Revision

Quiz time. What general wrote the following words?:

“To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . .Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources.”

“War is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact. We will take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper.”

“The war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people . . .There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished.”

It wasn’t Tamerlane, he couldn’t speak English and besides, practices described above were assumed in every war he fought.  It wouldn’t be a general in the Thirty Years War, they weren’t that calculating or organized when it came to slaughter. The man quoted is the hero of The History Channel’s docudrama “Sherman’s March,” and it wasn’t John Bell Hood. Everyone knows what William T. Sherman did when he set out “to make Georgia howl:” rape, pillage, and burn. In other words, make war on civilians to break the morale of the men in the armies. Clyde Wilson points out and argues the opposite view in an essay dated March 31st that the scholars of the History Channel suggest or state the following:  “Sherman’s march was a great military feat . . . his army only seized food on it march because of necessity and in keeping with the recognized rules of foraging . . . Sherman brought benevolent emancipation to grateful slaves . . . any atrocities that Sherman ordered or allowed were only just retaliation against Southerners, because Southerners for some unaccountable reason, perhaps their natural depravity, were ‘Vicious.’”All lies? At the least these are the new revised view of the blue locusts.

Today that is known as total war, and anyone who grew up in the 20th century is familiar with the process. While depredations certainly occur in all wars, until 1864 there were still limits on systematic destruction of personal property or widespread assault against women and children. Old Cump Sherman showed them how it was done and he received the accolades and rewards that a grateful presidential administration and nation could bestow.

What re-piqued my interest in this campaign actually came from a short piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution announcing the proposed Heritage Trails sites commemorating the war in Georgia, an excellent idea. One little comment caught my attention though, an incident known as the “betrayal at Ebenezer Creek.”The incident is familiar to everyone who has studied the campaign. After the bulk of the Union army had crossed Ebenezer Creek, Union General Jefferson C. Davis had his troops pull up the pontoon bridge behind them, stranding 6-10,000 slaves who had left their plantations and followed the Army of Emancipation. The Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler in hot pursuit came upon the multitude of abandoned freedmen. Some tried to swim for safety but drowned. The newspaper article states: “With sword and gun, the frustrated cavalrymen took their anger out on the unarmed people. Hundreds died in what became known as the betrayal at Ebenezer Creek.”

Forgive my ignorance, but I had never heard of an atrocity where Confederate cavalry massacred hundreds of unarmed (presumably) women, children, and old folks. Why is this horrendous loss of life   never mentioned in the standard histories of Sherman’s march? I have not read Noah Andre Trudeau’s new book on Sherman’s March yet (Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea) but I plan to soon. No one knows how many of the poor souls drowned trying to catch up to those they had considered their saviors. Trudeau is a fair-minded historian and will let the record speak for itself. Sometimes the truth lies somewhere between tradition and revision. Time does not heal all wounds though.

Bill Potter