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"A Play for Power"
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Forty acres and a mule
Forty acres of land to farm and a mule to plow it. Such was the compensation American slaves received after the Civil War. Special Field Orders #5 provided for the confiscation of 400,000 acres of land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The order was issued by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander of the United States Army's Military Division of the Mississippi. 400,000 acres ... a place where post war, approximately 40,000 freed slaves and other black refugees would settle.
Ask anyone north of the Ohio Valley ... slavery is the one outstanding feature of the South. People everywhere forget most all the colonies had slaves. As late as 1812, sixteen of the colonies still had slaves while nineteen were free. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly - hell, sometimes daily - in Merchant's Coffee House of New York.
It's true, however, that slavery in the North was a drop in the bucket compared to the South. But slavery in the South was a drop in the bucket when compared to slavery in New World. As a matter of fact, the Spanish and Portuguese brought roughly a million slaves from Africa to the New World before the first handful ever reached Virginia.
Back then, practically every New World colony was a slave colony. French Canada, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Cuba, Brazil -- all of them had an economic system built upon slavery. Each one operated within the sanction of the law and religion. During the entire history of slave trade, roughly 500,000 were brought into the colonies - a number that itself pales in comparison to the estimated ten million forced to the Americas during the same period.
Still, it is the South that bears the brunt of the moral guilt and suffered the most punishment. And Regardless of your feelings about reparations and the "debt" the South supposedly owed - and in the minds of some still owes - "forty acres and a mule" was forty acres and a mule more than anyone else below the Mason-Dixon Line had left after the war. Thanks in great part to General William Tecumseh Sherman; post war life for southerners was a living hell.
"Cump" or "Uncle Billy" as Sherman was called, was born in Lancaster, Ohio on February 8, 1820. Although not much is written about his childhood, I suspect he delighted in stomping on ants, pulling the wings off flies and starving and beating that old dog tied back behind his house half to death. He was not a merciful man.
Sherman fought with Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and Atlanta. However, just ask him, his biggest personal achievement was his March to the Sea across Georgia and the Carolina campaign. Sherman's March to the Sea ... history's largest campaign against a civilian population. It began in Atlanta on November 15, 1864, and concluded with the fall of Savannah on December 21, 1864.
Old Cump marched across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean just to prove to southerners that their fledgling government couldn't protect them from the northern invaders. He practiced psychological warfare. He believed that by marching his army across the state, he would demonstrate to the world that the Union had the power, not the Confederacy. "This may not be war," he said, "but rather statesmanship." I guess to Uncle Billy, it was merely a grown-up game ... one that was not unlike the stomping on ants, pulling the wings off flies, beating and starving a dog half to death he did as a kid.
According to history, after the fall of Atlanta, Union soldiers milled about the town, yelling and whooping it up. While the engineers operated under orders to blow-up the railroad tracks and military targets, soon the rank and file army began to torch private buildings - especially residences. The young Carrie Berry, still living with her family in the city, recorded the event. Her diary survived and is on display today at the Atlanta History Center.
Union officer David Conyngham related that about twenty houses were destroyed that night. Then more fires were set each night for the next four. On the final night of the Union occupation, Union troops set much of downtown afire.
Viewing the orange glow that hovered over much of the city, Major Henry Hitchcock of Sherman's staff predicted, "Gen. S. will hereafter be charged with the indiscriminate burning of Atlanta." The fall of the city assured President Lincoln's re-election in November. With the loss of Atlanta, Confederate defeat was only a matter of time.
Sherman then terrorized the countryside.
His men destroyed all sources of food and forage and left behind a hungry and demoralized people. Although he didn't raze any more towns, he did destroy buildings wherever there was resistance. His men showed no sympathy for the little town of Millen, near Savannah, the site of Camp Lawton, where Union prisoners of war were held.
Personal attacks on civilians were few, although it is not known how women fared at the hands of the invaders as it's reported that often, even former male slaves posted guards outside the cabins of their women. Prior to the march, Confederate president Jefferson Davis had urged Georgians to undertake a scorched-earth policy of their own, poisoning wells and burning fields. But civilians in the Union army's path had not done so. Sherman, however, burned or captured all the food stores that Georgians had saved for the winter. As a result, because of the cruel hardships endured by families back home, desertions were rampant in the Confederate army in Virginia.
Perhaps like the terrorist insurgents in the Middle East today, Uncle Billy believed his campaign against civilians would break the opponents' will to fight. So in January 1865, he carried this psychological warfare into South Carolina - the final campaign. Early in 1865, old Cump moved his army north from Savannah into the Carolinas.
A month after the invaders crossed the Savannah River, Columbia fell. Afterwords, the Union soldiers took advantage of ample supplies of liquor in the city and began to drink ... and drink ... and drink. Fires were set. High winds caused the flames to spread across a wide area. Most of the central city was destroyed as the fire companies found it difficult to fight the fires in the face of the invading Union army.
Sherman's forces destroyed virtually anything of military value in Columbia, including railroad depots, warehouses, arsenals, and machine shops. Then he and his henchmen took out their anger on churches and private buildings and residences. William Gilmore Simms, called by John Simon "the literary lion of the old South," and himself resident of Columbia, wrote in a newspaper account that the city suffered a 'demonic saturnalia of wicked and drunken troops, monsters under a banner of 'streaks and spangles.' (His colorful comment makes me wonder if the Sousa march "Stars and Stripes Forever" should have instead been called "Streaks and Spangles forever!")
On February 22, Charleston fell, followed four days later by Wilmington. During Cump's Carolina Campaign, his troops marched 425 miles in fifty days. Similar to his march through Georgia, the cities and towns along the way were left in smoldering ruins, in the incapable hands of a starving and destitute people. Because of the destruction wrought by Sherman's forces against the residents of Georgia and South Carolina, Uncle Billy became an arch-villain in the South and a hero in the North.
But some say the south still owes a debt. One that with accumulated interest, is according Harper's Magazine, over 220 trillion dollars. Diehards like law school graduate Deadria Farmer-Paellmann are demanding reparations. In 2002, nine lawsuits were filed on their behalf, but were eventually tossed-out by the courts. Arguing against reparations, many legal experts point to the fact that slavery was legal in the US prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in 1865. They argue that there is no legal basis for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when, in strictly legal terms, no crime was committed.
Slavery is now considered by many - including this writer - to be ethically and morally wrong. But remember, it was perfectly legal at the time, even though opponents of this legalistic argument contend that such was the case in Nazi Germany where, under German Law, so were the activities of the Nazis.
Perhaps the most cogent argument against reparations (though not a legal one) is the fact that few African-Americans are of "pure" African blood. Many of the descendants of the original slaves were off-springs of their Caucasian masters. Since that time, the African heritage has blended with the American experience, the same as generations of immigrants from other countries. Thus, the task of determining a "fair share" of reparations would be impossible.
Many blacks with no relation whatsoever to slavery, insist they are owed. But not Booker T. Washington. Himself a former slave, Washington wrote:
"I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction ... Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe ...This I say, not to justify slavery - on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive -- but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose."
On the one hand, former slaves got their freedom and received 40 acres and a mule ... on the other; the South was left in ruins. Dixie was destroyed. For over a century, it's heroes have been vilified ... an entire way of life has literally "gone with the wind."
In today's politically correct world where so many seem to have forgotten that "sticks and stones will break my bones ..." whites are becoming outraged at the outrageous hypocrisy; blacks see self-righteous payback.
I ask you, isn't enough, enough, already?