It was just over 142 years ago when General William Tecumseh Sherman burned Columbia, South Carolina and sent a battle-hardened military unit toward nearby Sumter, presumably to do the same. My then 16-year-old great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson “Jack” Moses, rode out to defend his hometown, along with other teenagers, invalids, old men, and the disabled and wounded from the local hospital. Since Jack kept running away from school to join the Confederate army, they finally let act as a courier on horseback.

Jack Moses’ final mission was as hopeless as it was valiant. The rag-tag group of volunteers did manage to hold off “Potter’s Raiders” for over an hour before being overwhelmed by a well-equipped force that had them outnumbered seventeen to one.

The date of this skirmish at Dingle’s Mill was April 9, 1865—the same day that General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Jack’s eldest brother, Joshua Lazarus Moses, was killed in the War’s last big engagement.

Josh died at Fort Blakeley, Alabama, commanding the artillery in defense of Mobile. His unit was outnumbered 12 to one. Josh died a few hours after Lee surrendered. One brother was wounded and another captured.

Of course, the History Channel’s April 22, two-hour documentary, “Sherman’s March,” tells a very different story. According the documentary’s producers, my ancestors were fighting, not to protect their families, homes and cities, but to acquire slaves and land. Also, we learned that, deep down, General Sherman was a decent and wise man who spoke with a gentle Southern accent.

Sherman: Decent and Wise?

Uncle Billy,” as he was sometimes called by his men, waged war against helpless civilians and burned homes. But, according to the History Channel, it was all in a good cause. Yes, he had a few minor flaws—such as his disregard for the fate of the freed slaves—but all in all, he should be respected for doing what he had to do to win on the side of good against evil. “War is cruelty,” he said, “…The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” What the History Channel fails to report is that such a rationale could be used to justify any massacre of civilians, including the S.S. at Malmedy and Oradour-sur-Glane, the Japanese in Nanking and Manila, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Hitler’s march through Poland and Russia (though no comparison to any of these events is here intended).

While one becomes accustomed to seeing the War Between the States constantly misrepresented in the media, one is nevertheless astonished by the sheer audacity of the History Channel in presenting such a blatantly biased and demonstrably untrue version of the War.

For example, the documentary repeatedly suggests that the War was fought over slavery. That assumption is a smear against the average Confederate draftee, who—hungry, exhausted, sick, shoeless, and short on everything but courage—fought against overwhelming odds. Only one isolated anecdote is offered to support the documentary’s view that slavery was the cause of war. As recorded by Major Henry Hitchcock, when Uncle Billy asked an old slave, “Why do these poor white people that don’t own slaves fight us?”, the man responded, “because the rich white people have promised them land and slaves if they whip the Yankees.”

The slave’s alleged statement stands uncontradicted as the only reason why young men whose homes and cities were being burned kept fighting until the bitter end.

Brutality Downplayed

I initially had hope that the History Channel documentary might manifest some shred of objectivity, since it noted early on that Sherman had been “a failed businessman … considered crazy” by some, and that Union commander Ulysses S. Grant was “a drunk.” The documentary does note that Sherman “plundered a year’s harvest,” and shows some scenes of theft and terrorizing of civilians, stealing and shooting of livestock; the use of Confederate prisoners to clear land mines (“torpedoes”); and the execution of an innocent POW. All these would be considered, then and today, to be war crimes.

Sherman is also shown ordering that freed slaves following his army be turned back. In one scene, many ex-slaves drowned after one of Sherman’s men (ironically named Jefferson C. Davis) pulled up the pontoon bridge over Ebenezer Creek; the Yankee’s offense not being that the poor slaves were unaccepted by their erstwhile liberators, but that they were now abandoned to the approaching Confederates. But the documentary hardly touches the surface in conveying the extent of suffering visited on Southern civilians left in Sherman’s wake or the cruelty of the invading army towards civilians, black and white alike.

Here is a more accurate summary of events, taken from Brian Cisco’s new book new book War Crimes Against Southern Civilians:

Women and children, black and white, were robbed, brutalized, and left homeless in Sherman’s infamous raid through Georgia. Torture and rape were not uncommon. In South Carolina, homes, farms, churches, and whole towns disappeared in flames. Civilians received no mercy at the hands of the Union invaders. Earrings were ripped from bleeding ears, graves were robbed, and towns were pillaged. Wherever Federal troops encountered Southern Blacks, whether free or slave, they were robbed, brutalized, belittled, kidnapped, threatened, tortured, and sometimes raped or killed by their blue-clad “liberators.”

Occupation of Sumter

My family’s home in Sumter, South Carolina was taken over by Sherman’s troops. My great-great grandmother Octavia Moses had five sons fighting for the Confederacy. Here, in part, is the account she cave of that terrible time:

On Sunday, April 9, 1865, Potter’s Raiders occupied Sumter…. They entered many houses and took what they wanted…. They looted the stores and burned the jail and Court house. After my husband was nearly killed by negro soldiers who demanded liquor … we asked for protection and took some officers in our house in order to insure it. We were afraid to undress our children at night, as we did not know when the torch might be applied; we had them dressed in several suits of clothing and had provisions and weapons hidden away.

The Moses family survived the Yankee occupation of Sumter, but some of their most valuable possessions did not:

On Tuesday, April 11, Potter’s raiders departed, but not before burning many buildings and 196 bales of our cotton…. As soon as the Northerners left, all the people of the town went around to each other to find out who was suffering most and how to relieve their needs.

Other families fared much worse, as Octavia notes:

We found poor old Mr. Bee (a refugee from Charleston) had been murdered by drunken soldiers. Mr. Harmon DeLeon, of Charleston, and my husband saw to his burial. My husband also went out to the battle field where, assisted by Augustus Solomons, they together cared for the dead.

Joe Wilder and others tell of the Yankees’ plundering in search of alcohol, and he says, “The black troops murdered old Mr. Bee while they were here on account of some wine, and if it had not been for a guard coming in, white troops would have killed Jackson Moses, thinking he had liquor concealed.”

According to Anne King Gregorie’s History of Sumter County, Robert Bee “was found hanging from the rafters of his attic, tortured and murdered by drunken soldiers, who were said to have raped his daughter” named Julia. In Julia’s “Account” of the incident, she tells how on “Sunday afternoon, the troops came in the village destroying everything on the way”:

The homes were ransacked—every vestige of food was taken—in the home was my father, sister, and four little children…. [T]he home was filled with Yankee hordes—My father was forced to leave the room—and not until several days afterwards did we know where he had been taken—our faithful servant who was looked upon as one of our household—dear faithful Hannah found looking in the upper rooms, exclaimed as she entered the room—”My God, here is my dear Master” murdered by the Yankees. Everything had been ransacked.

Cleansing the Atrocities

But no such horrors appear in the History Channel’s documentary. Sherman’s vandalism, arson and theft of food vitally needed by women and children are casually referred to as “foraging operations.” Sherman fondly calls his teenage soldiers “my little devils.”

Nor is there any mention of the worst atrocities: the well-documented rapes and murders of blacks and whites described in numerous contemporaneous accounts of the March. The closest is the concession that that South Carolina took the brunt of the destruction, since it was the object of vengeance by the Union soldiers, who considered it “the cradle of the rebellion,” the place “where the treason began, and … where it will end.”

Viewers of the documentary wait in vain for any discussion of the mass murder in the west of Native Americans—atrocities that historians euphemistically call “the Indian Wars,” carried out later under Sherman and other Union generals. One hears nothing of Sherman’s genocidal views of the Indians, such as his writing in 1866: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to the extermination, men, women, and children.”

Nor is there a single word about the virulent hatred of Jews demonstrated by Sherman and other Union officers, well known at the time, culminating in America’s worst official act of anti-Semitism in the nation’s history. On December 17, 1862, Union general Ulysses S. Grant issued his infamous General Order 11, expelling all Jews “as a class” from his conquered territories within 24 hours.

A few months earlier, on August 11, Sherman had warned in a letter to the Adjutant General of the Union Army that “the country will swarm with dishonest Jews” if continued trade in cotton is encouraged. Sherman, in a letter written in 1858, had described Jews as “without pity, soul, heart, or bowels of compassion.” None of these insights into Sherman’s character can be found in the documentary.

Confederate Gallantry

Try as they did to sugar-coat Sherman’s methods and motives, the valor of the outnumbered Confederates does come through at times. One of the most poignant moments is the Battle of Griswoldville, ten miles east of Macon, Georgia. A local militia had been formed, from what little manpower remained in the area (largely old men and boys) to try to slow the Union advance. It was the only significant attack on Sherman during his March to the Sea.

In this skirmish, the Union troops, occupying the high ground and firing repeating rifles and cannon, suffered 62 to 92 casualties, as compared to 473-600 militia casualties, according to varying accounts. The documentary quotes a Union soldier writing home about finding a 14-year old boy, with a broken arm and leg. Next to him, “cold in death, lay his father, two brothers, and an uncle.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that almost three dozen members of my mother’s extended family, the Moseses of South Carolina and Georgia, fought for the Confederacy, something that has given me some direct insight into how and why the war was waged by the South.

From their letters, memoirs, and diaries, I know with first hand authority that they and their comrades in arms were not fighting for slavery. They were trying to defend themselves and their comrades, their families, homes, and country from an invading army that was trying to kill them, burn their homes and cities, and destroy everything they possessed.
Thousands of descendants of Confederate veterans could recount similar stories, but such incidents are largely dismissed in “Sherman’s March” as myths or exaggerations.

The Confederates’ Honorable Behavior

The Confederates were operating under honorable rules of engagement that now seem almost quaint.
My ancestor, Major Raphael Moses, is a good example. As General James Longstreet’s chief commissary officer, Moses participated in many of the major battles in the east, and was responsible for supplying and feeding up to 54,000 troops, porters, and other non-combatants.

General Robert E. Lee had strictly forbidden him from entering private homes in search of supplies in raids into Union territory (such as the incursions into Pennsylvania), even when food and other provisions were in painfully short supply.
Moses always paid for what he took from farms and businesses, albeit with Confederate currency. And he always acted as a gentleman. Once, when a distraught woman approached Moses and pleaded for the return of her pet heifer that had been caught up in a cattle seizure, he graciously agreed.

For his part, Moses noted that while the women initially spurned his efforts to pay for the goods, and “refused his Confederate ‘trash’ with great scorn,” they eventually were careful to demand the precise amount owed them, “being very particular about the odd cents.”

Lincoln’s Reaction to the Atrocities

In President Abraham Lincoln’s brief appearance in the documentary, he is always portrayed as wise, decent, kindly and compassionate. Lincoln’s factual reaction to Sherman’s atrocities is not revealed.

In his Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, the general tells of visiting Lincoln with General Grant (whose family still owned slaves at the time) near war’s end aboard the president’s ship docked in City Point, Virginia.

The History Channel’s documentary quotes part of Sherman’s assessment of Lincoln: “Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other.” But the program does not mention Lincoln’s little known reaction to Sherman’s report of his war tactics against civilians:

We walked down the wharf, went on board, and found Mr. Lincoln alone in the after-cabin. He remembered me perfectly and at once engaged in a most interesting conversation. He was full of curiosity about the many incidents of our great march, which had reached him officially and through the newspapers, and seems to enjoy very much the more ludocrous [sic] parts—about the “bummers” and their devices to collect food and forage when the outside world supposed us to be starving.

This report is confirmed by “Admiral Porter’s Account of the Interview with Mr. Lincoln,” written in 1866 at the U.S. Naval Academy, mailed to Gen. Sherman, and included in his book:

The day of General Sherman’s arrival at City Point (I think the 27th of March, 1865), I accompanied him and General Grant on board the president’s flag ship, the Queen, where the president received us in the upper saloon….

The conversation soon turned on the events of Sherman’s campaign through the South, with every movement of which the president seemed familiar.

He laughed over some of the stories Sherman told of his “bummers” and told others in return. The interview between the two generals and the president lasted about an hour and a half, and, as it was a remarkable one, I jotted down what I remembered of the conversation.

At the end of the documentary, Sherman is shown in retirement being visited by those of his former troops who are in need, “the bummers,” receiving monetary gifts from their kindly commander: “the poor old soldiers who show up regularly at his door…. They are his family. He will always be their ‘Uncle Billy’.”

Correcting the “Myths” about Sherman

“Sherman’s March,” the History Channel documentary, was written and directed by Rick King for JWM Productions in Washington, D.C. It was well reviewed by the mainstream media and will doubtlessly win awards because it follows the politically correct version of history. Here is what Jim Auchmutey wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the various “myths” corrected by the program:

Sherman raises a tumbler of whiskey with his lieutenants and offers a toast as they watch Atlanta burn. The light from the flames plays off his red hair and strawberry complexion, making him look like a 19th-century Satan.

Despite the imagery, the man behind the show says he believes Sherman was no devil, even if he did pioneer the concept of “total war.”

“Sherman’s March is one of the great myths of American history,” says Rick King, a native of the Washington suburbs who wrote and directed the program. “The myth is that he was a brute, that he raped and pillaged his way across Georgia and the Carolinas, that he hated the South and was merciless and cruel.”

King points out that Sherman had lived in the South before the war and loved it. Furthermore, he argues, the burning of Atlanta and the March to the Sea have been exaggerated in popular memory and were undertaken for a humanitarian reason: to shorten the war by destroying the South’s will to fight.

The actor who plays Sherman, Bill Oberst, Jr., is a 42-year old South Carolinian from Pawley’s Island who grew up hearing stories about the War. His great-grandfather came from Scotland and became known as “Shorty” after losing a leg while serving in the Confederate Army. “I’m just dripping with this stuff, like most Southern guys of my generation,” Oberst told Auchmutey. “From a military perspective, I can understand what Sherman did. Those are the stories that have been handed down. So, yeah, I hated him.”

Oberst has played not only Jesus, Mark Twain, and John F. Kennedy, but even starred in his own one-man show depicting, of all people, the late humor writer Lewis Grizzard, who truly loved the South. “I thought if someone was going to play Sherman, it ought to be one of us,” Auchmutey says of Oberst. “He chomps his cigar and confers with Ulysses S. Grant. He pauses in the piney woods to talk with a group of emancipated slaves. He rides among his troops, who affectionately call him ‘Uncle Billy’.”

Unfortunately, the reporter did not ask Oberst if he thinks his great granddad “Shorty” is spinning in his grave after his descendant’s performance.

Producer-director Rick King was kind enough to allow me to interview him at length, and he seems like a nice guy. He knows how to make a documentary film, and he genuinely believes what he produced to be a truthful account. But—with apologies to Mr. King—I cannot help but be appalled by what comes across to me as an anti-Southern bias concerning our nation’s most transforming events.

I asked him why the program did not show or mention a single rape or murder of civilians, despite numerous eyewitness accounts. He said that he could not find any historians, or documentation in the dozens of books he consulted, to confirm the atrocity stories that have been handed down for generations.

He said that while there was indeed lots of plunder and destruction, he believed that the number of murders was “very minimal,” and that only a total of “two or three rapes” occurred. (Not believing what I heard, I asked him to repeat that.) Outside of South Carolina, King says, he could find very little wanton destruction of homes other than those with owners who were involved in the war effort.

I asked him if he truly believed Southern conscriptees were fighting to get land and slaves, as the ex-slave stated. “That was his opinion,” he replied, but he did not say why no other “opinions” were offered.

But King did make one point that makes sense out of Sherman’s tactics. By waging war against civilians instead of attacking the Confederate Army, he argues, Sherman saved many lives on both sides, and his destruction of much of the South’s economy shortened the war.

King says he blames the wealthy slave and plantation owners for the war, not the common soldier. “It was a rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.” This is, of course, the Marxist version of the War.

A Revisionist History

History is indeed often written by the victors. In the case of the War Between the States, what is taking place is more accurately described as a cleansing of the harsh facts about the Union victory, substituting a softer, more acceptable version. And now the revisionist account has become the mainstream version.

Today, respectable histories tell us the War was all about slavery; Sherman’s brutality is largely mythological; Lincoln was saintly, kind and compassionate and our greatest president ever. To take issue with any of this dogma invites quick and sharp allegations of racism and bigotry.

The producers of the program claim to have consulted 30 to 40 books. If so, it hardly seems possible that they could have failed to find solid evidence and numerous credible accounts of atrocities against civilians by Sherman’s army.

One historian they did not consult and whose books and articles they did not read is history professor and John C. Calhoun scholar Clyde Wilson. In his review of the documentary for LewRockwell.com, Dr. Wilson had this to say:

A whole team of third-string, half-baked carpetbagger “historians” of the type that now staff all Southern universities are presented to make the best possible case for the glory…. But … it is a bad cause that has to be defended by lies. And it can only be defended by lies, then and now.

In the end, there is no question that “Sherman’s March” attempts to make a hero of a war criminal and rewrites history under the guise of shattering myths. But like the teenagers and old men at Griswoldville 150 years ago, there will always be a few loyal Southerners honest and brave enough to keep fighting against hopeless odds. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing from those brave souls on the History Channel’s version of Sherman’s March.

Lewis Regenstein writes from Atlanta and can be reached at Regenstein@mindspring.com. All photos courtesy of the History Channel.