Happy birthday to one of the greatest War generals ever

He didn't go far enough, to be perfectly honest. In war, you must defeat the enemy.

...

...

He reintroduced the lost art of total war. Destroy your enemies means to make war and crush there will.
Happy birthday Willy

>I'm mad someone saved thousands of more soldiers dying in a prolonged war from dying by burning books, farms, and buildings

>implying that there were only material causalities to sherman's march
>implying the march didn't have profound negative effects on generations of innocent southerners who had nothing to do with the war
why exactly should a soldier's well being be placed above someone who's only crime was living in a rebellious state?

Serious question here. How good of a general was William Sherman? Aside from the whole target civilians/total war thing, was he actually good at leading forces? Stuff like did he lose any battles or did he only face shitty confederate militia.

He wasn't a spectacular battle general, he's wasn't bad but his real genius comes from how he knew how to make the greatest impact on the whole war. He would lose battles but he never bet all his chips on any battle so he would get more and more chances and eventually due to the Union having a much deeper pool of resources and a frustrated CSA changing commanders around he would get deeper and deeper into their territory.

There was only one competent gnereal in that whole conflict, Meade !

All the rest were mediocrities, except Meade, but he was a Democrat, so he was politically assassinated and written out of history.

The civil war (lower case as I have no respect for rednecks larping as Europeans) is the most overrated conflict in history, hell, you can give a gun to a baby and it'll still manage to shoot someone, Americans are overrated.

Too bad we didn't take Forrest off the leash and rip this Yankee sack of shit's balls out from under him.

Death to the Union and all who stand for it.

> !
wdhmbt?

He was terrible at actual battlefield command.

His only bright spot was the idea of attacking everywhere at once and burning everything in side.

>Liberal marxists burning an American flag
Oy Vey

If I did this:

> Meade!

It looks like I spelled Medal wrong.

See

> Meadel
> Meade!

>tfw you want to spend a nice day at the beach but somebody left the entire state of georgia in your way

>It looks like I spelled Medal wrong.
i think we would have understood what you meant, user

How high are you right now?

I'm on no4chan(my version of nofap) for the last 4 days, so I'm blowing my load as fast as I can.

god bless

>claim land
>residents are now fucking stupid because "muh conquest"

>Forrest off the leash and rip this Yankee sack of shit's balls out from under him.
With what; what was he supposed to fight with? Good Generalship can only overcome so much numerical and material inferiority.

WAR CRIMINAL
WAR CRIMINAL
WAR CRIMINAL
WAR CRIMINAL

>why exactly should a soldier's well being be placed above someone who's only crime was living in a rebellious state?

Because civilians also share the responsibility for not resisting secession?

Same reason why the Japs deserved the atom bomb. Civilians share at least part of the responsibility in either supporting or not preventing their country from going to war. Therefore, pro-secession Southerners share responsibility for starting the war.

This is a weird and dumb post
but Lee was an incredible general

His only mistake was not finishing the job and burning down ALL of the south.

how exactly do you go about separating the people who were for and against secession? if NATO marches into moscow tomorrow, should i be personally held accountable because i didn't prevent it from happening?

>Defend slavery on an anonymous imageboard
>Other guy is being edgy

It was war. Shit happens in war. Next time don't start one

>so he was politically assassinated and written out of history.
Yeah, no one's heard of the battle of Gettesburg

i didn't defend slavery.
the vast majority of the people negatively affected by the march to the sea weren't wealthy slave holders.
>It was war. Shit happens in war.
you act as if it's some random act of nature that civilians were killed, and universities burned, rather than the actions of a war criminal that you are currently defending. evidently because the rednecks he killed weren't real people.
>Next time don't start one
>be a poor farmhand in georgia c. 1860's
>own no land, can't vote
>CSA fires on fort sumter
>die in the burning of atlanta three years later
>"guess you shouldn't have started the war, faggot"

>>"guess you shouldn't have started the war, faggot"

Yep.

Missing the point lad. I fully acknowledge war sucks dick. I was being trivial, but shitposting aside war is terrible.

HENCE, why there should be a big fucking deterrent from starting one.

the point of all that was to demonstrate that the hypothetical southern farmhand had literally nothing to do with starting the war.
are you shitposting, or are you seriously too retarded to read?
my point wasn't just "war is bad." my point was that sherman committed atrocities against innocent people, and destroyed institutions of knowledge, and yet he is excused because his side won.

Very solid, very competent. He understood that the Civil War would be a war of attrition, and the North had to fight accordingly.

The idea that the March to the Sea was some sort of radical notion about modern warfare that Sherman thought up whole cloth is a load of bullshit.

Sherman, on the Western front, was driving South through Georgia fighting the confederates, beating them back time after time until he finally captured Georgia. After that, all he wanted to do was meet the Confederates in battle and deliver the killing blow. Except the opposing general, Hood, kept running away. He kept evading Shermans forces, sending raids around the north to harass Sherman and strike at his long supply lines.

Sherman got sick of putting up with this supply line harassment bullshit, so he just decided to give Hood a taste of his own medicine. He just picked his entire Army, left Georgia, and set out crushing all of Hood's supply lines, which happened to be the interior of the South, and all the other Confederate supply lines as well.

The South howled, but they were hypocrites for complaining, since Sherman was just doing what Hood was doing, only better.

Sherman was perfectly willing to meet any confederate force in battle. But at this point in the war, all the confederates had left was cowards who fled. If a town was willing to surrender and reenter the union, Sherman spared them. Where they put up resistance, he destroyed them. Most of the destruction was caused by fleeing Confederates, burning their own cities rather than allowing them to surrender to the Union.

Where is the evidence that Sherman destroyed libraries and universities intentionally? Remember he was the founder of what became Tulane.

>Same reason why the Japs deserved the atom bomb.
with that logic, what punishment do you deserve?
some future day maybe japan nukes your hometown??

provide the name of a single valuable book lost in those fire