What a "bummer" it would be to have your farm raided in November by fifty men, carrying off whatever could fit in your own conveyance, pulled by your own team of draught animals, never to be seen again. And the officer at the top amused by the personal violence these men would visit upon you. And for a hundred and fifty years afterwards, children would not be told of what happened to you by this army, the army of your own country. And why weren't they told? So they would be uncritical of the realities of war, so they would join that very same army that "pillaged" your great grandmother. I have to say, I feel a little let down by historiography at this moment. Is that unfair?
I suppose how one reacts probably depends on the expectations they have prior to reading. For my part, I had always understood Sherman's March as a fairly over-the-top example of retribution. So I was a bit surprised it didn't seem as vindictive in this account as I had imagined. But yeah, especially for poor farmers, it must have sucked. Less sympathy for plantation-owners, perhaps.
That's a good point about expectations. I guess I expected that, being the US, we didn't make it a policy of violating human rights in the name of protecting human rights. Even on the plantations, the burden of the pillaging would have fell most heavily on the slaves, surely Sherman would have understood that would be the result of his retribution. Are we better off carrying an idea that we fight differently as Americans, more humanely? Does that set an example to our own soldiers that serves to allay the worst of war behavior? Or would fully exposing the horrors of war make it less likely for us to engage in it in the first place?
Colonel Poe? Possibly related to Edgar?
Possibly distantly. Orlando Poe was Sherman's chief engineer and went on to build the Poe Lock at Sault Ste. Marie.
What a "bummer" it would be to have your farm raided in November by fifty men, carrying off whatever could fit in your own conveyance, pulled by your own team of draught animals, never to be seen again. And the officer at the top amused by the personal violence these men would visit upon you. And for a hundred and fifty years afterwards, children would not be told of what happened to you by this army, the army of your own country. And why weren't they told? So they would be uncritical of the realities of war, so they would join that very same army that "pillaged" your great grandmother. I have to say, I feel a little let down by historiography at this moment. Is that unfair?
I suppose how one reacts probably depends on the expectations they have prior to reading. For my part, I had always understood Sherman's March as a fairly over-the-top example of retribution. So I was a bit surprised it didn't seem as vindictive in this account as I had imagined. But yeah, especially for poor farmers, it must have sucked. Less sympathy for plantation-owners, perhaps.
That's a good point about expectations. I guess I expected that, being the US, we didn't make it a policy of violating human rights in the name of protecting human rights. Even on the plantations, the burden of the pillaging would have fell most heavily on the slaves, surely Sherman would have understood that would be the result of his retribution. Are we better off carrying an idea that we fight differently as Americans, more humanely? Does that set an example to our own soldiers that serves to allay the worst of war behavior? Or would fully exposing the horrors of war make it less likely for us to engage in it in the first place?