The rebel line of skirmishers seeing us comung up fell back int their works. As soon as our niggers caught sight of the retreating figures of the rebs, the very devil could not hold them. Their eyes glittered like serpents and with yells & howls like hungry wolves, they rushed to the rebel work...The rebs were panic-struck, numbers of them jumping into the river and were drowned in attempting to cross, or were shot while swimming. Still others threw down their arms and ran for their lives over to the white troops on our left to give themsleves up to save being butchered by our niggers. The niggers did not take a prisoner. They killed all they took to a man.To my mind, there was the regular Civil War, between North and South. And then there was this second Civil War between slave and master, or freedman and slave-master. The Civil War, which we think about, was brother against brother--sometimes literally. It's McClellan wanting to prosecute a "gentle" war. It's prisoner exchanges, and parole. Then there is the second Civil War, in which you have two people who, in the old phrasing, "just don't like each other very much."
Many black soldiers were essentially impressed into the Army. Others went to strike a blow for freedom. And still others went to preserve the Union. And then there was that final group--those looking to settle old scores. In truth, none of these groups were mutually exclusive from the other. But I think, when we talk about black soldiers in the Civil War, the noble chivalrous sheen (think Glory) doesn't account for that oldest of human emotions--vengeance.
When black soldiers went into combat, I think large numbers of them were thinking about the big payback. On the other hand, when white Confederate soldiers went to war against black regiments they had two responses. 1.) A maniacal hatred for them, a blood-frenzy stoked by the notion of slaves taking up arms. 2.) A deep-seated fear at exactly what these black soldiers might do. I suspect, that often, both of these emotions were bound up together.
The result was that, as we've talked about, you'd have a shockingly low number of black soldiers taken prisoner--evidence of massacre. But you'd also get these scattered reports of black soldiers nkilling men who were trying to surrender.
Part of this is the "Remember Fort Pillow" ethos. But I suspect another part of it is just a sheer desire for vengeance. A lot of these guys had been slaves in the Deep South. The prospect of the "get-back" must have been intoxicating. The point isn't to let Forrest off the hook--there is no black equivalent to Fort Pillow. But it's to see his actions in the context of this internal war, within the war. I hate thinking about black folks as blameless.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
That Civil War would be "half-brother against half-brother."
So true.
Heh, sans-culottes, yep.
One interesting question for me... despite the fact that Northern racism made it implausible... could the North have responded successfully to secession by 'containment' and the encouragement of slave revolts? Perhaps the difference between the historical strategy and the counterfactual strategy is the difference between Seward and Frederick Douglass as Secretary of War.
As you suggest, the result would not have been a 'pretty' war... but it would also have been a low-risk strategy that struck directly at the vital interests of the South: why bother blockading cotton shipments when the laborers picking the cotton are willing to mutiny?
Don't know... Wouldn't that potentially promote civilian casualties over military ones? Also, what's the endgame? The US supported the Afghani rebels against the Soviets but the long run was obviously not positive for the US. What's to say the outcome of a slave rebellion would have been favorable to the Union?
It is a WWCD question: what would Clausewitz do?
Sherman's response, of course, was succinct: 'war is hell.'
It's an entirely valid question whether such a strategy could be morally justified. And the point on Afghanistan is well taken, though I would suggest the comparison is quite inexact. Kabul's a lot further 'away' than Richmond, so much less difficult to police.
As to the end-game; I think it is pretty clear that the North's actual endgame (and reconstruction) failed... indeed, overall it could be argued that the North has been paying 'reparations' to the South for much of the 20th century -- certainly the balance of payments has favored the 'solid south.'
On the other hand, certainly such a strategy would mean a lot fewer Northern casualties in Northern Virginia, decreased war-weariness and likely a significantly larger appetite for continuing Reconstruction. Despite the ugliness, it would likely have decreased the pressures Lincoln faced going into the 1864 election.
Probably the most interesting points that the counterfactual raises: First, it allows a metric to measure what it really would have meant to "take the gloves off" with the South, which helps to put Sherman's march to the sea, "Northern Aggression," and southern victimhood in some perspective. And second, it significantly weakens the thesis of the "Lost Cause" -- the above was certainly a fall-back strategy if the 20th Maine had routed at Gettysburg.
Finally, I tend to think much of the mythistory surrounding the war has obscured Southern consciousness of their own Achilles' heel. The possibility (and the increasingly justified fear) that the Union might move to that strategy may help answer one of the persistent questions about Southern strategy in 1862-1863: if time was on your side, why march North to defeat at Antietam or Gettysburg?
My instinct is that the southern leadership was beginning to recognize the realities of their situation: their 'political system' was very vulnerable to decay from within, and not particularly resistant to stress imposed from without.
Slave revolts all ended very badly for both the insurgents and the slaves who weren't involved.
They didn't end all that well for the slaveholding classes either -- not least because they radically 'depreciated' the value of the people whom they viewed as property.
That said, you are right -- that sort of thing is generally a bloody mess -- which may suggest refinements to the strategy, but not necessarily the weakness of the strategy itself.
One could note, by the way, that Kennan learned that lesson in Albania during his first attempt to implement containment. (Not to compare 'slaveries' but simply to note that there are a range of approaches to containment and subversion).
Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I think the question is pertinent -- there's reason to use the Civil War as a strategic test-case as to how to go about implementing containment.
i dunno...the slaveholding class did pretty well a decade or so after the Late Unpleasantness ended, innit?
right back in the catbird seat, to quote a granddad.
Did any of the slave revolts seriously disrupt Southern society? I know they caused mass panic, resulting in harsh crackdowns, but I don't think they ever threatened to actually destabilize the situation. I could be wrong, this is not my strong point.
What would you have done about Washington, D.C., Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey and what became West Virginia? Granted DC abolished in 1862 and New Jersey had replaced "slavery" with "wardships" but it would seem impossible to encourage uprisings in the southern states but not in the north. And how would you have encouraged these uprisings in secession states w/o sending in troops to set it off? And those vital interests in the South that relied on slavery had friends and allies in the North that might have gotten sick of the economic pinch of a drawn out war and containment strategy.
Actually, probably the better bet would be an enclave strategy -- hold the coastal forts, snatch New Orleans, Yorktown, etc, and start the war with an emancipation proclamation. Dredd Scott and the runaway slave cases suggest the level of Southern black interest in remaining in bondage.
In essence, this is Anaconda with an earlier-declared emancipation component.
D.C.? Meh. The British had burned it 40 years previous. Philadelphia's a much more comfortable town for a capital. ;-) Missouri pretty much took care of itself.... and any major southern force sent across the Mississippi was basically putting its head in a noose.
As to New Jersey, better to send federal and state troops to quell uprisings by slaveholders than having to quell draft riots -- the New York Irish who set the city ablaze in 1863 had a lot less to lose.
Nb... the strategy would have sounded familiar to Pericles... and it would have had some of the same weaknesses.. although the Mississippi-Ohio-Potomac line was a good deal more expansive and economically viable than Pericles' long walls.
Carrington: I guess what I was asking is what the political feasibility of that strategy would be. My understanding is that at the outset large portions of the North were willing to fight to preserve the Union but not necessarily to abolish slavery. Even with the EP there were lots of Union areas which were exempt from abolition. If the war kicks off and Lincoln says screw it, no more slavery anywhere, is he able to prosecute the war.
In response to 433E83: political feasibility is a great question -- you're right, such a course was --probably -- politically unfeasable, especially without damaging the U.S. constitutional framework.
(though, nb. Maryland was under martial law in 1861 anyway: not a particularly good time for Md slaveowners to protest their 'dispossession.')
On the other hand, the question is interesting because the existence of a strategically optimal war policy (that wasn't taken) is very helpful in mapping out extant political restraints -- the historical equivalent of a radioactive trace for medical imaging.
And, finally, it illuminates the bounds of an ongoing civil-military debate: war is, to be sure, and extension of politics, but politicians must consider that a long or failed war tends to distort those politics as time goes on. I think it is a fair argument that such political distortions should be built into war planning simply because the distortions that occur ad hoc will, almost inevitably, be worse.
To sum up what others have said . . . it wouldn't have worked.
The entire slave-holding south was organized, from the viewpoint of a slave, as a police state, complete with checkpoints, "papers," and the right of any official--or white of social rank--to be as arbitrary and brutal as he pleased if he sensed some suspicious action or gesture from people of color. The militia system was tied to the county and state police authorities, all prepared to react quickly to any slave escape or resistance, with large numbers of tough, hard-edged racists (whites, Amerindians, and few free blacks) all very well armed, and perfectly ready to shoot, whip, hang, decapitate, or burn any black who crossed them. Any hint of encouragement of slaves to revolt would have probably have resulted in massive witch-hunts and thousands of deaths before the slaves even got the word around.
Of course, this solution could never have been seriously considered at the time. The political solution didn't allow for it. McPherson goes over the topic of Northern motivation quickly, but I presume other contributors to this discussion can name more intense scholarly discourse on the subject. Briefly, however . . .
First, the Lost Cause theory had it absolutely backwards. There was no conspiracy of Northern aggression to free the slaves before the beginning of the secession crisis. Most Northerners came to loathe slavery during the 1850s, but the number willing to get killed doing something about it was fairly small. The willingness of the North to fight a war, per my professor at Northwestern, was tied to the culture of rabid Southern nationalism that was deliberately built up in the 1840s and 1850s to provide a political defense for slavery. They considered themselves the "Real Americans," constantly voiced their contempt for Northern “mudsills and dirty mechanics, and their bullying, bragging, and power-mongering in Washington antagonized millions of Northerners who felt no more personal urge to free Southern slaves then they did Russian serfs or Chinese peasants. When they became a visible threat to the unity and safety of the Federal union, Republicans started counting votes in the millions and a large share of northern Democrats were willing to be convinced to join the fighting.
Another element that isn’t emphasized enough, to my thinking, is the history of democratic governments since 1776. France had gone through a Revolution, a First Republic, the Terror, the First Empire, a restored monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, a Second Republic, and was now a Second Empire. Other democratic movements in Europe had fallen prey to reactionary elements or had been unable to defend themselves from foreign armies. Attempts to create large federal unions like the United States in Latin America had failed utterly, provinces seceding and governments collapsing into anarchy or dictatorship. Thus, Americans had every reason to expect nothing but catastrophe for the entire nation if they let a rebellion go unchecked any faction of states to separate itself from the union.
The original secession crisis involved only seven states. That left Lincoln to be the president of eight slave and nineteen free states. He had no navy or army to speak of, just a frontier constabulary and a couple of dozen ships capable of showing the flag around the shores of a rebellious “combination” with a coastline as extensive as that of northern Europe. He had no powers he could bring to bear to restore the union himself. All he could do, practically speaking, was put on a brave front of holding on to Federal property and hope enough states would see looming catastrophe of dissolution and back him up with volunteers if it came to a fight. When South Carolina started the shooting, he got his volunteers from New England and the Midwest, while four of the eight slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln had no idea how long he could count on support from the rest of the North and if he lost Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland the game was up. The Confederacy would get control of the national capital, along with all internal communications along the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the lower Missouri. The Northeast would be linked to the Midwest by two railroads and Lake Erie, Colorado and New Mexico would be out of reach and defenseless and California and Oregon would, for all practical purposes, be reachable only by sea.
Given that, any direct action by the Federal government to free the slaves anywhere would have been suicidal. Inciting slave revolts would have destroyed the Union in a matter of weeks.
It would be more than a year before Lincoln had enough military force on hand to protect his military frontiers and “wall off” the south by sea. By then, the south had mobilized a giant army of its own and clamped down even tighter on the slaves.
Union opinion, solidified by war, had evolved to the point that a majority of the soldiers and voters saw slavery, not just as an evil in itself, but the core of the secessionist philosophy that had caused the war and kept the South fighting. Lincoln thereby had enough political maneuvering room to free slaves held outside of union control. He did not expect them to revolt, which would have gotten them massacred to no good purpose, but he did expect them to take a chance on freedom whenever a Union army got close enough to breach the chains of the Southern police state. Several million of them did take that chance, ending any possibility of restoring slavery as it had been, regardless of how the war ended.
Understood, although this is the reason I would term such a northern strategy a 'strategy of containment,' to be expected to act in slower motion, as a police stated dissolved itself.
The one problem with your argument, it should be noted: given northern liabilities, the call "On to Richmond" made no sense. Nail down the railroads, fortify the Potomac, hold the coastal forts, and build ships.
The strategic model, of course, is the Periclean strategy against Sparta. And, notably, Pericles, et. al. faced many of the same objections (and plague to boot). Nevertheless, the Athenians won... or at least until they deceived themselves that they could afford a small expedition to Sicily.
There's a further point to be made in response, though your points are well taken. It's very easy to think of past history: "it happened that way, therefore it had to happen that way." Yet it is also dangerous, because we tend to draw general conclusions from a specific historical narrative.
It's often helpful to ask what might have been.
If you want to see the Confederate soldiers' responses to Black regiments updated, go the the comments section on any hard right-wing blog. And yes, TNC, Black commenters are not blameless today in this regard, but I have yet to see anything that compares to the level of hatred and vitriol spewed against Pres. Obama, (I guess he's the latter day Black brigade all by himself) his family and Black people in general by this new generation of "Confederate soldiers." Only slightly milder in tone is right wing talk radio and apparently, the new head of the "National Young Republicans." BTW, if someone can point me to a site or comments sections where Black people reach this level, I will be happy to revise my remarks.
Every liberal blog I went to from 2003-2008 was full of overflowing vitrol towards Bush. If your game is which president gets more vitrol it is hard to argue that anyone can beat Bush.
Towards Bush personally or what he was doing? There is a difference.
Touhy you're totally right that there's a difference between righteous anger about Bush policies and personal attacks. To wit:
Cenk Uyger, "The Ugly Truth: Our President is an Idiot": You know it, I know it and the American people know it. But everyone is afraid to say it. They say it privately, but people are afraid of saying it publicly because you will be branded as a liberal, elite, intellectual snob. But believe me, you don't have to be an intellectual to see how painfully stupid our president is.
Katerhine van Wormer, "Dry Drunk Syndrome and George Bush": http://www.counterpunch.org/wormer1011.html (Nothing vitriolic per se but some nice personal shots based around a "syndrome".
I like this one from the website www.presidentbushisaf****ngmoron.com: Ok, enough pu**yfooting around. George W. Bush, our President, Commander in Chief, and the head honcho of the Republic Party, is a f'ng moron. Calling this as_*_*e “dumb as a stump” is an insult to trees. He’s so dense, his skull has an event horizon.
Adam McKay, the guy who wrote Will Ferrell's "Thank You America": “He’s so clearly a neglected 13-year-old that there’s something really kind of heartbreaking about him...W. may have some awareness, deep down inside" McKay said.
Hit up www.bushorchimp.com or just read:
Philip Slater, "New Scientific Study Reveals Bush is a Chimp".
Here are some Google hit scores:
331K for Bush is the Antichrist
584K for Bush is a f_g (171K for GEORGE Bush is a f_g)
1,010,000 for Bush is the worst person in the world
2,890,000 for George Bush is an a**_ole
6,980,000 for Bush is idiot (899K for Bush is AN idiot)
9,170,000 for Bush is a drunk (all from licensed MD's I'm sure)
16,100,000 for Bush should die
28,500,000 for Bush is stupid
Touhy - do you really want to play google with this shit ? If anybody actually gave a shit, you'd be creamed, reamed and buried in a mountain of rightwing trash talk. And that's just from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter...
Sorry that wasn't for "touhy" but for 43383...
43383 is asking us to open the Doors of Hell, Pandora's Box and the comments thread of Free Republic...dangerous turf.
433E83 - Bush only has 300,000 plus "antichrist" hits after 8 years ?
Obama's already got one million, four hundred thousand...less than six months in.
I won't spend any more time proving you're an idiot...or perhaps the antichrist. Maybe even Hitler.
Awesome bruceds. I'm an idiot/ maybe Hitler because I remember that I along with all my fellow buddies talked a lot of crap for 8 years. Thanks.
I guess if you actually spent 8 years talking crap, my irony is moot.
I grew up in Texas brucds. Between Anne Richards and the man not putting a roof on the new Texas Rangers stadium I knew all I needed to know about the man. My (way off board point) was that both sides spew a lot of trash.
And mine was that, using the metric you introduced, the rightwingnuts spewed a whole hell of a lot more against Obama than was ever spewed against Bush - leaving aside the question of who actually deserved a lot of it.
Consider two things about Bush - one that he was "elected" by the Supreme Court and proceeded to govern as a partisan, imagining that a majority of the country actually supported his politics and, two, that no matter that many of us liberals lined up behind him after 9/11 and supported the military action in Afghanistan, he betrayed the country by shifting his sights from Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda to Iraq, and in the course of that folly acted totally dishonestly. He then proceeded to fuck up his already bad decision as much as humanly possible. Bush earned his "vitriol." Obama, like Clinton, simply brings out the innate cultural hatred, racism and sense of violated entitlement that infects the crazy contemporary Right. No comparison between the rightwingnuts and the liberals who were simply ahead of the overwhelming majority of Americans in figuring out what a trainwreck the Bush administration was. Also, I had my patriotism questioned persistently during those years by wingnuts. Fuck 'em and the assholes they rode in on.
We're way off-topic. Let it go. Or save it for the open thread.
I just spent an hour on Google and had a ten-thousand word comment ready, but you're the boss.
Also don't forget the age old truth that despite best attempts at professionalism and discipline, soldiers do horrible things to one another all the time and will murder those at their mercy. The hatred, fear and vengeance in the heat of battle is and always was a horrible consequence of sending people off to war against one another. The romantic notions of war that are propogated in popular culture shouldn't blind us to this fact, no matter how righteous or necessary a war may be.
The caveat to that: even the bestiality of war cannot be collapsed into a single dimension. You could argue the reverse, that it is surprising that professionalism and discipline are often maintained in the face of the brutal logic of war.
Very true--it makes it all the more impressive when soldiers are able to maintain their discipline and professionalism in the midst of combat.
In my opinion the reaction of confederate troops boils down to the fear that the myth of the compliant slave was exactly that a myth.
Professor Blight in one of his lectures says something to the effect of "The truth always has a way of coming out out no matter how hard you try and hide it." For all of the mythology that white southerners preached about Black inferiority, and the necessity of slavery I think in their bones they either knew, or were afraid, or both, that it wasn't true.
Sorn wrote:
In my opinion the reaction of confederate troops boils down to the fear that the myth of the compliant slave was exactly that a myth.
I grew up in part of the old Confederacy with the similar myth that former slaves were so loyal and indebted to their masters that they stayed after emancipation, took their former masters' surnames, etc.
I don't doubt some did stay, but it took me a long time to realize that that wasn't a function of loyalty as much as it was brutal economic necessity, particularly for those with no particular skills as craftsmen that could secure their future.
I'm not sure here...remember mostly it was black troops led by white officers. I believe those white officers would rarely let vengeance happen for multiple reasons. Such as losing control of the unit, encouraging the enemy to do the same in the opposite circumstance, etc.
If it was vengeance then I would think that would be more "man to man" as opposed to unit vengeance. If a rebel soldier was captured by a union black soldier when no officer was present then maybe vengeance was in play.
Not so on a unit scale.
Although this may be splitting hairs.
"Letting" vengeance happens assumes a bit much--looking the other way is another way of thinking about it. After Fort Pillow, there are testimonies by white officers basically saying as much.
I'm sure there was "man to man" vengeance, but again, a lot of the letters I've seen talk about feelings across the regiment. I think what you're getting at is that white officers would not, say, order a massacre. That's true. But there's a lot of space between ordering a massacre and stopping one. An officer might, as I said, look the other way. He might not try that hard. He might arrange to be somewhere else on the battlefield etc.
I believe the white officers would be extra careful in this situation. Remember how dangerous it was to lead black troops in the war.
They were already in a very vulnerable situation because the secesh were ordered that white officers were to be treated the same as the "escaped slaves". That is, shot and buried in un-marked graves at the battle sites. A fear all soldiers had I believe.
I would guess that white officers would try to mitigate any bad behavior just so they and their troops would be seen and treated as enemy soldiers.
It seems they (at least the good officers) would try to do anything to accomplish this.
Being elsewhere on the field would be no excuse for the officer in charge. He is expected to control his men.
Of course this assumes that all officers were good ones. That assumption is poor. I would agree with you there had to be officers that looked the other way. I would hope they were in the minority.
The closest scenario I can imagine myself in is as a Jewish Allied soldier in Europe in late WW2. I think it would take an extreme amount of discipline to limit my vengeance seeking to only German soldiers.
... cough.... Red Army... cough.
And yes... it was pretty nasty.
Yeah...check out Beevor's "The Fall of Berlin"...which only makes a kind of very ugly sense if you've read his prior "Stalingrad." Nasty is an understatement.
It's interesting, the way that (in this case) race twists a phenomenon that we have a hard time understanding anyway: the special hatred and fear that is reserved for the "illegitimate" combatant. The Confederate reaction to black soldiers in blue uniforms is related to the German reaction to Belgian resistance in World War I, the British reaction to Afrikaner commandos, and to any situation where people who are "supposed to be beaten" or "never should have fought" take up arms in an organized manner. And it has some similarities* to our reaction to Islamist terrorism today. Generally, people recognize that these combatants are not plain criminals in the police sense, but when preconceptions about their moral standing do not match the reality of their resistance, the forces opposing them often lose the ability to treat them as soldiers. The dissonance leads those forces to employ extra violence, because the "illegitimate" combatant is not (in their minds) a real soldier, and therefore does not play by the usual rules, and therefore is a cheat and a savage.
And yet, in the specifics of the Civil War, we have people who are by every definition formal soldiers of the state, but because of the racial divide, their opponents see them as illegitimate anyway. And so instead of being just another group of guys shooting at you, in the Confederate mind they become backstabbers, betrayers, a secret weapon, an attack from outside the bounds of civilization.
It would be a lot easier on all concerned if people could reexamine their preconceptions more readily. But once the axiom has been used to generate a strong emotion, that same axiom is unlikely to ever be questioned again. And so Fort Pillow ends up being one more massacre in an extraordinarily long history of human fear and violence.
*Obviously, before anyone goes off half-cocked, there are many crucial differences here, too. This is one aspect of the issue, not the entire analysis.
A guy I know and hold in very high esteem is fond of saying that "Human beings although they have the capacity and the ability to think rationaly they don't often do so."
So true so very often, yet so sad.
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower describes in horrifying detail how in WWII the US fought a normal war against Hitler and the German military, and simultaneously a race war with the Japanese people.
I meant that to be a reply to Grunthos above.
It's been a while since I read Dower, but the quick and sloppy description of it came up over at CAP, and I put this response up:
"On the other side of the world, captured Japanese were treated with unfiltered savagery until they were well to the rear of hostilities . . . Charming accounts of captured Japanese being used for target practice, or of wounded Japanese having their gold teeth removed by bayonet are not uncommon."
The point of surrender is dangerous for any soldier in any war. At the time of greatest brutality, anyone might commit an atrocity. Yes, Americans and British soldiers occasionally murdered and brutalized Germans when they surrendered. It was a forseeable effect of the stress of ground combat, and the army had training and policy in place to minimize it.
The situation was different in the Pacific. It wasn’t primarily because of racism directed towards the Japanese–only a tiny minority of Americans had ever met anyone Japanese before they entered the Pacific combat zone. Their cultural prejudices towards them weren’t remotely as harsh as those held by White Americans towards Blacks and Hispanics."
The brutalization of the Pacific stemmed, first and foremost, from the Japanese attitude towards the war. Americans entered into combat in the early months expecting to be treated per the Geneva Convention if they surrendered and most expected that the Japanese would surrender under roughly the same conditions as an American or European. Instead, they found themselves up against an enemy that casually murdered prisoners, military and civilian, and brutalized and abused them as a matter of standard practice, the officers leading the torture, maiming, and execution sessions to show off for the enlisted men.
Marine General Archer Vandegrift, who’d served in Asia before the war and thought he’d seen it all, was stunned by what he learned after his first land combat action on Guadacanal, writing to a fellow officer: “I have never heard of this type of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded wait until men come up to examine them . . . and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade.” Attempts to rescue swimming Japanese survivors after a naval battle could get American sailors throttled, drowned, stabbed, or shot.
The experience of battle taught the Allies that they had to deal harshly with this different kind of enemy. To their immense credit, the military commanders strove to minimize the petty atrocities, just as they did in Europe. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that they were not as successful in the Pacific. As it was, some prisoners were taken in almost every battle, often at great risk to the Allied sailors and soldiers attempting to lessen the horror of what they had to do to survive. Eugene Sledge, who wrote one of the great accounts of Pacific land combat, speaks of its brutalizing effect. He also describes how the Marines he served with tried to keep each other sane and human in spite of it all.
If Dower's original is more sophisticated than the PC version I've heard from time, to time, I'll check him back out at the library to sharpen my response. Either way, the parallel seems apparent. Regardless of how the African-American soldiers might feel, maintaining discipline and avoiding combat brutalization is a lot harder when you're up against an opponent who won't play by "the rules" as you understand them.
Dresden?
Yup, just like Dresden. The decision to firebomb Dresden was undertaken, consciously, as an act of revenge for the firebombing of Coventry by the Germans. So, by this framework, the Germans had violated the "accepted" rules of war by purposefully targeting an entire city for extermination, military and industrial and pure civilian targets alike. The Allies were outraged and picked out a German city to receive payback.
Yes. But not Berlin. And the German-American population of the East Coast wasn't rounded up, even though u-boats were operating within sight of NYC. And most US propaganda didn't target Germans as a race. And German troops who fell into US custody were sent to plow fields and get fat in Iowa. And no Americans sent their girlfriends German skulls as souvenirs.
Part of that was embarrassment at the treatment of German-Americans during the war to end all wars.
It would be interesting to see how deep the parallels are with the war of the bushwhackers between Kansas and Missouri, if any. That whole thing was just plain nastiness between two irregular forces that flat out did not get along. Atrocities were the norm on both sides and it didn't really end just because the war was "over."
Part of the Union garrison was a white TN cavalry unit. One of them survived and wrote that Forrest's troops were outraged having to fight "home-made Yankees" and wanted to teach them a lesson. Deeply personal on both sides.
Definitely, I think that Ride with the Devil actually did a decent job of showing how personal vendettas and allegiances really fueled the whole thing.
oh, I also think that the character of Holt is one of the most nuanced and human portrayals of a relationship between slave and master that I've seen in a civil war movie. How his friendship and loyalty with Clyde was quite real but at the same time it was totally different from the friendship he later formed with Jake as a free man.
I had the late Jim Shenton for many history classes as an undergrad at Columbia (along with one in grad school). He had been a medic in the US Army in World War Two in Europe. (I believe he was in Patton's Third Army, but I cannot swear to it.) He had been among the first US troops to enter to separate Nazi death camps. I believe one was Buchenwald. The second was a smaller camp that did medical experiments. Shenton would never describe what he saw in the second camp, except to say that it was much worse than Buchenwald.
I wrote the above as background for what follows. I once asked Shenton what had happened to certain camp guards. He answered that in his experience, if people knew who they were when they surrendered, they would have been massacred. Shenton was a gentle man. He was willing to risk his life in combat as a medic, but he himself would not bear arms. Still, he did not seem upset to report the guards' fate.
Technically, killing the guards would have been a war crime, but I find it hard to condemn the US soldiers who did it. Similarly, I find it hard to condemn the killing of Confederates who committed the massacre at Fort Pillow. I imagine the white officers of the Union's "Colored Troops" felt the same way.
Yeah, I'm not really "condemning" anyone. I don't know how anyone really could.
I'm still troubled by it--at the end of the day, you're still talking about surrendering men at your mercy, not unlike a captured terrorist. The reason we condemn torture (even if there's no doubt as to guilt) is precisely because such a person is at our mercy. Killing a prisoner--even one who committed evil acts--in the heated aftermath of a battle may be understandable, but it's still worthy of condemnation.
Actually, there was a piece in the Boston Globe a couple years ago about the liberation of one of the camps. Relatively credible story of summary executions: guards and Wehrmacht were intermingled, American troops separated them out, perhaps with ex-prisoners help.
The guards were then machine-gunned. Officers hadn't ordered it, the event took only a few minutes. I'm remembering that Eisenhower got word of the summary executions, but declined to investigate.
The vendetta between the 1st Canadian division and 12th SS Division was more systematic.
TNC,
Forgive me if I misunderstand or am missing the point, but exactly what sort of "blame" are we talking about here in the context of black Union soldiers? As you mention, many of these folks were former slaves, and as such, had survived one of this country's greatest evils. Vengeance may be morally wrong, but in their cases I don't see how they can be "blamed" for anything. A classic example of chickens coming home to roost.
It's worth considering the context around "blameless." The point is that these guys were just victims or objects acted upon by history or innocent flowers. They were people with their set of complicated motives.
I'm not sure if there answers your question. If your asking me if I "fault" them, then I'd say no, and then quickly add that the question is beside the point. I'm not writing this to find "fault." I'm looking for people. Fully realized people.
Que Spr90 is sounding like the Dapper Don. Don't drive any cars around his kids when they're out riding their bikes. Murder is murder son. You can't wrap your side in moral righteousness and then murder surrendering troops. You do that and you end up with this crap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/asia/11afghan.html
433E83,
Well, that's your view. However, if I'm a slave from the deep south who runs across rebels, or a Jewish survivor of a concentration camp who encounters Nazis, or a Native American survivor of a massacre who runs across U.S. Cavalrymen, being a "fully realized" person, vengeance will most likely be on my mind and from my perspective, my causing your death is not murder, your claim notwithstanding.
I never claimed "moral righteousness", a strawman you assert, but was simply asking of TNC clarification.
Let's end this now. It's getting personal.
Not meaning to rankle and I apologize. I understand your point though and have no idea how I would deal with any sort of vengeance scenario. I've read a lot of things lately about troops for a variety of seemingly sound reasons crossing from prosecuting wars to murdering people so it's on my mind.
TNC,
I read your blog regularly and rarely comment, but I believe that you haven't listed Out of the House of Bondage by Thavolia Glymph on your booklist. It's a recent release, but addresses the war between slave and master in a way that few scholars have previously. Also, she recasts the plantation house as a site of resistance, rather than assimilation in the narrative of American slavery. Definitely worth a look if you're interested. Mark Anthony Neal includes a brief overview in a previous blog post found here: http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2008/12/nbm-booknotes-december-2008.html.
It's only a list of things I've read so far. Not a list of things other people should read--though others are welcome to it.
Deleted.
There's a set of correspondence regarding Fort Pillow written by troops on both sides which is online at http://www.civilwarhome.com/ftpillow.htm. It includes correspondence between Forrest and Cadwallader Washburn who was a Union Major General in Tennessee. This is all after Fort Pillow and at one point Forrest writes Washburn basically saying "gee, I'm concerned about these rumors that your guys have vowed to show no quarter towards my guys...can we talk about this?" Washburn writes back:
You say in your letter that it has been reported to you "that all the negro troops stationed at Memphis took an oath on their knees, in the presence of Major-General Hurlbut and other officers of our army, to avenge Fort Pillow, and that they would show your troops no quarter." I believe that it is true that the colored troops did take such an oath, but not in the presence of General Hurlbut. From what I can learn, this act of theirs was not influenced by any white officer, but was the result of their own sense of what was due to themselves and their fellows, who had been mercilessly slaughtered. I have no doubt that they went into the field as you allege, in the full belief that they would be murdered in case they fell into your hands. The affair of Fort Pillow fully justified that belief. I am not aware as to what they proclaimed on their late march, and it may be as you say, that they declared that no quarter would be given to any of your men that might fall into their hands. Your declaration that you have conducted the war on all occasions on civilized principles cannot be accepted, but I receive with satisfaction the intimation in your letter that the recent slaughter of colored troops at the battle of Tishomingo Creek resulted rather from the desperation with which they fought than a predetermined intention to give them no quarter. You must have learned by this time that the attempt to intimidate the colored troops by indiscriminate slaughter has signally failed, and that instead of a feeling of terror you have aroused a spirit of courage and desperation that will not down at your bidding.
Does any of this have to do with religion. I'm thinking of Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis or any number of examples from my own period (European Middle Ages). The tendency to cast something as holy war means that you talk in zero-sum equations, where good is fighting evil and the stakes are cosmic in scope. God is on 1 side and the devil the other. This leads to slaughter.
In the midst of battle it is very difficult not to shoot the man who was just trying to kill you. There is simply too much adrenaline, fear, and a rush of feelings that I can't describe, even though I have been in small unit, close quarters combat. There are some extraneous factors effecting the reaction, but, in my experience, they proved to be minimal. It is all too personal. Fear, rage, survival, and vengeance all coalesce
at the same time, I guess. A number of posters have mentioned this particular aspect of combat. The moment of surrender is very frightening and requires an unusual amount of self-discipline for the soldier who deals with the soldier surrendering. No one can predict, or learn that kind of control. More often than not, it is a split second decision driven by the immmediate environment, I think.
Regarding the issue of race in WW2, carpet bombing of civilian targets in Europe and Japan was accepted as an essential strategy. However, there is no doubt that the Japanese soldiers were treated far worse then German POW's. Ultimately, it all breaks down into a sickness. Carpet bombing civilian targets is fine, but a rifleman shooting a civilian on the ground is a crime. I think I have heard every rational for the differentiation. The folks who try to do that have their head so far up their ass, they can see their tongue wagging through the light between their yakking lips.
I think this is germane to the topic.
I'm a little concerned about those who would hold the black soldiers blameless or find nothing to condemn. I think their behavior is to be condemned and so is that of Forrest at Fort Pillow, just as someone who kills in passion or emotional reaction should be convicted alongside a murderer in cold blood. It's just that the second should be punished more than the first.
The black soldiers had good reason to want to wreak furious vengeance. That is undeniable, but it is not a pass on morality. After they slaughtered, would a Confederate who just saw his brother gutted while begging to surrender have reason to wreak vengeance on every future black soldier? Where does it stop?
I think it stops when we consistently condemn those who substitute their own passion for vengeance for a rule of law, including the rules of the law of war. To claim that because in war people often act savagely means there should be no condemnation for acting savagely is the argument of those upset Lt. Calley was tried for My Lai.
How severe the condemnation should be, how great the punishment can be fitted to circumstances. But to refuse to condemn soldiers who massacre the helpless, or to sanction their actions, seems to be going in the wrong direction.
I appreciate TNC, your point the atrocities require context, and that there's no report on the Union side of a massacre like Fort Pillow. I also appreciate your point that brutality begets brutality. That may make the second brutality understandable. But it is still brutality.
A little more coherency would help, here.
Regarding the issue of race in WW2, carpet bombing of civilian targets in Europe and Japan was accepted as an essential strategy.
"Carpet Bombing," the Wikipedia entry notwithstanding, is not correctly used to refer to the bombing of cities during World War II. The Germans and Japanese in the 1930s first came up with the concept of "Terror Bombing," which is the unannounced bombing civilian centers to demoralize the enemy and break down civil order. The Japanese practiced it in China, the Germans in Spain, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The British retaliated with small strikes against German cities in the early part of World War II. However, their precision bombing campaign against military and industrial targets, which was the only means they had of hurting the Germans and supporting their allies, the Soviets, during the crisis years of 1941 and 1942, failed. They could only get past German air defenses at night, so they came up with what they called "Area Bombing," which was deliberately intended to "de-house" the inhabitants of large cities, cripple industrial production, and demoralize the population. In theory, since the Germans had warning systems, this wasn't exactly "Terror Bombing," but if you started a firestorm, it was pretty much the same thing.
"Carpet Bombing" or "Saturation Bombing" was the concentration of a lot of bombs in a small area--a square mile or so--to completely eradicate all military opposition. It was used in the Battle of Normandy, in areas that were, in theory, on the front lines and cleared of civilians, with mixed results.
In the post-war world, these concepts have been blurred, to the detriment of American's moral and political standing in the world. Carpet bombing around civilians kills people needlessly, brutalizes the people doing the bombing, and is most often politically stupid.
However, there is no doubt that the Japanese soldiers were treated far worse then German POW's.
Unclear here whether you are talking about Japanese POWs and German POWs, or Japanese soldiers surrendering and German soldiers surrendering. The Japanese soldier was indoctrinated to fight to the death and try to kill people attempting to take him prisoner. He was also taught that other nation's soldiers who surrendered were contemptible creatures who should be tortured, brutalized, or murdered as a way of showing his racial superiority. The two situations aren't really comparable. Taking a Japanese soldier or sailor prisoner required deliberate effort. It would be a breach of standard Allied discipline to kill or molest a helpless prisoner, but, given the different views of surrender held by the Germans and the Japanese, it shouldn't surprise anyone that petty brutality was more common among Allied solders in the Pacific theater.
As an addenda, the Waffen SS tended to brutalize or murder prisoners more than German regulars, and also were more likely to try to fight to the death and take someone with them. Consequently, they had a low survival rate when they did try to surrender to veteran Allied soldiers.
Ultimately, it all breaks down into a sickness. Carpet bombing civilian targets is fine, but a rifleman shooting a civilian on the ground is a crime. I think I have heard every rational for the differentiation.
I dunno that I'd call it a sickness, and not that many people were "bombed" during the Civil War, but I agree with the sentiment.
One thing to note, tactically -- 'no quarter' in the Pacific was a behavior with asymmetric result, specifically one that favored the Japanese. (Much as, it might be noted, it tended to favor the Soviets as they defended against German attack.)
As you mention, the Japanese soldier was indoctrinated to fight to the death... but American behavior toward the Japanese simply reinforced that indoctrination, helping the Japanese military maintain the discipline it had sought in the first place.
David Grossman's On Killing is of significant interest, by the way.
One of the creepier documents I've read from the Kansas-Missouri border war was a journal entry by either Frank or Jesse James. They were part of a group of raiders who ambushed a company of mounted Union militia. After killing most of them on the initial battle site, they tracked the survivors down and finished them all off, wounded, attempting to surrender, etc. Then the boys went home for a "nice Sunday dinner."
They had issues, Frank and Jesse did. Kept on fighting the war for years after the final surrender, robbing banks and trains. They made the mistake, in 1876, of leaving friendly territory to rob a bank way up in Northfield, Minnesota, because owned by a former Union civil war general. A lot of the townsmen were Union army veterans and a terrific gun battle erupted. Six of the eight gang members were shot down in town or hunted down trying to escape. The locals were disciplined enough to take prisoners and give them due process.
:-)
"The locals" also wait for the walk-signal with nary a car in sight. In the middle of December.
In a way not surprising.
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling." - Abraham Lincoln
I think these examples make that so clear - what the hell is a war crime if you believe in slavery
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt027.html
Yes. But not Berlin. And the German-American population of the East Coast wasn't rounded up, even though u-boats were operating within sight of NYC. And most US propaganda didn't target Germans as a race . . . And no Americans sent their girlfriends German skulls as souvenirs.
The distinction here is between whether racism affected the behavior of Allied troops fighting the Japanese in World War II or was it the determining factor in how they were treated? The first statement is obviously true. The second is almost certainly not true. The Japanese set their own rules on treatment of prisoners and surrender. The Western Allies reacted, to some degree, by treating Japanese dead and wounded more callously than they did German and Italian dead.
And German troops who fell into US custody were sent to plow fields and get fat in Iowa.
Japanese troops who "fell into US custody" were treated similarly.
I'm not sure if we are on the same topic here because you keep trying to equate two radically different situations.
For the most part, German and Italian soldiers in World War II followed Western cultural conventions as regards surrender and capture. Surrendering was dangerous for them, but no more so than for soldiers of any other European country in that war. Millions of them surrendered and recieved reasonably decent treatment in prisoner of war camps.
Fanatical German troops in Sicily and Italy occasionally tried the "white flag" trick to lure American and British soldiers into the open to be captured or ambushed. Germans who did this had very little chance of surviving a surrender attempt afterward. Likewise, the Waffen SS and other fanatical German soldiers who were known to fight to the death or to abuse and murder prisoners had a good chance of being killed when captured.
The Japanese made fanatical resistance, abuse, and murder the standard practice for their entire army. For the most part, they would not surrender at all, and for this reason only a few thousand were received as prisoners. Once they were in American hands and away from the danger zone of the front line, Americans found them quite likable and chatty. They were good intelligence sources, as they hadn't been trained to handle even the most casual interrogation process.
African-American soldiers in the Civil War fought under the morally stressful position of American and Commonwealth soldiers fighting the most fanatical German soldiers in Europe in World War II. They knew the enemy did not take prisoners, or might murder them out of hand. Any other factors affecting their behavior tend to be blurred by this stress factor.