Just remind me..

[Hauldren Collider]

Because neither Lincoln nor Johnson who came after him wanted to burn all the bridges (so to speak). Also Johnson wanted to be all friends with the rich white Southerners who he envied when he was a Congressman.

They weren't all that rich after the war.

[molly bloom]

They left out a lot in your history classes didn't they? Did you forget what the Romans did to Carthage? What the Visigoths did to Ravenna? What the Vandals did to Rome? What the Mongols did to Babylon? What the Catholics did to northern Germany? What the Swedes did to southern Germany? What the British did to the Gangetic plains?

Don't forget Timur & Smyrna.

And Cortes & Tenochtitlan. Bad bad men.

[Elok]

After a day of watching documentaries on Reconstruction, why didn't Sherman just finish the job and wipe out the rest of the racist scum in the South? Seriously, the endless list of terrorist acts, racist murder and evil that those ****ers perpetrated should have led to a scorched earth policy. Maybe then blacks wouldn't have had to suffer another century of vicious oppression by those ****s.

Learned some new stuff about the Lowry war though which was pretty cool.

Well, assuming he managed to only kill the "guilty," however you define that term (presumptively only slaveowners, overseers, and other people directly involved in the system, though the entire economy was neck-deep in slavery so it's a really blurry line), and then found a way to instantly assimilate all the newly-freed slaves into the decapitated economy without any of them turning criminal, and then kept the survivors from going vendetta on behalf of all the people he just killed without trial, et cetera, et cetera, there would be a stunning number of orphans left to starve. Also there would be inevitable chaos as all the unowned property went up for grabs without a stable civilian government to oversee it, a large number of the freed slaves would likely die from lynching or plain starvation as the economy went straight to hell, assimilated or not, and prolly some other stuff I'm not thinking of. Short answer, terrible things happen when you completely purge a society of elements you deem undesirable. Even if they're just the telephone sanitizers.

Wait, I just realized you said, "scorched earth." Well, that simplifies things: because the majority of white southerners were not directly involved in slavery, and massacring civilians would have constituted an unspeakable war crime in any case.

[Elok]

DP, but I guess I should note that what Sherman did would probably be considered a war crime today as-is.

[kentonio]

Well, assuming he managed to only kill the "guilty," however you define that term (presumptively only slaveowners, overseers, and other people directly involved in the system, though the entire economy was neck-deep in slavery so it's a really blurry line), and then found a way to instantly assimilate all the newly-freed slaves into the decapitated economy without any of them turning criminal, and then kept the survivors from going vendetta on behalf of all the people he just killed without trial, et cetera, et cetera, there would be a stunning number of orphans left to starve. Also there would be inevitable chaos as all the unowned property went up for grabs without a stable civilian government to oversee it, a large number of the freed slaves would likely die from lynching or plain starvation as the economy went straight to hell, assimilated or not, and prolly some other stuff I'm not thinking of. Short answer, terrible things happen when you completely purge a society of elements you deem undesirable. Even if they're just the telephone sanitizers.

Wait, I just realized you said, "scorched earth." Well, that simplifies things: because the majority of white southerners were not directly involved in slavery, and massacring civilians would have constituted an unspeakable war crime in any case.

I was quite angry at the time, but hey I'm still pretty angry now so **** it. When you read about how complicit the supposedly 'innocent' majority were in subjugating and oppressing the blacks, indians and anyone else that wasn't white, it's hard to give too much of a damn about them. They should have been treated exactly like the Germans were after WW2. If you think that's going too far, then remember that the failure to do so led to an extra century of black oppression, lynching and basically slavery in all but name for long periods.

[Dr Strangelove]

Wasn't Atlanta already largely burned down thanks to the rebels setting afire their armory when they retreated from the city?

[Ben Kenobi]

It would have solved a lot of problems. If the confederacy survived, it probably would've allied with Hitler.

Oddly enough Hitler won a greater percentage of popular support than Lincoln.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Don't forget the Yankee bankers and shipbuilders and crews, or the Yankee textile mill-owners who profited immensely off the slave harvested cotton.

For that matter, ol' Sherman himself. Both virulent racists. A couple of Shermie's gems about dealing with Indians are: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children." and "during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age."

As a rule, humans suck. Some more than others

[Dinner]

Sherman didn't give a ****. He wasn't motivated by human rights, he was motivated by a utilitarian approach to ending the war. He scorched as much earth as was conducive to going from point A to point B in an expeditious manner, and that was it.

Yeah, he got tired of Confederate raiders harassing his supply lines so he decided burning everything would prevent said raiders from getting resupplied from the local populous. Originally the concentration camp was invented as a more humanitarian way of accomplishing the same thing; preventing rebels from hiding among and getting resupplied by local area civilians. The British used them in the Boer war in South Africa and the Spanish used it in Cuba (which was one of the justifications the US used when they declared war on Spain).

[Elok]

I was quite angry at the time, but hey I'm still pretty angry now so **** it. When you read about how complicit the supposedly 'innocent' majority were in subjugating and oppressing the blacks, indians and anyone else that wasn't white, it's hard to give too much of a damn about them. They should have been treated exactly like the Germans were after WW2. If you think that's going too far, then remember that the failure to do so led to an extra century of black oppression, lynching and basically slavery in all but name for long periods.

Again: orphans. Crap-ton of orphans. Innocent. Starving. Not nice. Assuming the kids don't all croak in the assault itself. Also, scorched-earth means all the slaves die too. And it's not like Union soldiers know who was innocent; pretty much all the Underground Railroad conductors will eat it along with the Simon Legrees.

In light of this, I bestow upon you the Dinner Memorial Damn You're a Bad Liberal Award.

[kentonio]

Again: orphans. Crap-ton of orphans. Innocent. Starving. Not nice. Assuming the kids don't all croak in the assault itself. Also, scorched-earth means all the slaves die too. And it's not like Union soldiers know who was innocent; pretty much all the Underground Railroad conductors will eat it along with the Simon Legrees.

In light of this, I bestow upon you the Dinner Memorial Damn You're a Bad Liberal Award.

Meh, I'm not being a liberal today, I'm being a Victorian era war-moralist. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

[Dinner]

To quote Monty Python: "I'm not dead yet" so why is it the Dinner Memorial Award?

[giblets]

Don't forget the Yankee bankers and shipbuilders and crews, or the Yankee textile mill-owners who profited immensely off the slave harvested cotton.

Oh and let's not forget the evil bastards who wore cotton fabrics.

[regexcellent]

The North wasn't a whole lot less racist than the south. And even today I run into a distressing number of racists in the Rochester area, seriously. And Rochester was this huge center of anti-slavery and women's rights stuff.

The anti-slavery people frequently advocated deporting the slaves back to africa because while they thought slavery was wrong, they still thought black people were inferior. Kind of like how people today think fighting dogs is wrong, but still thing dogs don't have the same rights as people.

Stonewall Jackson was less racist than many prominent abolitionists.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Oh and let's not forget the evil bastards who wore cotton fabrics.

Funny you should mention that, because if you're going to apply modern sensibilities to a significantly different era, the whole "fair trade" "blood diamond" etc. notion is that you don't encourage a brutal, exploitive trade by supporting it financially. In some cases, such as trade in items sourced from endangered species, you even have legal restrictions against such trade. The same general concept applies to sanctions against regimes which abuse human rights on a large scale (e.g. Apartheid South Africa)