Sherman's Mississippi Campaign

1. Sherman’s Transformation

During the ¤rst year of the American Civil War, William T. Sherman considered proper treatment of noncombatants and their property to be his soldierly duty. He took great care in seeing that his policies and the conduct of his men did not trample upon the perceived rights of secessionist or unionist civilians. He handed out harsh punishment to men who did as little as steal fence rails for their camp¤res or take liberally from the countryside.1 By the end of the war, however, most Southerners saw Sherman as a “brute” for his harsh treatment of Southern civilians and his destruction of property across the Confederate States. His “bummers” became notorious for their ability to strip the land of valuable goods, and Southerners greatly abhorred them. Many historians have credited Sherman with creating the policy of “total war” and being the originator of modern warfare. Although recent works have rightfully concluded that Sherman was not the ¤rst general to promote a harsher attitude toward civilians, he nevertheless moved war in that direction to a far greater degree than any of his contemporaries. How and why did Sherman move from one mind-set to the other?2 The pivotal circumstances in Sherman’s transformation came because of his dealings with guerrillas along the Mississippi River and his participation in the Vicksburg campaign in 1862 and 1863. Because of the partisans’ menace to Union depots, communications, and supply lines, coupled with the Confederate populace’s support of these raiders, Sherman developed a harsher, more encompassing policy toward Southern civilians. Just after the fall of 1 / Sherman’s Transformation Vicksburg, while in Jackson for the second time, Sherman conducted a campaign of destruction to render an entire region unusable to the Confederate army. The Meridian campaign, some six months later, was, however, his preliminary attempt to subjugate an entire state and served as his proving ground for later campaigns into Georgia and the Carolinas. Sherman adapted his experiences learned during the ¤rst three years of the war into a new technique that he designed to end the war as quickly and bloodlessly as possible . He wanted to remove the enemy’s ability and will to ¤ght without the need for the destruction of the opponent’s army or the capturing and garrisoning of large areas of the Confederacy. Although he attended West Point, Sherman did not derive his principles from his experience there. Most professional of¤cers, many of whom had attended West Point, had studied the works of Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini. Although many historians contend that Jomini’s works had little in-®uence on these of¤cers because The Art of War was not translated into English until later in 1854, most military tacticians and strategists of the period drew upon this work for their own writings. Jomini contended that the violence between two enemy armies on the battle¤eld had few limitations but that civilians away from the ¤ghting should not be included. Commenting on acts of guerrilla warfare, he wrote that actions against civilians should “display courtesy, gentleness, and severity united, and, particularly, deal justly.” “Absolute war,” in his opinion, should remain an action reserved for belligerents, and he made no mention of the expansion of such a strategy to the civilian population. Jomini held that there was a de¤nite wall between warring armies and the common population. His comments about guerrillas also implied condemnation of their style of warfare. Sherman agreed with Jomini that noncombatants should receive different treatment than soldiers.3 After the Battle of First Bull Run, Sherman wrote to his wife about the depredations that some of his command had committed. “If he [a private] thinks right he takes the oats [and] corn, and even burns the house of his enemy,” he wrote angrily. “No goths or vandals ever had less respect for the lives [and] property of friends and foes.” Sherman thought these types of infractions were detrimental to the Union cause. When he became commander of the Department of the Cumberland later that year, he compensated civilians for all property secured for the Federals’ military use in the state of Kentucky. He thought this was the best way to keep border state civilians from straying to the Confederate side. A Northern newspaper deSherman ’s Transformation / 3 clared that Sherman’s policy had “produced a marked change in favor of the Union cause.”4 In July 1862, Sherman wrote...