. in particular, how did his men handle african-americans? >> that is a good question. in my book am i have a whole chapter about the march and african americans. as they marched through, there is his misconception that people said sherman men cut a swath 50 miles wide. that is -- i would tell my

students, you do not want to think of it like a lawnmower strip. it is 50 miles from the edge of one column through 4 columns. in many ways, it is very -- what does the word i am looking for? not sporadic. sometimes a house is tarred and sometimes a house a mile away is not targeted. where sherman and his men and african-americans is an interesting question. sherman's army was probably one of the great armies of liberation. they are not willing to liberators. sherman was not, certainly not a fan of racial equality or according civil rights to african americans. he was perfectly content as they went on to plantations to have his men liberate the slaves and say they were free. he would always tell them to stay put. they needed to stay put because he did not want to know following after his army.

he was unable from stopping african-americans from following. there were probably 25,000 african-americans who have followed his army. he does not want to go. he's perfectly willing and there's a section in his ordered to take able-bodied african-american men and have the work as teamsters. he did not want to have to feed women and children and elderly people. there is a horrific episode outside of savannah in a place called ebenezer creek where sherman's men, you have sherman's army or a section under the command of one of sherman's subordinates, jefferson davis, no relation. and then you have the african americans who were following and

then you have will or -- wheeler's calvary. they get through this one area. davis ordered the bridges pulled up so the african americans cannot cross on the bridges. hundreds of them wind up drowning in the swamp and hundreds of them and of being recaptured by wheeler's calvary. when in the news came out, sherman was condemned for not condemning davis. it is tangled, is the short answer. >> one consequence of the march was rising desertion rates in

virginia from those soldiers whose homes were in the areas that sherman's army went through. was this a fortuitous circumstance or one of sherman's goals? >> i do not think sherman was directly hoping. where i think sherman was directly trying to target the army of northern virginia was not desertion a resupply. first of all, by breaking which had been a major supply line up to petersburg and by raiding through the relatively untouched area to deprive them of supplies. i think also there was a sense, he was cognitive of the psychological impact that he wanted people to know that he could not be stopped and in fact, any rumors that may have come out about how vicious they were or violent they were, he was comfortable with that. does it matter?

>> 50 years before the events he you were talking about, we had an episode so similar right here. the british came to the belmont house literally next door. somebody took a pot shot as he arrived in the plaza. general ross ordered that house a burnt but he made a particular point of not destroying property. so back to the uncivilized actions to the townsend they burned and looted, he said we are far more civilized. is general ross ahead of his time? what was going on?

>> i am far from an expert of the war of 1812. i do nothing ross was ahead of his time. i think ross, burning the civilian house? not to burning everything else? no, there is an argument to be made for only limiting your destruction to private buildings. i would say that with sherman, the vast majority of buildings or structures that the men burned were not private homes, but -- the places they gave material support to the confederacy barnes, gin houses, cotton. they burned remarkably few houses. one of the areas i explore in my book, it is in fact all of the different reasons that house

s along sherman's root were saved. you cannot have it both ways. you cannot cash undercutting the 50 miles walked in having dozens of antebellum halls -- home surviving. there is a reason why this house was spared or this house was spared. >> hard to follow. i'm also a tour guide. i take people passed the statue of the guy on the horse. you mentioned the revisionist history. "war is the pathway to a more perfect peace." i wonder, if the psychological effect when the family came to chattanooga and his son died, a son named willie. how much of an effect do you think that head in making him manic and mean, what do you

think? >> i think it was tragic for him as losing a child would be for anybody. i think that -- i do not think sherman was mean. i think that sherman was clear eyed. to say he recognized that is the way you stop a war is you make the war too costly and in so doing, he really did believe he was saving his men. with his men, they thought the march was great. they loved it. they had more to eat than they normally did. they marched less each day than they did. and with few exceptions, nobody shot down. from sherman's perspective, it was saving his men's lives while bringing the war to a more rapid close. i do not think he is mean. i think he has a job and is

willing to do what it takes. >> can you speak to how in 1864, northern papers were covering the march and how where lincoln opponents who singled out for march as anything different from happening? >> there is very little coverage of the march itself because from november 15 until when he is right outside of savannah, there is no news coming out of the march. the northern paper i looked out of the most has been harper's weekly mostly because i was looking for images and has great images. it is largely celebratory. i will be perfectly honest with you. i've not looked specifically at democratic newspapers where you might have found opponents of lincoln. there is not a sense at the time

that sherman is doing anything beyond the pale. no one thinks sherman has created a new kind of warfare. partly what sherman is doing is the same as what he did in the valley earlier. when the grant famously instructed sheridan, you should destroy the valley such that a crow flying over will have to carry his own provender with him, so it is largely celebratory because they see in the progress of sherman, that his progress is helping to win the war. the reason he turns to savannah and go through the carolinas, he is trying to get to petersburg ultimately. to help out grant. and not to steal any of his thunder, that was my frustration with the movie "lincoln." there was no sherman in it. >> one of my favorite cities in the u.s. is atlanta, georgia.

-- in america is savannah, georgia. can you talk about his decision to save that beautiful city and give a gift to president lincoln? >> that is the nicest description i have heard about that. because normally sherman did not , decide to save it, he said he you can surrender or i will show you into submission. he gave them a choice. savannah said they will surrender. in fact, they earned the enmity of most other places in the south because they looked like they were weak and gave up. that is just the nicest way i have ever heard that played. >> i am just going to -- a quick question. of course, natchez does the same thing but i have another , question. in 1863, confederate troops went out of their way to arrive at gettysburg, busy burning down

thaddeus stevens' house and chasing free blacks all over pennsylvania and rounded them up. is there any equivalent in sherman's march, did his army targeted politicians' houses and did they march out of their way to seek revenge against politicians? or are they rounding up any whites and enslaving them? >> they are not rounded up any whites and enslaving down. sherman takes a particular delight and has a long passage in his memoirs about camping on how will -- howell's plantation. another plays that comes under a lot of destruction is the south carolina poet, william gilmore simms, who they really destroyed his house. i read one diary where a soldier was really dismayed. it is one thing if they trash

the house, but they burned a lot of the books in simms' library. he felt like that was beyond the pale. those are the two. when they take milledgeville, sherman's men going to the georgia state house and they have a mock convention where they bring georgia back. it is really interesting. what they don't do is talk about emancipation at all in this mock convention. they just bring georgia back in. >> there were women and children from the south who were shipped via rail train to the north. and never made it back home again. has any research been done to follow up on what happened to them after the war? >> not that i am aware of. they go willingly. it is not like he is refugeeing women and children. i have not seen much of that. i recall a long time ago i read

a diary of a woman who had been from georgia and had gone and spent part of the war with family in brooklyn and came back to georgia and was very upset that the minister's wife would not talk to her and was seen as a traitor. i am not familiar with that. >> as a professor, it is mississippi state who recently came out with a book on sherman. it advances that one of his motives since he went to school in louisiana, to a military school, knew many of the confederate officers and have many friendships. and part of his motivation and the south was to protect his own troops and certainly to break the will of the south. what we had been doing was not

completely working and then i think back to after the overland campaign, grant still hung on for almost a year. all of the loss and distraction and loss of life that went on there to take the approach to break the will of the south to continue to fight. and all that intel, but also he did not want to harm his own troops. he did not want to take on many of his friends and do battle on the field of battle. >> i have not heard that theory. those friendships of courts are legendary. not so much but cause sherman had taught at lsu, but that a lot of the officers had been at west point together. that does not ring true to me. i am not familiar with the book -- is a "demon of the lost

cause?" is that the one? it is the most recent one that i know that has come out. i would love to see it. thank you. >> when the question arose about the press coverage, did walt whitman cover anything having to do with sherman? the other question is can you address some of the demonizing of sherman, when it began? there is a big mythologization, when did that begin? >> walt whitman has one poem that sort of oblique lee references sherman, it is ethiopia signaling the colors. it's from a point of view of an african-american woman.

herman melville, in battle pieces, has two poems about sherman's march, i think there are two that are pretty powerful. the mythologizing of sherman, it began as the war concluded and was seen as such a heor of the war. -- hero of the war. they march at the very end of the war and areas captured cows and sheep and sings marching behind them. certainly when the sherman dies in 1891 or 1892, there's an outpouring of grief that was tremendous. during the 1870's, he is not reviled in the south.

he makes a tour of the south in 1879 and goes back to atlanta. he is welcomed with open arms. there are balls in his honor. there are people like, sherman is coming. hide the matches. he is welcomed by white southerners because of the fact he did not support equality for african americans, he wanted a very soft peace. going back to his time at lsu, he loved the south and southern whites to be more clear. thank you all very much. [applause] [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> you are watching american history tv all weekend on c-span3. to join the commerce asian, like us on facebook. book "sundays at includes gretchen

mortenson. >> what role will the government play in housing finance? if you want to subsidize financing in this country and you want to talk about it and the populace agrees that it is something we should subsidize, then put on the balance sheet and make it clear and make it evident. make everyone aware of how much it is costing, but when you deliver it into these third-party enterprises, freddie mae in the -- fannie mae and freddie mac, extract a lot of subsidy for themselves, that is good way of subsidizing homeownership. whites read more of our conversation with gretchen mortenson another featured interviews from our book notes and "q&a" programs in "sundays at eight," now available from your favorite booksellers. >> all weekend long, american history tv is