Should Sherman Take Atlanta Essay

Nicholas Lemann begins his book “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War” with the 1873 Colfax, Louisiana massacre where a White League militia comprised of former Confederate soldiers killed black Republican voters. The Colfax massacre was perhaps the bloodiest event of Reconstruction. Lemann views this event as a startup of what would happen later in Mississippi if Federal troops did not defend black voters. Lemann blames Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, for not stopping the White Line activity in Louisiana and Mississippi. Grant had worked hard to stop the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s with Congress passing legislation and Federal troops putting down Klan activity.

She argues that the white Union men who enlisted disliked slavery from the beginning, even though they viewed blacks as inferior. She argues that over the course of the war, the Union armies saw firsthand the brutality of what slavery had done. For instance, Manning includes accounts of Unionist seeing slaves with “great welts, and callous stripes … [and] great scars” (77). She also has narratives of Unionist who saw slaves that were almost as white as they were and the anger that they felt towards the sexual abuse that slave women went through at the hands of white men (77-78). On the other hand, she argues that the Confederates wanted to preserve slavery because it was the backbone to the southern economy and that there would be dangers to society if the slaves became free.

During the civil war of 1864 a military strategy known as Total War was introduced by the Union General, William Tecumseh Sherman. This strategy deeply impacted the south. Most southerners were asked to leave everything behind, including their homes, cities, and town dwellings (Overly). The destruction of millions of dollars worth of property caused a lot of hardship for the south (Overly). Many were left homeless, roaming the streets of their burnt town.

Sherman’s March The Civil war was an event that shaped America. There were many important battles,events, and inventions that changed the course of the war. One of those important events was Sherman’s March. Sherman’s March changed the way the rest of the civil war was fought, by entering, “total war” (Carr).

Name of Document: A Southern Woman Describes the Hardship of War - 1862 A. List four things the author said that you think are important: 1.The townspeople fears the fact that the southerns will lose the town. 2. Laura and other southerns didn’t expect to see the Union invade Tennessee so quickly. 3.All communication with the brother will be lost if the Union captures their town.

The individual Southern leaders who rebelled should be punished. First, they should be taken out of government. If the ex-confederates stay in government, they will try to make laws that don’t abolish slavery, or don’t give African Americans full rights. Since many of them still believe in white supremacy, having them as leaders wouldn’t turn out well. This plan is better than President Johnson’s Reconstruction plan because even if they take an oath not to do anything against African Americans, their word can’t be trusted because they rebelled once and they could rebel again.

Life for the Union Soldier was not only brutal on the battlefield, but the camp life for a Union soldier was just as cruel. With the lack of personal hygiene, unsavory and repugnant food, and the shortage of clothing made living, a very difficult thing to do. Growth in the number of people with diseases was also a contributing factor to the massive amounts of death within the camp and as well as the post-battle wounds that often left either a man with one less limb or put in a mental institution. A Union Soldier’s life during the Civil War was cruel and horrific during their stay at the camps.

Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign. In thirty seven weeks, Sherman marched 62,000 men more than three hundred miles across Georgia. In his path lay ruin. Bridges, cotton, livestock, factories, telegraph lines and hundreds of miles of railroads were destroyed. The campaign begins on November 15, when Sherman's troops leave Atlanta after they razed it to the ground.

In the fall of 1863 General William T. Sherman started planning for the next portion of his battles across the southern states and ending in the Carolinas to try and finally end the Civil War. The campaigns and battles proceeding the spring of 1864 had been conventional warfare, hand to hand and geared more directly at the troops, ships, battery emplacements, and key military facilities. Sherman left Vicksburg February 3, 1864 giving explicit orders to destroy the railroad tracks across Mississippi, as well any facility or establishment that could be utilized in helping or supporting the Confederate war efforts. Sherman continued this reign of destruction the Carolina’s.

The American Civil war was fundamentally fought over the emancipation of the slaves, thus when the war ended the Southerners became the losers of the war. However when President Johnson was left to reconstruct his country after Lincoln’s assassination, the Southern white men prevailed the winners as they were brought back into a society that treated them as the superior. For the North the civil war was a fight to keep together a country that had been rapidly falling apart, while for the south, the civil war was a fight for their lifestyle. Thus the Southerners had more on the line with this fight, and as a result they had more to loose. The southerners lost their homes, their economy, their lifestyle, their slaves, money, and the Union’s

Meanwhile General Earl Van Dorn, also of the Confederate army, was able to capture a very important Union supply base at Holly springs. This ensured that Grant had no other option but to withdraw his attack from Vicksburg as he and his men couldn’t be supported without proper supplies. Sherman decided to try and attack Vicksburg without the reinforcements of Grant’s men, but also ended up withdrawing within a couple days. After Grant’s initial attempt to capture Vicksburg, Grant tried again in December to gain control of Vicksburg, but due to the large numbers of Confederate soldiers. The Confederates wanted to keep a tight hold of Vicksburg for the same reasons as the Union plus the fact that it was their last position being held inside Mississippi.

In a time before the United States was a country, and striving for independence, an infamous man, Roger Sherman, took a stand against Britain countless times with his fellow patriots to create a new and independent government. The government we know of today wouldn’t have been possible if Roger Sherman hadn’t taken a stand by signing all four original American documents, ratifying the Constitution, and coming up with the Great Compromise. At first, when he created these works, it caused for major differences in opinion and an upheaval in the world, but in the end, helped establish a government the world had never seen before. Throughout history, people see issues within their society and do nothing or act upon them.

White soldiers understanding of slavery changed during the course of the war because at one point they were willing to free some slaves but not all and when the president fed into this it only made the southerners upset because then they knew all of them would be free. Soldiers identified slavery as the reason for the war. For Manning, such samplings of soldiers' writing represent the fundamental fact that right from the beginning soldiers knew that the war was about slavery. Chandra Manning tries to get at how common troops black, Union, and Confederate viewed the Civil War and the reasons for fighting in the war. The answer?

In chapter one of What They Fought For, I learned about the letters and diaries of the Confederate soldiers. The themes of the letters were home-sickness, lack of peace, and the defense of home against their invading enemy. The thought of soldiers fighting for their homes and being threatened by invaders, made them stronger when facing adversity. Many men expressed that they would rather die fighting for a cause, than dying without trying and this commitment showed patriotism. Throughout the letters, soldiers claimed their reason for fighting, was for the principles of Constitutional liberty and self-government.

This shows that the South couldn't be motivated because they had already given up, even if they hadn't lost yet. The South was fighting a losing battle, and nothing anyone did could help. Likewise, another reason he didn't