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In October 1864, Sherman ordered the indiscriminate murder of civilians near Calhoun Georgia. He wrote to his subordinate, Gen. Louis Watkins:
“Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Peace to Kingston!” (Official Records, series 1 Vol. 39, page 494.
Despite the Lieber Code mandating severe punishment for such actions, Gen. Garrard was never published, and Gen. Watkins died on active duty without any disciplinary action being taken. Sherman, of course, simply moved on to his Masterpiece of Atrocity: the pillage and burning of a large Southern city, Atlanta Georgia.
Sherman’s March to Atlanta and March to the Sea 1864
From Mid-November to the end of December 1864, General Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea encompassed numerous war crimes and atrocities which Sherman and the subordinates carrying out his orders committed. Neither Sherman nor any of his officers were charged with the multiple and flagrant violations of the Lieber Code that they committed. Even the malleable Leiber Code, which gave wide berth for anything justified under the elastic concept of “military necessity” had conceived of the type of Total War that Sherman had now perfected.
Before beginning the March, Sherman told one of his commanders:
“I am going into the very bowels of the Confederacy, and propose to leave a trail that will be recognized fifty years hence.” (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 39, page 358)
Sherman indiscriminately confiscated and destroyed civilian property; property was taken without payment or even with any accounting for it or providing receipts as was the tradition of civilized warfare. Homes and building with absolutely no military value were destroyed as a matter of course and he even his sympathetic biographers indicate he “winked” at abuses” committed by his soldiers. Farm fields were trampled and livestock was taken for food. In a report to General Halleck, Sherman relished the destruction he was about to unleash on South Carolina saying: “The truth is the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her.” (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 44, page 799)
There is no doubt that Atlanta contained many important military assets and transportation facilities vital to the Confederate War effort and that these were legitimate targets for Federal troops. However, the destruction meted out to the entire city was beyond excessive.
For one thing, there had been several pitched battles fought on the outskirts surrounding the city, including the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church, which bled the Southern forces defending the area to the breaking point. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta, after a five-week siege. After obtaining a military victory, instead of moving on, Sherman literally destroyed the city, which was bombarded by cannon fire for three long weeks.
Sherman said:
“Let us destroy Atlanta and make it a desolation… one thing is certain, whether we get inside Atlanta or not, it will be a used-up community by the time we are done with it.” (Official Records, Series 1Vol. 38 part 5, page 452)
On August 223 artillery pieces rained down as may of 5000 rounds of shot on Atlanta in one day. The bombardment went on day and night for 3 weeks. Any concern for civilian life or property was discarded. During the bombardment, one surgeon reported that he performed 107 amputations on men women and children. Houses and Churches were shattered along with civilian bodies.
However, Sherman absurdly blamed the casualties on the Confederate commander John Bell Hood for defending a line so close to the city that many people were killed “by accident” when Union shells overshot their marks.
Again, the rationale of Total War came into play. As Sherman wrote to Halleck in 1863:
“If we can, our numerical majority has both the natural and constitutional right to govern. If we cannot whip them, they contend for the natural right to select their own government”
Of course, the right to select one’s own government was exactly what the Declaration of Independence was all about. To ensure the South would be prevented from exercising such a natural right, Sherman wrote:
“...we will remove and destroy every obstacle – if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.” (Official Records Series 1, Vol. 30, Part. 3, pages 697 – 698)
On September 2, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered the city and Sherman sent a telegram to Washington reading, “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” That same day, Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate and the city.
The legitimate burning and destruction of military assets soon got out of hand and, with no civilians to stop it, spread wildly. Looting, pillaging, rape, and assault were widespread.
Sherman later wrote:
“Behind us lay Atlanta, smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. (William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman, Chapter 21)
The Fall of Atlanta and the Presidential Election of 1864
Of course, the fall of Atlanta was a “present” for President Lincoln, who was facing a tough election that November that he was very worried he would lose. Northern voters faced a clear choice between the candidates in the 1864 election. Lincoln continued to insist that the Confederacy must accept re-union and emancipation. His opponent, General George McClellan set the condition for peace as ”the Union and nothing more” – viz. restoring the antebellum Union with slavery intact. It is very likely that if McClellan had won the election, he would have rescinded the Emancipation Proclamation and ended the participation of the 186,000 Black soldiers, most of them liberated slaves in the Army and Navy; presumably, they would have been returned to their masters.
Given the brutal losses suffered by Grant’s powerful and well-equipped army at the hands of Lee’s threadbare forces in the battles of The Wilderness, McClellan and his advisers were confident that Lincoln could be beaten. Lincoln and many other Republicans also thought he would lose and others even begged him to cancel the election.
Therefore, the fall of Atlanta was especially noteworthy for its political ramifications. The capture and fall of the city were extensively covered by Northern newspapers and significantly boosted Northern morale.
The Lincoln myth of him as a gentle and compassionate man who, ”had no desire to take bloody vengeance” on the rebels, to kill or subjugate them, to confiscate their property or to deprive them of their legal and constitutional rights is as absurd as it is inaccurate.
It does not square with the reality of his fanatic desire to subjugate the Confederacy and destroy its concept of a Union under the rules of the Constitution of 1789.
Lincoln himself had said that once he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, ”the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation. . . . The South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.” Lincoln’s policies turned the war into the very thing he had once warned against: ”a remorseless revolutionary struggle” that not only vanquished the Old South but destroyed the concept of Federal Union as laid down in the Constitution of 1789… not to mention killing plenty of rebels.
That Constitution was to be overthrown; its articles regarding the traditional constitutional power relationship between State and Federal Government eviscerated; its ethos favoring limited and local governance over overpowering and centralized governance inverted; its worship of individual Jeffersonian Liberty perverted into the apostasy of bowing before an ever more powerful Hamiltonian State.
Sherman’s brutality served both Lincoln’s political needs and his statist philosophy; he was easily re-elected more on the ruins of Southern cities and civilian bodies than on defeated Southern armies which, given their thrashing of Grants vastly superior forces during the Wilderness campaign, still had the power to inflict military defeat on the North despite all its advantages.