What The Yankees Did To Us: Sherman's Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta

Not only did Sherman’s leave the South a smoldering ruin, but he ruined the North too! The South now had zero purchasing power, so the North would have a hard time selling their goods down there. It cost an already cash-strapped Congress too much money and with the South ruined, there would be no businesses and no tax revenue after the war. By the time Sherman reached Georgia, the South was already starving from food shortages, so he could easily have marched around it. I’ve always suspected that the previously unsuccessful general was trying to get attention. He failed in his chance to lead a big army like Grant did, so why not show his prowess by shelling a town? He made a big display for himself, and it got him attention. The Northern press, hungry for good stories, printed everything he said.

Author Stephen Davis has written this extensive book on Sherman’s campaign, with liberal use of eyewitness accounts. Blow by blow, the book tells of how it began with a siege, continued with weeks of shelling, and ended with the army tearing down the remains. The author blames part of it on the Confederate army being called away from the city, and that allowed Sherman to attack. But as for the burning, he blames it on a lack of manpower to fight the fires. I’ll give the author credit for that, but he also described in detail how the occupying Union troops dismantled the remaining houses to build their own shanties and fuel cooking fires. Confederate troops came back to find their houses stripped to the foundations.

The North may have won and the South obviously lost. But in some ways, both sides lost. The main cities in the South had all burned, and for years afterwards, both white and black people were poor. Ruined whites took out their anger on newly freed slaves, so the blacks ended up losing too. The only way for white planters to prosper was to keep blacks enslaved through the sharecropping system (or prison farms.) Things have turned out the same way with Iraq since 2003, when the US invaded and occupied the country. Although it’s thousands of miles away, it’s created trouble for the USA in that it we have a huge war debt (which led to the devaluation of bonds), and Iraq has no purchasing power (no market for US products.) As for safety and security, well forget it, because Iraq is a security risk for the whole world (military spending rises.) Bringing war to the civilians, or “total war,” as some call it, leaves the winning side in a financial mess.

Some people just never learn.