War Crimes Against Southern Civilians Read online

  WAR CRIMES

  AGAINST SOUTHERN

  CIVILIANS

  WAR CRIMES

  AGAINST SOUTHERN

  CIVILIANS

  Walter Brian Cisco

  For Hunter

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter1 .......................................... 15

  An Introduction to Lincoln's War

  Chapter 2 .......................................... 21

  "We Believe in a War of Extermination"

  Keeping Missouri in the Union

  Chapter 3 .......................................... 31

  "Burnt District"

  Order No. 11

  Chapter 4 .......................................... 39

  "Treason Must Be Made Odious"

  Oppression in Tennessee

  Chapter 5 .......................................... 51

  "Soldiers Are Not Expected to Be Angels"

  Fredericksburg Pillaged

  Chapter 6 .......................................... 57

  "1 Shut My Eyes for Two Hours "

  The Sack of Athens

  Chapter 7 .......................................... 63

  "Fleurs du Sud"

  New Orleans Under Butler

  Chapter 8 .......................................... 71

  "Randolph Is Gone"

  Law and Order and Sherman

  Chapter 9 .......................................... 77

  "Their Houses Will Be Burned and the Men Shot"

  Tyranny in Tucker County

  Chapter 10 ......................................... 81

  "The Best Government the World Ever Saw"

  Milroy Rules Winchester

  Chapter 11 ......................................... 85

  "Swamp Angel"

  The Shelling of Charleston

  Chapter 12 ......................................... 89

  "I Intend to Take Everything"

  Banks Raids Louisiana

  Chapter 13

  "No Strict Dichotomy"

  The Lieber Code

  Chapter 14 ........................................ 105

  "We Spent the Rest of That Day in the Dungeon "

  Women and Children in Prison

  Chapter 15 ........................................ 109

  "Make It a Desolation "

  The Shelling of Atlanta

  Chapter 16 ........................................ 113

  "As Captors, We Have a Right to It"

  The Forced Evacuation of Atlanta

  Chapter 17 ........................................ 117

  "Plundering Dreadfully from All Accounts"

  Hunter in the Shenandoah

  Chapter 18 ........................................ 121

  "Nothing Left for Man or Beast"

  Sheridan's Devastation

  Chapter 19 ........................................ 127

  "General Sherman Is Kind of Careless with Fire"

  The Burning of Atlanta

  Chapter 20 ........................................ 131

  "They Took Everything That Was Not Red-Hot or Nailed

  Down"

  March to the Sea

  Chapter 21 ........................................ 143

  "Sometimes the World Seemed on Fire"

  Sherman in South Carolina

  Chapter 22 ........................................ 157

  "And What Do You Think of the Yankees Now?"

  The Burning of Columbia

  Chapter 23 ........................................ 163

  "We Must Make the Thing Pay Somehow"

  Sherman in North Carolina

  Chapter 24 ........................................ 169

  "Marne General Sherman Said War Was Hell"

  Abuse of African-Americans

  Notes ............................................. 187

  Index ............................................. 215

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due the staffs of the following institutions: the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library (particularly the longsuffering folks in the Interlibrary Loan Department) and South Caroliniana Library; Library of Congress; William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; Special Collections Library, Duke University; Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University; and the Huntington Library.

  I appreciate, too, all those individuals who contributed material, ideas, and encouragement: Clyde Wilson, Don Livingston, Tom Elmore, Randy Simpson, Bill Moody, and David Cisco. I only wish that I could have used every piece of information given me.

  This is a better book for the advice, assistance, and inspiration of others. Any shortcomings are entirely the author's.

  WALTER BRIAN CISCO

  WAR CRIMES

  AGAINST SOUTHERN

  CIVILIANS

  Chapter 1

  An Introduction to

  Lincoln's War

  In the midst of his 1863 invasion of the United States, Gen. Robert E. Lee issued a proclamation to his men. After suffering for two years innumerable depredations by their enemies, some Southerners, soldiers and civilians, thought at last the time had come for retaliation. Lee would have none of that. He reminded his troops that "the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own."

  The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country...

  It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain.'

  Accustomed as we are in our own time to war's unmitigated horrors, the injunction of Lee seems anachronistic if not quixotic, yet is a measure and reminder of how much has been lost.

  Through the centuries, by common consent within what used to be called Christendom, there arose a code of civilized warfare. Though other issues are covered by the term, and despite lapses, it came to be understood that war would be confined to combatants. Thus limited, said historian F. J. P. Veale, "it necessarily followed that an enemy civilian did not forfeit his rights as a human being merely because the armed forces of his country were unable to defend him."' According to Veale, the amelioration of war's barbarism did not come as a direct result of Christianity, or even from the rise of European chivalry, but "as the product of belated common sense." As early as the eighteenth century, Swiss jurist Emeric de Vattel, author of The Law of Nations, expressed what should be obvious to any student of history: breaking the code on one side encourages violations by the other, multiplying hatred and bitterness that can only increase the likelihood and intensity of future wars.' "There is today," concluded Vattel in 1758, "no Nation in any degree civilized which does not observe this rule of justice and humanity."4

  Yet warring against noncombatants came to be the stated policy and deliberate practice of the United States in its subjugation of the Confederacy. Shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering of personal property, even murder all became routine. The development of Federal policy during the war is difficult to neatly categorize. Abraham Lincoln, the commander in chie
f with a reputation as micromanager, well knew what was going on and approved. Commanders seemed always inclined to turn a blind eye to their soldiers' proclivity for theft and violence against the defenseless. And though the attitude of Federal authorities in waging war on Southern civilians became increasingly harsh over time, there was from the beginning a widespread conviction that the crushing of secession justified the severest of measures. Malice, not charity, is the theme most often encountered.

  Lincoln's embracing of "hard war" may have had consequences more far-reaching even than defeat of the South. Union general Philip Sheridan, in Germany to observe that empire's conquest of France in 1870, told Otto von Bismarck that defeated civilians "must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war." The chancellor was said to have been shocked by the unsolicited advice. But the kind of warfare practiced by the Federal military during 1861-65 turned America-and arguably the whole world-back to a darker age. "It scarcely needs pointing out," wrote Richard M. Weaver, "that from the military policies of [William T.] Sherman and Sheridan there lies but an easy step to the total war of the Nazis, the greatest affront to Western civilization since its founding."'

  "In war, as in peace," observed Weaver, "people remain civilized by acknowledging bounds beyond which they must not go." Echoing the words of Lee, Weaver understood no necessary contradiction in the term "Christian" as applied to the profession of arms. "The Christian soldier must seek the verdict of battle always remembering that there is a higher law by which he and his opponent will be judged, and which enjoins against fighting as the barbarian."'

  Some assume that as long as there are wars, there will be widespread excesses. Telford Taylor noted that the attitude of Americans when informed of the massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai was to discount it by saying that such things are bound to happen. "So, too," Taylor pointed out, "are murders and robberies `bound to happen' in our streets, and they are likely to happen much more often if we cease to regard them as reprehensible."7 Others justify war on civilians as necessary to achieve victory. They applaud the depredations of Sherman, hail him as a man ahead of his time, and smile as they repeat his "war is hell" mantra, not hearing the totalitarian echo in their words.

  Historian James M. McPherson estimated that fifty thousand Southern civilians perished in war-related deaths.' Others place the figure far higher. Despite such numbers apologists for Lincoln's "hard war" then and now downplay the suffering endured and damage done, lay much to "mistakes" or "accidents," or even try to place blame on victims themselves. Little attention is paid to the poor who were plundered or to brutalized African-Americans. Many cling to the Lincolnian myth that only by the most horrendous of wars could the slaves be freed, ignoring the fact that the rest of the Western world managed to bring an end to the institution without bloodshed.

  But one conviction remains an American article of faith: the war on Southern civilians was justified-the war itself was just-because it resulted in saving the union.

  Abolitionist Lysander Spooner spent a lifetime battling slavery, but surprisingly found little to rejoice in over the outcome of Lincoln's war.

  The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.

  No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave.'

  The Deep South understood Lincoln's sectional victory in the 1860 presidential election to be a revolutionary event that virtually abolished the confederated republic of the founders. In withdrawing from the union, they simply removed themselves from a government they did not want. It took Lincoln's declaration of war five months later to convince others of his true intentions, prompting a second wave of secession. The sovereign people-organized as sovereign states-had created the federal government in ratifying the Constitution. States that entered the union of their own free will now left it in the same manner.

  "The reason Lincoln gave for launching a military invasion of the South was to save the Union,"' wrote Thomas J. DiLorenzo.

  Translating from his obfuscating rhetoric, this means that he wanted to use military force to destroy once and for all the doctrines of federalism and states' rights that had, since the founding of the republic, frustrated ambitious politicians like himself who wanted a highly centralized and greatly enlarged state."'

  Federal troops died to preserve the union. But, Lincoln's pious poetry to the contrary, it was their opponents in gray who struggled "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

  The people of Maryland never had the opportunity to choose whether to remain in the United States or join the new Confederacy. The Federal army overran the state, and Lincoln was quick to jail legislators and other elected officials, close newspapers, and suppress free speech in his zeal to insure "loyalty." Lee, on crossing the Potomac in 1862, issued another extraordinary document, this directed to the citizens of that suffering state.

  Believing that the people of Maryland possessed a spirit too lofty to submit to such a government, the people of the South have long wished to aid you in throwing off this foreign yoke. ... In obedience to this wish, our army has come among you, and is prepared to assist you with the power of its arms in regaining the rights of which you have been despoiled....

  We know no enemies among you, and will protect all, of every opinion. It is for you to decide your destiny freely and without constraint. This army will respect your choice, whatever it may be; and while the Southern people will rejoice to welcome you to your natural position among them, they will only welcome you when you come of your own free will."

  That principle-of people having the right to freely choose their own destiny-was utterly repugnant to Lincoln. In waging war on civilians he returned to the barbarism of the past, but he also dealt a blow to limited, constitutional government from which America has yet to recover. That all Americans are less free today, and live in a more dangerous world, are among his legacies.

  Chapter 2

  "We Believe in a War of

  Extermination"

  Keeping Missouri

  in the Union

  As the seven states of the Deep South departed the union during the winter of 1860-61, the majority of Missourians, in common with the people of other Border States and those of the upper South, longed for an amicable settlement of differences between the sections. The state had voted for Democrat Stephen Douglas in the presidential election, Abraham Lincoln running last in the four-way race. Delegates elected to a state convention that met on February 28 to consider Missouri's course of action were overwhelmingly opposed to secession. Still, they warned against federal coercion of the South. When that convention met again the following month delegates called for compromise, resolved that Missouri remain in the union, then adjourned subject to recall.'

  On April 15, Lincoln ordered each state to send troops so that he might invade the newly formed Confederacy. Whatever their view of events up to then-even if they believed the first wave of secession unjustified-most Southerners still in the union could not countenance such coercion. To them, denying fellow Americans their right of self-determination was simply wrong. "Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical, and cannot be complied with," replied Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson. "Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade."2

  St. Louis County was but one of two in the state carried by Lincoln in the 1860 election, that due to large numbers of recently arrived German
immigrants. Still, in the spring of 1861 the city of St. Louis was hardly a bastion of Lincolnism. The Republican mayor and his administration were swept from office on April 1 and the president's declaration of war against the Confederacy on April 15 was widely decried. The political situation remained fluid and volatile.'

  As required by law, Missouri militia units mustered in early May for their annual period of training and drill. Local St. Louis militiamen pitched their tents at Lindell Grove, on the western boundary of the city, under the direction of Brig. Gen. Daniel M. Frost." Whatever their individual inclination, every officer and soldier in the Missouri militia had taken an oath to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the Stars and Stripes flew over their encampment, called Camp Jackson.'

  In command of the local U.S. Army garrison was Connecticut-born Capt. Nathaniel Lyon. Convincing himself that the Federal arsenal was in danger of seizure by secessionists, he had ordered most of the arms stored there be shipped to Illinois.' Lyon then discovered evidence that the governor was arranging with Confederates to smuggle artillery to the Lindell Grove encampment. Calling Missouri militiamen "a body of rabid and violent opposers of the General Government" and "a terror to all loyal and peaceful citizens," Lyon determined to strike.' But first he would augment his small force of regulars with German Unionist volunteers. Permission granted by the War Department, Lyon soon commanded between six and seven thousand men-his German recruits armed, but most without uniforms." On the afternoon of May 10, Lyon marched his force through the streets of St. Louis to Lindell Grove, surrounded Camp Jackson, and demanded its surrender. Frost, outnumbered eight to one, confessed himself "wholly unprepared to defend my command" and ordered his men to lay down their arms.'

  A hostile crowd of onlookers gathered as Lyon marched those 689 crestfallen prisoners, surrounded by their captors and led by a band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," back through the streets of the city. It was 5:30 P.M. Outraged citizens heckled the Germans and began throwing rocks, dirt clods, and other objects at them. According to a witness, one German soldier shot into the crowd even as some fired a warning volley over their heads. Almost immediately, other German troops lowered their rifles and began shooting civilians. Some would later claim that a few in the crowd, armed with pistols, returned the fire. When it was over, twenty-eight civilians lay dead on the streets of St. Louis, a number that included two women and four children. Seventy-five others were wounded. Three of the prisoners were also killed, as were two soldiers, probably victims of stray fire by Federals. (Capt. Constantine Blandovski, for example, was mortally wounded by a minie ball-a kind of bullet possessed only by his own troops.)"'