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One hundred
thirty-six years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox,
Americans are still fascinated with the War for Southern Independence.
The larger bookstores devote an inordinate amount of shelf space
to books about the events and personalities of the war; Ken Burns’s "Civil
War" television series and the movie "Gettysburg" were
blockbuster hits; dozens of new books on the war are still published
every year; and a monthly newspaper, Civil War News, lists
literally hundreds of seminars, conferences, reenactments, and
memorial events related to the war in all 50 states and the District
of Columbia all year long. Indeed, many Northerners are "still
fighting the war" in that they organize a political mob whenever
anyone attempts to display a Confederate heritage symbol in any
public place.
Americans
are still fascinated by the war because many of us recognize it
as the defining event in American history. Lincoln’s war established
myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government
and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power,
central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription,
the suspension of constitutional liberties, the "rewriting" of
the Constitution by federal judges, "total war," the
quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is
one big "problem solver."
Perhaps
the most hideous precedent established by Lincoln’s war, however,
was the intentional targeting of defenseless civilians. Human beings
did not always engage in such barbaric acts as we have all watched
in horror in recent days. Targeting civilians has been a common
practice ever since World War II, but its roots lie in Lincoln’s
war.
In 1863
there was an international convention in Geneva, Switzerland, that
sought to codify international law with regard to the conduct of
war. What the convention sought to do was to take the principles
of "civilized" warfare that had evolved over the previous
century, and declare them to be a part of international law that
should be obeyed by all civilized societies. Essentially, the convention
concluded that it should be considered to be a war crime, punishable
by imprisonment or death, for armies to attack defenseless citizens
and towns; plunder civilian property; or take from the civilian
population more than what was necessary to feed and sustain an
occupying army.
The Swiss
jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67, author of The Law of Nations, was
the world’s expert on the proper conduct of war at the time. "The
people, the peasants, the citizens, take no part in it, and generally
have nothing to fear from the sword of the enemy," Vattel
wrote. As long as they refrain from hostilities themselves they "live
in as perfect safety as if they were friends." Occupying soldiers
who would destroy private property should be regard as "savage
barbarians."
In 1861
the leading American expert in international law as it relates
to the proper conduct of war was the San Francisco attorney Henry
Halleck, a former army officer and West Point instructor whom Abraham
Lincoln appointed General-in-Chief of the federal armies in July
of 1862. Halleck was the author of the book, International Law, which
was used as a text at West Point and essentially echoed Vattel’s
writing.
On April
24, 1863, the Lincoln administration seemed to adopt the precepts
of international law as expressed by the Geneva Convention, Vattel,
and Halleck, when it issued General Order No. 100, known as the "Lieber
Code." The Code’s author was the German legal scholar Francis
Leiber, an advisor to Otto von Bismarck and a staunch advocate
of centralized governmental power. In his writings Lieber denounced
the federal system of government created by the American founding
fathers as having created "confederacies of petty sovereigns" and
dismissed the Jeffersonian philosophy of government as a collection
of "obsolete ideas." In Germany he was arrested several
times for subversive activities. He was a perfect ideological fit
with Lincoln’s own political philosophy and was just the man Lincoln
wanted to outline the rules of war for his administration.
The Lieber
Code paid lip service to the notion that civilians should not be
targeted in war, but it contained a giant loophole: Federal commanders
were permitted to completely ignore the Code if, "in their
discretion," the events of the war would warrant that they
do so. In other words, the Lieber Code was purely propaganda.
The
fact is, the Lincoln government intentionally targeted civilians
from the very beginning of the war. The administration’s battle
plan was known as the "Anaconda Plan" because it sought
to blockade all Southern ports and inland waterways and starving
the Southern civilian economy. Even drugs and medicines were
on the government’s list of items that were to be kept out of
the hands of Southerners, as far as possible.
As early
as the first major battle of the war, the Battle of First Manassas
in July of 1861, federal soldiers were plundering and burning private
homes in the Northern Virginia countryside. Such behavior quickly
became so pervasive that on June 20, 1862 – one year into the war – General
George McClellan, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac,
wrote Lincoln a letter imploring him to see to it that the war
was conducted according to "the highest principles known to
Christian civilization" and to avoid targeting the civilian
population to the extent that that was possible. Lincoln replaced
McClellan a few months later and ignored his letter.
Most Americans
are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s "march
to the sea" in which his army pillaged, plundered, raped,
and murdered civilians as it marched through Georgia in the face
of scant military opposition. But such atrocities had been occurring
for the duration of the war; Sherman’s March was nothing new.
In 1862
Sherman was having difficulty subduing Confederate sharpshooters
who were harassing federal gunboats on the Mississippi River near
Memphis. He then adopted the theory of "collective responsibility" to "justify" attacking
innocent civilians in retaliation for such attacks. He burned the
entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, to the ground. He also began
taking civilian hostages and either trading them for federal prisoners
of war or executing them.
Jackson
and Meridian, Mississippi, were also burned to the ground by Sherman’s
troops even though there was no Confederate army there to oppose
them. After the burnings his soldiers sacked the town, stealing
anything of value and destroying the rest. As Sherman biographer
John Marzalek writes, his soldiers "entered residences, appropriating
whatever appeared to be of value . . . those articles which they
could not carry they broke."
After
the destruction of Meridian Sherman boasted that "for five
days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that
work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and
with fire.... Meridian no longer exists."
In The
Hard Hand of War historian Mark Grimsley argues that Sherman
has been unfairly criticized as the "father" of waging
war on civilians because he "pursued a policy quite in keeping
with that of other Union commanders from Missouri to Virginia." Fair
enough. Why blame just Sherman when such practices were an essential
part of Lincoln’s entire war plan and were routinely practiced
by all federal commanders? Sherman was just the most zealous
of all federal commanders in targeting Southern civilians, which
is apparently why he became one of Lincoln’s favorite generals.
In his
First Inaugural Address Jefferson said that any secessionists should
be allowed to "stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety
with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left
free to combat it." But by 1864 Sherman would announce that "to
the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy." In
1862 Sherman wrote his wife that his purpose in the war would
be "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least
of the trouble, but the people" of the South. His loving and
gentle wife wrote back that her wish was for "a war of extermination
and that all [Southerners] would be driven like swine into the
sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one
habitation is left standing."
The Geneva
Convention of 1863 condemned the bombardment of cities occupied
by civilians, but Lincoln ignored all such restrictions on his
behavior. The bombardment of Atlanta destroyed 90 percent of the
city, after which the remaining civilian residents were forced
to depopulate the city just as winter was approaching and the Georgia
countryside had been stripped of food by the federal army. In
his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100
million in private property and carried home $20 million more during
his "march to the sea."
Sherman
was not above randomly executing innocent civilians as part of
his (and Lincoln’s) terror campaign. In October of 1864 he ordered
a subordinate, General Louis Watkins, to go to Fairmount, Georgia, "burn
ten or twelve houses" and "kill a few at random," and "let
them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired
upon."
Another
Sherman biographer, Lee Kennett, found that in Sherman’s army "the
New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and
foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World." Although
it is rarely mentioned by "mainstream" historians, many
acts of rape were committed by these federal soldiers. The University
of South Carolina’s library contains a large collection of thousands
diaries and letters of Southern women that mention these unspeakable
atrocities.
Shermans’ band
of criminal looters (known as "bummers") sacked the slave
cabins as well as the plantation houses. As Grimsley describes
it, "With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm
among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking
whatever they liked." A routine procedure would be to hang
a slave by his neck until he told federal soldiers where the plantation
owners’ valuables were hidden.
General
Philip Sheridan is another celebrated "war hero" who
followed in Sherman’s footsteps in attacking defenseless civilians.
After the Confederate army had finally evacuated the Shenandoah
Valley in the autumn of 1864 Sheridan’s 35,000 infantry troops
essentially burned the entire valley to the ground. As Sheridan
described it in a letter to General Grant, in the first few days
he "destroyed over 2200 barns . . . over 70 mills . . . have
driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed
. . . not less than 3000 sheep. . . . Tomorrow I will continue
the destruction."
In letters
home Sheridan’s troops described themselves as "barn burners" and "destroyers
of homes." One soldier wrote home that he had personally set
60 private homes on fire and opined that "it was a hard looking
sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this
season of the year." A Sergeant William T. Patterson wrote
that "the whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens
are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations,
such crying and pleading for mercy [by defenseless women]... I
never saw or want to see again."
As horrific
as the burning of the Shenandoah Valley was, Grimsley concluded
that it was actually "one of the more controlled acts of destruction
during the war’s final year." After it was all over Lincoln
personally conveyed to Sheridan "the thanks of the Nation."
Sherman
biographer Lee Kennett is among the historians who bend over backwards
to downplay the horrors of how Lincoln waged war on civilians.
Just recently, he published an article in the Atlanta Constitution arguing
that Sherman wasn’t such a bad guy after all and should not be
reviled by Georgians as much as he is. But even Kennett admitted
in his biography of Sherman that:
Had the
Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position
to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they
would have found themselves justified...in stringing up President
Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violations of the
laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.
Sherman
himself admitted after the war that he was taught at West Point
that he could be hanged for the things he did. But in war the victors
always write the history and are never punished for war crimes,
no matter how heinous. Only the defeated suffer that fate. That
is why very few Americans are aware of the fact that the unspeakable
atrocities of war committed against civilians, from the firebombing
of Dresden, the rape of Nanking, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the
World Trade Center bombings, had their origins in Lincoln’s war.
This is yet another reason why Americans will continue their fascination
with the War for Southern Independence.
Thomas
J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland.
His book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His
Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, will be published next March.
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