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This view was echoed by Halleck who wrote Sherman in December 1864:
“Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by some accident the place may be destroyed and if a little salt should be sown upon its site it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and secession.”
Believing Charleston already sufficiently devastated, Sherman instead turned to Columbia South Carolina to satisfy Halleck Punic Vengeance.
On the day the army entered the city, robbery of civilian homes was rampant and was indulged in by both officers and enlisted men. Churches were pillaged, women’s jewelry was roughly taken from their bodies and arson was rampant. (William G. Simms, Sack and destruction of the City of Columbia S.C, pages 40, 48)
Once again, Sherman blamed the victim, telling the mayor of Columbia Thomas Goodwyn:
“It is true our men have burnt Columbia, but it is your fault.” (Edwin Scott, Random Recollections of a Long Life 1806 – 1876 Pages 183 – 184)
War of Extermination in Missouri
The Union forces resorted to brutal tactics to stamp out independent Southern Militia in the state of Missouri to fight those who were reduced to partisan warfare as their only means of resistance, as Southerners had done in the Revolutionary War.
Gen Halleck stated that:
“every man who enlists in such a (partisan) organization forfeits his life and becomes an outlaw.” (Official Records, Series 1 Vol. 8 Page 612)
The commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, Lt. Gem Theophilus Hunter-Holmes protested the Union policy of basically criminalizing all Southern military resistance:
“…I can see but one result of the course which the Federal Government and its officers are thus adopting. That result is a war of extermination… We cannot allow our enemies to decide for us whether we shall fight in masses or individually in uniform, without uniform openly or from ambush. Our forefathers and yours conceded no such right to the British in the first Revolution, and we cannot concede it to you in this.” (Official Records, Series 1, Vol.13, Page 727)
Federal forces responded brutally, foregoing due process, hanging partisans, and leaving them unburied to set an example, assuming any bands of men larger than two or more were guerrillas and having them summarily shot. Women and family members of suspected guerrillas were incarcerated in terrible and dangerous conditions if it was determined they were “disloyal” including girls and teenagers.
On August 25th 1863, Brig. Gen Thomas Ewing issued General Order 11 which commanded rural residents of four Missouri counties to abandon their homes and all their possessions. They were given 15 days to clear out, on foot, of an area of almost 3000 square miles consisting of a population of 20,000. Many families were attacked and robbed of horses and any possessions they managed to take with them on the road.
Union militiamen then set fire to all the abandoned homes and those fires often spread to fields and forests creating what was known as a “Burn District” to describe the extensive devastation.
The Burning – Shenandoah Valley Virginia, 1864
In late Spring 1864, Maj. Gen David Hunter launched an attack on Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He burned civilian homes and seized civilian property in recompense for Confederate attacks on Federal supplies and order that: secession sympathizers”; within a radius of 10 miles where the Federal supplies were lost be made to pay for them at five times the value of such property.
During the 2 day occupation of Lexington, soldiers pillaged homes and left the population destitute and starving.
In September 1864, Maj. Gen Philip Sheridan followed up his victory over Southern Forces at the Battle of Third Winchester to take the opportunity to make the Valley, in his words, “A barren waste” or what the residents simply came to call “The Burning.”
Sheridan was proud of his record of the destruction of civilian property. He noted “I have destroyed over 2000 barns, filled with wheat, hay, and farming implements,” along with “over 70 mills, filled with flour and wheat.” (Official Records, Series 1, Vol.43, part 2, page 308)
WAR CRIMES AGAINST PRISONERS OF WAR
Confederate POWs Used to Clear Mine Fields – Virginia 1862
During a skirmish that occurred during the battle of Williamsburg Gen. McClellan forced the Confederate forces to withdraw, but not before they covered their withdrawal with the placement of crude land mines (or, as they were known at the time “torpedoes”)
McClellan forced Confederate POWs to clear these “torpedoes” after some of his men were killed by them. However, forcing POWs to clear land mines was prohibited by the Lieber Code paragraph 75, which spares POWs from “intentional suffering or indignity.”
Sherman added his own perverse twist on this practice when he used or threatened to use, civilians to clear land mines as well as POWs.
Sherman wrote, “Of course an enemy cannot complain of his own traps.” (O.R. Series 1 Vol.38 page 579)
This was in direct violation of the Leiber Code, paragraph 33 that says it is a “serious breach of the law of war to force the subjects of the enemy into service of the victorious government.
Extortion, Torture and Murder of Soldiers– Jackson Tennessee, 1864
As reported by Confederate Gen. W.M. Reed, the US Army tortured and murdered Confederate POWs as well as threatening, extorting money, and murdering civilians in the area. When this was reported to Confederate Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest, he demanded that the Federal commander turn over the Officers and men responsible for the crime.
Union Col. Fielding Hurst rode into Jackson and demanded money from the townspeople or else his forces would burn the town. He extorted over $5139.25 from the civilian population… the exact amount the US Army had assessed Hurst had stolen when he entered and robbed the home owned by a woman living in Jackson the year before in 1863. Resentful of having to pay this assessment, Hurst returned to steal the restitution money.
During Hurst’s stay in Jackson, several Southern POWs were tortured, mutilated, and killed; several members of the Jackson clergy were also arrested and threatened; they were only released when Forrest threatened to execute 5 Federal officers in retaliation if they were not let go.
All the above is in perfect accord with the Sherman doctrine of “collective guilt” – that is, civilians and POWs were collectively responsible for Confederate military actions whether they were involved or not.
Confederate Officers used as Human Shields
The Lincoln Administration sanctioned the use of POWs as human shields at the very highest levels. In 1864, Secretary of War Stanton approved a plan to move 600 Confederate POWs from Ft. Delaware to Charleston harbor, where they were placed in the line of fire between the Confederate and Union lines while they were forced to constructed Union fortifications
The US Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Halleck wrote to Gen J.G. Foster, the officer in charge of building the fortifications the following:
“The Secretary of War has directed that 600 rebel officers, prisoners of war, be sent to you, to be confined, exposed to fire, and treated with the same manner as our officers, prisoners of war are treated in Charleston. No exchanges will be made without special instructions of the War Department. Any offer for exchange will be communicated here of the action of the secretary of War.”
This tactic was in gross violation of the Lieber Code paragraphs 56 and 75 which specifically spares POWs from “barbarity” and “intentional suffering or indignity.”
Confederate Maltreatment of Union Prisoners at Andersonville Prison
By 1864, the Confederate Prison at Andersonville was frequently undersupplied with food affecting BOTH prisoners and the Confederate personnel within the fort. Even when sufficient food was available, its quality was very poor.
The camp, built to hold 10,000 prisoners in November 1863 held 20,000 by June 1864.
During the summer of 1864, 1/3 of the Union prisoners held there died from dysentery and scurvy while many others suffered greatly from over-exposure to the elements, severe hunger and other diseases. As was the standard practice of the Confederacy, prisoners were buried in mass graves.
Upon arriving at the Prison, one Union POW gave this harrowing account of what he saw:
“As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. “Can this be hell?” “God protect us!” and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then.” Robert H. Kellogg, “Life and Death in Rebel Prisons” 1865.
In 1864 Mr. Joseph Jones, an expert on infectious disease, investigated the high mortality rate at the camp. He concluded that it was due to “scorbutic dysentery” (bloody diarrhea caused by vitamin C deficiency.) However, modern medicine recognizes it more as probably being rampant hookworm disease that was the likely cause of the fatal emaciation and diarrhea that was rampant in the camp. Hookworm disease was a condition that was not known to medical science during the Civil War era.
The water supply from Creek became polluted when too many Union prisoners used it as a sink and the men were forced to wash themselves in the creek.
The water supply from Creek became polluted when too many Union prisoners used it as a sink and the men were forced to wash themselves in the creek.
Violence among the prisoners saw them attacking their fellow inmates to steal food, personal jewelry, clothes, and whatever money remained on them.
By July 1864, the conditions became so poor that the Prison commander Captain Henry Wirz paroled five Union soldiers to deliver a petition signed by the majority of Andersonville’s prisoners to ask that the Union reinstate prisoner exchanges. The request in the petition was denied by the Federal forces and the Union soldiers, who had sworn to do so, reported this denial to their comrades.
In the latter part of the summer of 1864, the Confederacy offered to unconditionally release prisoners if the Union would send ships (Andersonville is inland, with access possible only via rail line and roadway) to retrieve them. In the autumn of 1864, after the capture of Atlanta, all the prisoners who were well enough to be moved were sent to Millen, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina. At Millen better arrangements prevailed, and after General William Tecumseh Sherman began his march to the sea, the prisoners were returned to Andersonville, where conditions were somewhat improved.
The Prison was liberated by Federal forces in May 1865
After the war Commandant, Wirz was tried by a Union military tribunal on charges of conspiracy and murder. The trial was presided over by Union General Lew Wallace.
A number of former prisoners testified on conditions at Andersonville and they accused Wirz of specific acts of cruelty, most of which could not be substantiated. Some of the acts which Wirz was accused of happened when he was not even present in the camp. The court also considered official correspondence from captured Confederate records. When testimony regarding the terrible conditions in the prison were revealed, it all but sealed Wirz’s conviction
During the war, 45,000 prisoners were received at Andersonville prison, and of these nearly 13,000 died. The nature of the deaths and the reasons for them are a continuing source of controversy among historians.
Some contend that they were a result of deliberate Confederate maltreatment constituting a war crime toward Union prisoners; others contend that the deaths were the result of disease promoted by severe overcrowding, the general shortage of food in the Confederate States, the incompetence of the prison officials, and the refusal of Union authorities to reinstate the prisoner exchange, thus overfilling the stockade.
Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War, Charles A. Dana wrote in the NY Sun:
“We think after testimony given that the Confederate authorities and especially Mr. Davis ought not to be held responsible for the terrible privations, suffering, and injuries which our men had to endure while kept in Confederate Military Prisons, the fact is unquestionable that while Confederates desired to exchange prisoners, to send our men home, and to get back their own men, General Grant steadily and strenuously resisted such an exchange.”
Union General Benjamin Butler stated, “The reason for this was that the exchange of prisoners would strengthen Lee’s army and greatly prolong the war.”
Grant himself said: “If we hold these men caught they are no more than dead men. If we liberate them we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated.”
Secretary of War Stanton’s own statistics testifies that while there were 50,000 more prisoners in Southern prisons than in Northern prisons, the mortality among Southern men in Northern Prisons was far greater.
Some contend that they were a result of deliberate Confederate maltreatment constituting a war crime toward Union prisoners; others contend that the deaths were the result of disease promoted by severe overcrowding, the general shortage of food in the Confederate States, the incompetence of the prison officials, and the refusal of Union authorities to reinstate the prisoner exchange, thus overfilling the stockade.
Wirz presented evidence that he pleaded in vain to Confederate authorities to try to get more food and tried to improve the conditions for the prisoners inside.
Of course, one of President Lincoln’s first acts was to order a blockade of Southern ports on April 19, 1861, to deny food and medicine, among other items, to civilians; such shortages became worse as the war dragged on. Further, given the fact that it was the Federal policy regarding “military necessity” to decimate the ability of the South to wage war by inflicting such starvation and suffering on the civilian population as to cause them to either end the war or face mass death, it is not very surprising that, only having such meager supplies for Southern civilians, Northern POWs suffered their lack as well.
Wirz was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. He was hanged on November 10, 1865.
However, Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the entire Civil War, which in itself is a testimony to the differences between how the fighting was conducted by both sides.