@paninid yah for sure. I even came up with some really fire memes on the topic at one point. But then I went back over the details of his place in history and decided it was the wrong club to swing.
@paninid that's a fair choice to make and I do make that choice in other circumstances but for me, I noted the reaction his name gets among those with Native American indigenous ancestry and decided to just find other ways to make the same points.
"We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children" and he wasn't kidding. But I hear you. He was a pioneer of "hard war" in every context.
@paninid yeah he and Grant made an incredible pair in terms of sharing that mechanistic, determined, rigorous way of thinking about war, which leaned hard into the Union advantages and minimized the few Confederate strengths. You've likely read the Chernow bio of Grant but if not I give it highest marks. Once those two were ascending the command ladder, the only chance the Confederacy had was a Lincoln election loss in '64. In a meaningful sense they invented modern industrial warfare.
@paninid but yes Sherman more than Grant was a classic Bad Bad Man. If he was fighting on your side, you were glad for it, and may your God have mercy on your soul if not.
The "40 acres" subplot in the Civil War endgame attests to how complex a figure he was - racist as he was against blacks, he was the one person to actually seize massive plantations and just give them to the freedmen. He was right, and the same thing should have happened everywhere; this country would be very different.
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