Sherman’s Hard Truths About War Ring True Today 

The Civil War general’s experiences offer important lessons for critics of Israel’s military tactics.

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(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

In September 1864, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman occupied Atlanta and warned citizens to evacuate before he burned the town. The mayor and city council implored him to rescind the evacuation order, but Sherman—then commanding the Union’s Army of the West—politely refused and explained why. His response is worth revisiting today given the debate regarding Israeli operations in Gaza after Hamas terrorists sadistically massacred 1,400 Jews, and took 240 others hostage—several dozen of them United States citizens—on October 7.  

In the letter,  Sherman laid out the reasons for his occupation of Atlanta and forthcoming actions against the Confederate army. He wished no harm to the occupants of the city and offered to “make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.” Sherman wrote those words nearly 160 years ago, but they remain relevant for their insight into the necessity of effective force—as Sherman would go on to say years later, “War is hell”—as Israel seeks to eradicate the terrorists who made life miserable for both Israelis and Palestinians. 

To have peace in all of America, Sherman explained, the Union Army must defeat the Confederate army wherever it stood, and destroy its ability to arm and sustain itself. Atlanta had been used for “warlike purposes … inconsistent with its character as a home for families.”  Similarly, Israel cannot be at peace unless Hamas is destroyed. Gaza is the forward headquarters, and logistical and manpower base, of that organization. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) therefore reasonably ordered Palestinian civilians to evacuate much of Gaza.

Sherman continued, “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” Gaza’s civilians are now essentially held captive by Hamas, but just as Southerners elected secessionist governments in 1860, Palestinians in Gaza knowingly elected Hamas in 2006 despite—or perhaps because of—its history of terror attacks. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    A very powerful and important article. I’m glad TD published this.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    Virginia had a secession committee. Preliminary voting prior to Ft Sumter was 2:1 to remain. But after Ft. Sumter it ran 95%+ in favor of secession, as a romanticist emotion swept through the delegates there.

    A good many of them learned Sherman was sincere when he wrote “𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙖 𝙗𝙤𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙩𝙤𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙖𝙧 𝙖𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙮, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙗𝙤𝙮𝙨, 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙡.”

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    1. Pohl

      I wrote a thesis once based on the school of thought that the war was the “creation of inflamed imaginations.” I’m less convinced of that now, but fevers can definitely sway better judgement.

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  3. Pohl

    If you remove most of the paragraph citing the atrocities of Dresden and Tokyo during WWII, your case would be stronger.

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  4. Deleted Comment

    This comment has been deleted

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    Thegwscotts

    Why should not political entities be allowed to separate? The Twenty-first Century view is that they should. Whether in the Nineteenth Century the South had a "right" to secede was the question, much disputed at the time, though present commentators generally choose to ignore that debate. (Virginia, at least, had reserved that right in the legislative act in ratifying the Constitution.)

    It may well be Providential that the Union was preserved, but at a great great cost in lives, and more. The author writes that Southern independence would perpetuate "the horrible evil of slavery for several decades." Indeed, one can hardly imagine slavery lasting more than that, certainly not into the 20th Century. But it surely would have ended -- perhaps with great violence, but perhaps at considerably lesser cost than the war (and Jim Crow) imposed. This is a question that deserves thought. The direct targeting of civilians deserves perhaps less thought and more condemnation.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Scarlette Tarte

      I do not think slavery would have ever ended. Yes, as we moved off of farms and into manufacturing the labor needs changed ,but NO ONE just gives up "free labor". Well, aside from the very few who ever had a crises of conscience, that is.

      A big plantation owner decides to invest in the automobile, let's say, when it comes out. Who better to staff a factory with than free labor? Automobiles were simple to assemble back then, and teaching the slaves how an engine works would have been easy. Showing them how to work an assembly line, no problem.

      And on and on it would have gone. Most capitalist who were ok having slaves pick their cotton would not have suddenly developed qualms about using them in a plant producing whatever the businessman had invested in.

      Sure, there would have been an abolition movement, but since so many liked the idea of having slaves and LOVED the idea of the profits you could make with free labor, I don't see it ever ending. Slaves could be moved into various production capabilities, and very likely they would have even been able to move them into service industry jobs as well, being the housekeepers, cooks, bellmen, concierges, wait staff, dishwashers etc at the hotels and restaurants these business folk would own.

      No, I don't see it "ending naturally". It's not something any slaveholder in a slave owning economy would want to do. It was always gonna take a fight, either between slave and free regions of the US or an uprising of the slaves themselves, acting in cahoots with abolitionists.

      Too much money was made on the economy of free labor ever to give that up without a fight of some kind.

      The idea that "slavery was ending soon anyway" is what apologists for the south like to say, as if to say "gee, they were already thinking of ending it themselves because, after all, it just wasn't a great economy.

      Which is, for anyone who knows just how much wealth that slave economy produces, astounding to hear anyone try to claim.

      Though slavery as an economic system was not an economic engine for the economy as a whole, it was a massive wealth generator for the slave holder. In 1860, the value of the slaves themselves was 4 billion dollars, which today would equal 148 billion dollars today, using the valuation of 100 dollars in 1860 equaling 3700 dollars today. Averaging out the value of each slave, in 1860 each slave was worth 1000 (1860) dollars.

      Mississippi was the wealthiest state in the union in 1860. Natchez Mississippi, today a lazy backwater, was home to the most millionaires in 1860. 600 of their homes survive and are on our historic register, the most of of any place in the US. The single wealthiest county in the US in 1860 was Adams county Mississippi. Today, that county ranks 41st just in Mississippi, with a median income of 27,096 dollars.

      The civil war evaporated that wealth. Overnight, the wealthiest region of the country became the poorest.

      All that wealth was not about to just be "given up" and one can see now that there is no way the US government could have ever paid that much money to buy the slaves from slave holders to free them.

      The north stripped the slave owners of vast amounts of wealth by force, which is the only way any government could have made those people free. By force. I don't know of many people who willingly give up any money, much less than kind of dough.

      Slavery, on the scale it was practiced in the US was never going to "just end'. Too much money was involved.

      Slavery is terrible as an economic engine for growth of the entire country. But for slave owners, the wealth that redounded to them by virtue of that free labor was enormous, almost more than we can imagine.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      I think slavery would have easily lasted another 75-100 years.

      Abolition was not a majority held position until into the civil war. Many anti-slavery people were split on how to effect emancipation.

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    3. Mike E

      It sounds like you would have preferred to see slavery continue, since that would have been a lesser cost than the war. You also surmise that slavery would "certainly" just end. I'm not convinced that you've got this right.

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        Pbanuski

        All the abolition societies that would spring up from Richmond to Montgomery. /s

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  6. Acasilaco

    Can anyone recommend a link to a reasonably fair-minded analysis of what the IDF is doing to mitigate civilian casualties, what they could be doing better, and so on? It's a tough thing to Google. My young adult children are convinced from what they've been reading and listening to that IDF is acting at least as bad as Hamas in their response. I'm trying to show my kids that, yes, bad things are happening in Gaza, but there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel and IDF is *trying* to keep civilian deaths as low as possible.

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    1. Yikes

      When the IDF gleefully murders and rapes, your kids will have a point.

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    2. Dougrhon

      It is actually remarkable how much effort the IDF is taking to avoid civilian casualties. Given the degree to which Hamas imbeds among them, a callous army would have killed probably 50 to 100 thousand civilians already. It is simply through the looking glass to believe the IDF is anything like Hamas. Unfortunately most major media has gone through the looking glass. I mean the IDF is doing what Sherman did and literally opening corridors of safety to move civilians away while Hamas is literally shooting civilians who try to leave. It is as black and white decency vs evil as any war in human history.

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      Jmacdonster

      Perhaps this?

      https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/israel%E2%80%93hamas-war-iran-update

      It’s more descriptive than emotive.

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  7. Clark.Monson

    One thing to also note is that before the war, Sherman was a great admirer of the South. Even after the war, he was privately critical of his old friend Grant’s Reconstruction policies, believing them too harsh. In other words, Sherman wasn’t a man who hated the South; quite the opposite. But he knew what needed to be done to win the war.

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    1. Dougrhon

      Emotion has no place in a battle plan. Sherman and Grant were pure logic.

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  8. BEE

    Couldn't have put it any better myself.

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    Citizen60

    Excellent read. Bringing history into today was done masterfully. Thank you.

    P.S. I wish a larger audience could read this

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    1. BEE

      I think this article is public! Feel free to share it elsewhere.

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    SandyG

    A great piece. Just a question: Who are the European and Arab countries standing by to rebuild and aid Gaza?

    Thank you.

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      CVS

      The Arabs dumped money into Gaza anyway. They'll do so again to rebuild, probably even moreso.

      Macron just held some sort of conference to get money for Gaza. It'll be there. And it should be. Just without Hamas.

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        SandyG

        OK, thx.

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