As is so happens, I've been reading a collection of the writings of William Tecumseh Sherman and his staff on their incredible march through Georgia. It stands among the greatest feats of arms ever accomplished.
There was just a Carolina redneck piece of shit on "Hardball" spouting the same old tired bullshit that is beloved of racist fucktards.
If a Southerner tells you that the Civil War was about anything but slavery, tell them that they are lying sacks of shit.
This quotation is from a letter written by Henry Hitchcock, who was Sherman's adjudant. At Lee's surrender, one of the persons in the room was the Confederate General Wade Hampton. Hitchock had personally supervised the burning of Hampton's main estate. It was a slave breeding farm. It was a place where white men were encouraged to impregnate slave women (many of them held there in bondage because of the "one drop" rule) to "improve" the strain of slaves. The first burning wasn't good enough for Hampton. He had his men cut fresh pine, douse that with kerosene and coal oil and burn that shit some more.
At Appomattox he refused to observe any niceties with Hampton, neither military courtesy or common civilian.
To his son, who was serving with Thomas in Tennessee he wrote:
Hampton's whole demeanor was marked with the easy 'well-bred' essentially vulgar insolence which is characteristic of that type of 'gentleman;' a man of polished manners, scarcely veiling the arrogance and utter selfishness which marks his class, and which I hate with a perfect hatred."
The vaunted Southern "Home Guard" never once came out to confront Sherman. He understood, as Epamanondas had understood about the Spartans, that their army was designed to deal with rebellions of unarmed slaves. Not to confront an army of soldiers bearing weapons.
Let them know that if they want to nullify federal laws and authority, if they want to secede again. We will be more than happy to muster and kick their fucking asses thoroughly once more.
