I don't remember Americans blowing up women and children on their way to church.
Big deal, war is war. You don't rack up 600,000 dead by focusing on church services. How about burning down a whole city, Richmond, VA, 1865.
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"the Confederates were guilty of atrocities which included murdering most of the garrison after it surrendered, burying Negro soldiers alive, and setting fire to tents containing Federal wounded."
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
Camp Presses, Manassas, Junct., Dec. 2d, 1862
My Dear Sister: I have seen more since I have been in this war than I ever expected to see in my life. I went to the the battle field one day where the great battle was fought, and I saw more than I ever want to see again. I saw soldiers from Georgia grabble up Yankees that had been buried. I saw them pull of their heads and scrape the meat and hair off, and take the skull bone with them to send home of their folks to see.
Your dear brother,
Hyman Caton,
Co. J. 4th reg't N. C. State Troops
celticcousins.net
Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman wrote:
"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper."
Halleck liked Sherman's letter so much that he passed it on to President Lincoln, who declared that it should be published. Sherman, in a follow-up to Halleck on October 10, 1863, declared:
"I have your telegram saying the President had read my letter and thought it should be published. I profess ... to fight for but one single purpose, viz, to sustain a Government capable of vindicating its just and rightful authority, independent of niggers, cotton, money, or any earthly interest."
On June 21, 1864, before his bloody March to the Sea, Sherman wrote to the secretary of war: "There is a class of people [in the South] men, women, and children, who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order." A few months later, Sherman informed one of his subordinate commanders:
"I am satisfied ... that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory, so that hard, bull-dog fighting, and a great deal of it, yet remains to be done. Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results."...
On October 9, 1864, Sherman wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant:
"Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl."
Sherman lived up to his boast - and left a swath of devastation and misery that helped plunge the South into decades of poverty.
Scorched-earth tactics were also used in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864-65. On September 28, 1864, Gen. Phil Sheridan ordered one of his commanders to "leave the valley a barren waste." General Grant ordered Union troops to "make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad a desert as high up as possible ... eat out Virginia clear and clean ... so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them." Union Gen. Wesley Merritt proudly reported to Sheridan on December 3, 1864, that "the destruction in the valley, and in the mountains bounding it, was most complete."
Such tactics were typical towards the end of the war. On December 19, 1864, a Union colonel reported that he had followed orders "to desolate the country from the Arkansas River to Fort Scott, and burn every house on the route." In the same month, a major general with the Army of the Potomac noted the success of a Union expedition south of Petersburg, Virginia: "Many houses were deserted contained only helpless women and children ... almost every house was set on fire."
Many Union officers were horrified at the wanton destruction their armies inflicted on the South. On March 8, 1865, Gen. Cyrus Bussey reported:
"There are several thousand families within the limits of this command who are related to and dependent on the Arkansas soldiers in our service. These people have nearly all been robbed of everything they had by the troops of this command, and are now left destitute and compelled to leave their homes to avoid starvation.... In most instances everything has been taken and no receipts given, the people turned out to starve, and their effects loaded into trains and sent to Kansas."
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