Upon his capture, Ferguson was executed for alleged war crimes.īy 1863, pragmatism began to give way to “hard war,” according to which Southerners who were identified as secessionists were the target of “directed severity,” a policy characterized by destruction of public property but also by a general unwillingness to harm civilians. He and his company of men attacked civilians who held Union sympathies in Tennessee during the war. The prominence of guerrilla warfare in Missouri and Tennessee meant that pragmatic policies took hold more quickly in the West than in Virginia.Ĭhamp Ferguson, pictured here in an 1850s photograph, was a Southern guerrilla fighter. As a result, Union generals such as Henry Halleck in Missouri and Benjamin Butler in New Orleans began to use what historians have called “pragmatic” policies, treating Unionists and those who were neutral better than they treated those who opposed the Union. Lee, whose subsequent victories substantially strengthened the rebellion. Even such generals as Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, who later advocated “hard war,” adhered to the policy of conciliation.Ĭonciliation seemed to be working until George McClellan’s stalemate on the Virginia peninsula in the early summer of 1862 and the emergence of Robert E. Thus, early in the Rebellion, Union generals ordered their soldiers to respect the private property, including slaves, of all civilians, even those who were actively working against them. Initially, the Union adhered to a policy of “conciliation,” waging a somewhat limited war based on the notion that the majority of individuals in the seceded states did not support the breakup of the Union and that the governments of these states were illegal and did not represent their people’s will. In fact, Sherman’s actions were the culmination of a Union policy toward civilians that evolved during the course of the war. But the matter is more complex than either of these charges indicate. Some have claimed that Sherman was a war criminal, authorizing plunder and looting of civilian property. Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s actions after the capture of Atlanta and his subsequent March to the Sea are sometimes seen as anticipating the pattern of total war in the twentieth century. Elliott, Scott’s Great Snake(Anaconda Plan), 1861 Primary Source and the Images of Total War: Sherman’s March to the Sea, 1865 Primary Source to illustrate the tactics the Union used to win the war.
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