Sherman and the Hard Hand of War: “…she deserves all that seems in store for her”

Cover of sheet music for “Sherman’s March to the Sea”, 1965: Byers & Rockwell

In The Hard Hand of War, Mark Grimsley addresses the evolution of Union military policy towards Southern civilians and specifies three separate phases of policy: conciliatory, pragmatic, and hard war. This policy changed with the Union’s changing war aim from the defense of the Union to the abolition of slavery and every stepping stone in between. The hard war policy came to a head after the failure to break the Confederacy by both respectful occupation and concentration on the battlefield. For hard war, the focus shifted to the destruction of the Confederate infrastructure and the confiscation of private citizens’ property, especially those who outright supported the Confederate cause.

The hard hand of war came down after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. With the legalization of black troops, the Union had motivation to bring the backbone of the Confederate infrastructure into the Union’s grasp and thus completely undermine the economic structure of the Confederacy. The loss of the slave power and support of the war effort not only hurt the Confederacy, but also helped the Union when those slaves joined Union military ranks. The Union further attempted to put an end to Confederate progress by enacting preventative measure by the way of raids ensuring the inability of Confederate troops to acquire necessary provisions, most famously done by Major General William Sherman. Most importantly, emancipation was seen as the best way to dismantle Confederate infrastructure and unless the Union destroyed the Confederacy, they would “become slaves themselves” (141). The goal now was to conquer the Confederates by any means necessary, including the confiscation of property from all civilians, regardless of their level of affiliation or support of the rebellion.

In 1863, the United States War Department published General Order No. 11, also known as Lieber’s Code. This publication provided the justification of hard war by means of military necessity – the harder the war, the shorter it will be. It did not permit “wanton destruction”, which inhibited the return to a state of peace and reconciliation (150). More importantly, the Code left the acceptable range of actions taken against civilians considered as rebellious enemies, and thus the distinction of pragmatic war versus hard war, up to the discretion of military commanders.

Lieber’s Code/General Order No. 100

For General Sherman, hard war was embodied in the strategy of raids employed by Grant in 1864. Chevauchées aimed provide for the pillaging troops, improve their will to fight, decimate the enemy’s land, and destroy the enemy both politically and psychologically.  Sherman’s aim for his March to the Sea was to show Jefferson Davis the Union power “which [he] cannot resist” by marching through his territory and “desolating the land” (191). Originally, Sherman was not completely comfortable with the idea of hard war and pillaging as a military necessity. He saw pillaging as a crime punishable by death, an opinion shared by Francis Lieber, the namesake of the Lieber Code. Lieber, however, saw a difference between pillaging done by uniformed troops and pillaging done by “self-constituted guerrillas” – only the latter is punishable by death. The former would be treated as “ordinary belligerents” (148). However, Sherman became accustomed to hard war tactics and supported them as retribution for the Confederacy forcing the Union into a war.

A King’s Cure for All Evils: Lincoln, the End of the War, and Slavery

Before the Civil War, Lincoln was staunch in his antislavery beliefs and denied access to equal rights for African Americans. Throughout the war, his views evolved considerably. He denied Frémont’s 1861 call for military emancipation because he did not see it as a necessity, but by 1862 he began to see slavery as intrinsically linked to the war cause. In a December 1862 address to Congress, he said “without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue” and outlined his ideas for emancipation, which included gradual and compensated emancipation (146). This proposal was to further the war cause and quicken reunion, not necessarily to give the salves the freedom they deserved. However, Lincoln never abandoned his personal moral opposition to slavery. In the Gettysburg Address of November 19^th, 1963 he reminded the nation that the war advanced the notion of equality between blacks and whites.

“Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address” by Dan Duffy. From http://www.lionword.com.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. In December of the same year, he addressed Congress and outlined the effectiveness of emancipation on the war effort. He emphasized that the “full one hundred thousand” (186) black men now enlisted in the Union military provided both manpower and worked against the Confederacy by taking away their slaves and employing them against the Confederate war effort.  White soldiers, though originally reluctant to embrace emancipation as a war aim, began to support it once they saw that it would be the best way to dry up the support system of the Confederacy. By 1864, Lincoln began calling for voting rights for the “very intelligent” blacks as well as those who fought for the Union (193). In April, he said: “I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” (194).  He presented his opposition to slavery as not only one that is morally right, but one that is inherent in man’s sense of justice and righteousness, as well as one ordered by God. He claimed that emancipation became a military necessity not only due to the manpower crisis, but also due to the refusal of Border States to voluntarily accept gradual emancipation. Previously, Lincoln kept this personal view of slavery to himself, but the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the general acceptance of black troops gave Lincoln the green light to announce his personal opinions.

Lincoln did not sway from this position – he used previous actions such as the Militia Act of 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment as well as the views of the people (213) to validate and further his views on slavery. In his Second Inaugural Address, he cited slavery as the cause for the war and without its abolishment, the war would continue forever. Lincoln’s views on slavery evolved due to events outside of his control, and he eventually supported complete emancipation and eradication of slavery and suffrage for certain blacks, but his opinions on equal rights remained unclear, for he never said anything directly about black equal rights except in relation to their status as prisoners of war, specifically at Fort Pillow (197). However, his plan of extending suffrage towards some blacks could have evolved into a plan of extending suffrage to all black men during the journey of Reconstruction.

Lincoln’s Military Necessity for Emancipation

Lincoln revokes Fremont’s Emancipation Proclamation (c. 1861) “I’m sorry to have to drop you, Sambo, but this concern won’t carry us both!”

Before the year 1861, Abraham Lincoln had crusaded for the anti-slavery cause and did his best to separate himself from the abolitionists. In September of that year, he revoked Union Major General John C. Frémont’s statute declaring the emancipation of slaves of citizens in rebellion, claiming it was “purely political, and not in the range of military law, or necessity” (110). In December, he requested Congress to approve a plan offering compensation to any state that agreed to gradually free its slaves. Although Congress did not initially approve it, Lincoln got his way in March of 1862. He issued a plea to Congress stating that the purpose of gradual and compensated emancipation of border states is to deprive the Southern states of the hope of Northern slave states leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy, thus “substantially [ending] the rebellion” (119).

Clearly, Lincoln did not choose to propose compensated emancipation because his moral standing on slavery changed, but rather the military necessity of emancipation increased. However, in May, when Union General David Hunter ordered all slaves in the occupied areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, Lincoln overturned his proclamation. Lincoln claimed that emancipation would be acceptable only when he issued it and when it was “a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government” (123) and furthermore, he had already established an offer of compensated gradual emancipation that required action only on the part of the states, not by the Union’s military commanders. Unfortunately, the Border States did not take up his offer, despite his warnings that otherwise they would lose slavery altogether and “have nothing valuable in lieu of it” (126).

In August of 1862, Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, urged Lincoln to integrate slavery with the war effort. Lincoln replied and declared that his “paramount object in the struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery” and that all he does about slavery is “because [I] believe it helps to save the Union” (135). Exactly one month later, on September 22^nd, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This came after the Union’s good-enough victory at Antietam, and gave the rebellion states 100 days to return to the Union, after which he would free the slaves in rebelling areas, but would continue offering compensation to the Border States and to those “who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion” (137). This escalation of the war was again justified by the goal of “practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States” (136) – a goal which could not be reached without the threat of the abolition of slavery which, in turn, inflamed Confederate sentiment against the Union even more. In December, Lincoln stated “…Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue” and “the proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase in population, and proportionately the wealth of the country. With these, we should pay all the emancipation would cost, together with our debt, easier than we should pay our other debt, without it” (146). He now directly linked slavery to the cause of the rebellion, but also showed that reunification would benefit the entire country by repaying Union debt as well as emancipation compensation, but omits any mention of how emancipation would help pay back Confederate debt.

President Lincoln, writing the Proclamation of Freedom (David Gilmore Blythe c. 1862)

On January 1^st 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in which he declared “all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward, shall be free…and…that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service” (152). The areas excepted from the proclamation were those already in Union possession, where gradual, rather than immediate, compensation would be enacted. He defended the act, citing his 100 days warning and continuing the offer of Union rights to states not included in the proclamation, so long as they agree to systems of gradual emancipation and establish apprenticeships for former slaves. In July, he responded to the Confederate action of enslaving any captured black troops and the execution of their white commanders by threatening mirrored retaliation against Confederate soldiers. In the same order, he stated that every government had the duty “to give protection to its citizens, whatever class, color, or condition…especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers” and “the law of nations…permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war” (169). This statement is extremely interesting, as it could suggest equal rights and treatment under law for blacks – despite his early denial of the establishment of such equality between the races (30).  August he wrote to General Grant and defends the use of black troops in the war as “it works doubly, weakening the enemy and strengthening us” and allows the “relieving (of) all the white troops to serve elsewhere” (172). He again defended his proclamation to his fellow Republicans and claimed that the use of black troops was “the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion”. He also tells the men that if they will not fight for the freedom of the slaves, they should “fight…then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union” because the use of black troops would leave “so much less for white soldiers to do” (178).

Thus, Lincoln’s strategy against slavery evolved from one echoing the ideals of the Founding Fathers and the concept of equality to one imploring the military necessity of emancipation – the eventual weakening of the Confederate forces by using the same people who had previously fueled their society and war machine to literally fight against them. These black troops would also be used in place of the seemingly more valuable white troops. On November 19^th 1863, Lincoln harkened back to the basic principles he had previously depended on when he issued his Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” (184). Here, Lincoln returned to the reasoning that the war was for equality between blacks and whites due to moral and historical standings, not due to military or political necessity.