He wrote that “every member of the nation is bound by natural and constitutional law to ‘maintain and defend the Government against all its opposers whomsoever.’ If they fail to do it they are derelict,” he maintained, “and can be punished or deprived of all advantages arising from the labors of those who do.” Sherman came to Georgia to command an army in that theater and put this policy into operation after the fall of Atlanta during his famous March to the Sea. In September 1863, Sherman laid out his emerging philosophy in a long letter to Halleck. The Meridian operation, which provided a blueprint for Sherman’s March to the Sea, was also an example of psychological warfare, meant to destroy any hope the people might have had of a Confederate victory. This operation was different in that, for the first time, Sherman instructed Union troops to wage a war of destruction, leaving civilians with enough for survival but not enough to support military activity. Approximately seven months after the fall of Vicksburg, Sherman applied the “hard hand of war” against central Mississippi during the Meridian operation. During the Vicksburg Campaign, Grant lived off the land for a time, allowing his army to take what it needed from civilians in its path. The Vicksburg Campaign signaled the beginning of the Union’s hard war policy, permitting whatever was necessary including the destruction of civilian property to bring the conflict to an end. The document, signed by President Lincoln in April 1863, authorized hard war but placed clear limits on its conduct. Like pragmatism, hard war gained traction earlier in the West than it did in the East.Ī milestone of sorts was reached in early 1863 when General Halleck published General Order 100, which provided “a generalized set of regulations” regarding the legal aspects of conducting war. Upon his capture, Ferguson was executed for alleged war crimes.īy 1863, pragmatism began to give way to “hard war,” according to which Southerners who were identified as secessionists were the target of “directed severity,” a policy characterized by destruction of public property but also by a general unwillingness to harm civilians. He and his company of men attacked civilians who held Union sympathies in Tennessee during the war. The prominence of guerrilla warfare in Missouri and Tennessee meant that pragmatic policies took hold more quickly in the West than in Virginia.Ĭhamp Ferguson, pictured here in an 1850s photograph, was a Southern guerrilla fighter. As a result, Union generals such as Henry Halleck in Missouri and Benjamin Butler in New Orleans began to use what historians have called “pragmatic” policies, treating Unionists and those who were neutral better than they treated those who opposed the Union. Lee, whose subsequent victories substantially strengthened the rebellion. Even such generals as Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, who later advocated “hard war,” adhered to the policy of conciliation.Ĭonciliation seemed to be working until George McClellan’s stalemate on the Virginia peninsula in the early summer of 1862 and the emergence of Robert E. Thus, early in the Rebellion, Union generals ordered their soldiers to respect the private property, including slaves, of all civilians, even those who were actively working against them. Initially, the Union adhered to a policy of “conciliation,” waging a somewhat limited war based on the notion that the majority of individuals in the seceded states did not support the breakup of the Union and that the governments of these states were illegal and did not represent their people’s will. In fact, Sherman’s actions were the culmination of a Union policy toward civilians that evolved during the course of the war. But the matter is more complex than either of these charges indicate. Some have claimed that Sherman was a war criminal, authorizing plunder and looting of civilian property. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s actions after the capture of Atlanta and his subsequent March to the Sea are sometimes seen as anticipating the pattern of total war in the twentieth century. Elliott, Scott’s Great Snake(Anaconda Plan), 1861 Primary Source and the Images of Total War: Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1865 Primary Source to illustrate the tactics the Union used to win the war.
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