Thursday, October 31, 2013

Why Total War?

This reading perhaps tells us one of the darkest chapters of the Civil War--one where the Union went on a campaign of complete and utter destruction of the state of Georgia on its march from Atlanta to Savannah.

How did this final stage of the war differ from previous ones?  Why did General Sherman use this strategy?  Do moral decisions get totally undermined by wartime strategy here, and was that OK?

11 comments:

  1. Previously, the attacking Northern armies would protect civilians' property whether they were loyal or not because technically, the North considered the Southerners to still be part of the same country. However, when General Sherman pushed into Georgia, he realized that even with his superior numbers, he could not protect his supply lines, fight the Confederate army, and suppress a rebellious populace. So he had his army live off of conquered supplies, destroying anything that they did not need. His goal was to "make war so terrible to the people of the South that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." He excused his cruelty and barbarity by saying "war is hell." Of course, the mass death and destruction in total war was not moral, but the Union armies would have lost too many of their own soldiers if they had used a different wartime strategy.

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  2. Well he used this tactic to destroy the hopes of the south. He wanted to make sure that there was no more hope for the south to win. Everyone was tired of this war and wanting it to end. But what he did was not necessary. I do not believe it was okay because he gave them no mercy. he wanted to make sure there was nothing left. To show that no one messes with the union army. But I believe that was to far there are a ton of other solutions a lot better then what he went with. People do not realize how bad some of there decisions are after people tell them. It just shows how messed up the human race was and still is today.

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  3. Just like Stefan mentioned, the line where sherman said he wanted to "make war so terrible that 'generations would pass before away before they would again appeal to it'". He also stated that "war is hell" , he really just wanted to sort of freak everyone out from the idea of war. And that was mainly his goal was to convince everyone that war was so bad it would end quickly and no one would want to go through it again.

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  4. Going to war is all about the winning. There is no mercy in a war. You either win, or you lose. Therefore, in order to win, it is necessary to abandon morality sometimes. Being a nice person with a kind heart is not going to bring General Sherman any victory. He knows that the easiest way to win is to be cruel. Like him said himself, "War is hell." Under Sherman's war strategy, the Union became efficient and powerful. They cut off the rebels' sources by burning food, supplies, house and cattle. Furthermore, Lincoln did offer the South chances to rejoin the Union, and he will compensate for the emancipation. However, the South rejected his idea, and that is what brought out the total war. No doubts that the South would say no to Lincoln's offer. First it did not compensate enough compare to the lost of slaves; second, the South wanted to perserve their state rights. Overall, the reading tonight just showed how brutal and cruel war is, and the biggest victim of the war is usually innocent people/civilian.

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  5. War, and what it's surrounded by, fall directly into the moral grey area. Therefore, when it comes to war time decisions i don't think the question of something being moral or not is relevant. Although i do think what they did wasn't moral at all because they completely disregarded how this would affect the people of the south. At this point in the war everyone was sick of it and Sherman thought that completely ransacking everything and just adding to the existing burden the south threw on themselves would prove too much for them to handle and they would surrender. Like Stefan said, the Union was generally seen as respecting the other side in the moral sense but as we see here this didn't hold strongly for everyone.

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  6. General Sherman used very violent tactics in order to subdue the South. They included stealing from the places they conqured, evacuating citizens and burning down the cities after they were done. Also, prisoner negociations became much more harsh because the North felt as though every prisoner was someone that would again turn against them. The reason for these tactics was the level of power with which the South fought. The Souths goal was to win their independence, giving them a drive like no other and making them almost impossible to defeat. According to the general this total war effort was the only way to kill their spirits and win the war. I believe this was probably true due to the amount of losses and wins the North had in battles despite the fact that they had a bigger army.

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  7. General Sherman used malicious tactics in attempts to beat the South. Obviously all he wanted to do was win, and would do anything in order to fulfill this dream of his. He did really bad things such as stealing things, burning the cities that they would destroy in battle after evacuating the citizens. I agree with Tracy when she says that what he did was not moral, but it had to be done even though it wasn't the right thing to do. There were many other ways that he could have gone about this, and came out on top. Even though it would have been very difficult, he could have done things that weren't as violent and didn't cause harm to as many people or their cities.

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  8. First of all, answering to the blog question, in the year of 1964, towards the end of the war, the north really gained a lot of advantages, partially because the north started to involve the civilians by stealing things, burning houses. In comparison to the early stage of war, civilians did not have their houses burned. General Sherman, from the union started with the tactic of stealing civilians' supply because he realized that no matter how many troops he had, it just was not enough to protect the railroad which the troops get supplies from. So robbing was an efficient way to get supplies. However, I think moral decision still exist during civil war. Although General Sherman's troops stole from civilians and burned their houses, at the very least he didn't kill them. This was just a way to weaken the South because the civilians were rebelling as well. Of course, if you want to speak in a completely moral tone, army troops should not have burn civilians' houses but without General Sherman's "war time strategy", the war might last even longer which was a suffer to the civilian as well.

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  9. In the initial stage of the war, The Union did not seize the civilians' property. However, as the war started to drag, The Union started to use the "EarthScourge" in which they started to live off of South's property since General Sherman could not protect their supply lines, including the civilians'. Plus, not only did they seize the civilians' property, but also they burned everything that was left of it. Personally, I think what General Sherman decided to do was completely immoral. However, if you look at it militarily, It was something that brought progress to the north.

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  10. This final stage of the war was very clever even though very devastating. General Sherman used the strategy to take and conquer. He would order his men to go into towns and burn down the houses, take all of the supplies even if there were ‘innocent’ civilians living in the town during the attacks. The whole idea of this take, conquer and burn idea was to not only have war on the battle fields but to destroy every last bit of the south including their everyday life styles. This war tactic is very immoral because there are innocent people living in the towns but during the times of the attacks whether it was a moral decision or not, was not a big concern. I think that during was a lot of moral rights get looked down upon because the only real goal is to win even if its not ok.

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  11. I believe General Sherman used that tactic to show his authority and to show to the south that they had no opportunities to win anymore and that the Union was much more powerful. Even though as Meghan said it was clever, it was awful because he went to the people's house and would steal their properties and burn all the houses of cities without any scruples. This freaks me out like I imagine it how awful would it be to have to it and also just to see it. As everybody said, this tactic is not moral because General Sherman was only concerning about how weak the South would feel after that devastating action that he did instead of concerning more about the innocent people that were losing their properties.

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