William T. Sherman was a diagnosable manic-depressive. Such a man should not be in command of an army. Always with superior forces, he seldom won a battle. His famous “March” was almost entirely a terror campaign against undefended civilians. Republicans tried hard to get him to run for President which he refused with annoyance. His son became a Jesuit and then committed suicide.
Republicans also wanted to nominate General Sheridan, Sherman’s near equal as a war criminal, for President. Sheridan had been as intensive against the lives and property of civilians although on a lesser scale than Sherman. His boasting of his campaigns shocked Prussian officers. To nominate him for President, the Republicans would have to have lied that he was a natural-born citizen.
An important factor leading up to the American declaration of war against Spain in 1898 was revulsion at the cruelty of Spanish General Valeriano Weyler toward Cuban civilians. As a young officer, Weyler had been an observer with Sherman.
As for the great military hero Grant—with superior forces aided by a fleet of warships on the rivers he took nine months and several failed attempts before taking Vicksburg from a starved people.
In a few weeks during the Wilderness campaign, this great leader lost more men than Lee had in his entire force. His men called him “Butcher” and pinned their name and hometown on their uniforms when he ordered an advance. A great general is generally thought of as one who wins by skill and economy of force.
Grant presided over the most incompetent and corrupt presidential administration ever until Joe Biden got into the White House. In the election of 1872 against the Democrat Horatio Seymour, Grant received a minority of the white vote and was only elected President because of the army-controlled polls in the occupied South.
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The great Radical Republican leader Thaddeus Stephens received an extra $6,000 profit on each mile of railroad iron produced by his factory because of the tariff.
Cotton stealing was a major activity of Union soldiers and politicians during the war and Reconstruction. Cotton was the most valuable commodity in the U.S. before and during the war and was supreme in U.S. exports before the war. With the blockade cutting supply its value increased greatly to fill U.S. and European demand.
The Union government early on passed a Confiscation Act to seize cotton in the occupied areas of the South. At least $100,000,000 in cotton was seized–$30,000,000 more or less legally under the Confiscation Act and the rest sheer theft. Loyal Southerners burned vast amounts of their own cotton to prevent Yankee seizure. Yankee military movements were sometimes dictated by cotton stealing and Yankee generals and admirals argued over the possession of seized cotton. Lincoln allowed a large illegal trade across the lines which was a help to the Confederacy.
Of the $30,000,000 only 10% ever reached the treasury, stolen by Union officers and bureaucrats. A U.S. Secretary of the Treasury commented that a few of the agents he sent South must have been honest but none remained so very long.
Cotton stealing was the cause of one of the worst maritime disasters in history. The captain of a wooden steamboat, the Sultana, contracted at Vicksburg to take home up the Mississippi Northern soldiers recently released from Confederate POW camps. The steamboat had already been condemned for defective boilers but it was the only ship available, all the worthy vessels having been contracted profitably by Union officers to ship cotton upstream. The ship’s carrying capacity was 376 people. The Sultana departed Vicksburg April 27, 1865 with over 2,000 Northern soldiers.
On its first night out the boat exploded and burned up. The death toll from burning and drowning was estimated at over 1,195.
Southerners (Confederate people) living along the river did all they could to save survivors from the water.
Clyde Wilson Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he was the editor of the multivolume The Papers of John C. Calhoun. He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews and is co-publisher of www.shotwellpublishing.com, a source for unreconstructed Southern books.
