The Union's Total War Policy

Starving and Terrorizing Southern Citizens

From the Brady War Collection

Here brothers fought for their principles

Here heroes died to save their country

And a united people will forever cherish

The precious legacy of their noble manhood.

~From the Pennsylvania Monument at Vicksburg

The political storm that began in the early 1830’s, had been gaining strength year by year, steadily increasing the sectional friction between the North and the South. Constitutional issues, slavery, foreign trade, westward expansion, and inequitable taxes were many of the items of contention threatening to divide the young nation of States. With the election of Lincoln as President, the Southern states immediately began to consider secession. When the war finally broke in 1861, belief and political ideals had become so firm they transcended family ties and bonds of friendship—brother against brother.

To imagine the horrors, the misery, and agony the noncombatant people of the South endured during the Civil War, to many, is unfathomable today, that something like war could take place to the magnitude it did, one hundred and sixty years ago. As a genealogist, and an amateur historian of Southern history, I can’t even begin to write about the many families who’ve I researched who lost ancestors when the Union forces ravaged the South. Women and children killed when their husbands and fathers laid dead on battlefields hundreds of miles away, only to be buried in mass graves.

It's also a story of the human toil and machinery that produced more than four million small arms for the Union Army and stamped copper over one billion percussion caps for these weapons during the four years of war. Inside the Confederacy, it is a story of experiments with new weapons—the submarine, iron clad rams, torpedoes, and landmines, in an attempt to overcome the North’s numerical superiority.

The first thing I generally hear from people who only learned what the history books taught them in school, including myself, is that the South were traitors. I never thought of the South as traitors, but I never understood the reasons why the South wanted to secede either. It is said, “Wisdom comes with age,” which is also a debatable statement. But, avid learners will milk every experience for all the insight they can gain from learning something new, this is what I’ve done learning about the South, especially living in South Carolina, the hot seat for contention among many people, who are closed minded to the real reasons why eleven states felt it was economically important to secede from the growing greed of the Union on the taxes it imposed on Southern agriculture.

More recently, the controversy about Florida banning BLM and Pride flags on any state property has gotten more backlash than taking down the Southern Cross, aka The Confederate Battle Flag. Banter between strangers saying they are sick of the Confederate flag issue. Our late Governor Nikki Haley was quick to banish the flag from the capital in Columbia, and officials in several counties demand its removal off private property. This tells me, the lack of knowledge one has about the true issues of the War for Independence is limited at best. The memorials of the men who fought bravely for something they believed in taken down and hidden away, if not destroyed, were demanded by young unschooled college students, because they believe these monuments represents oppression and slavery. Once again, a lack of knowledge. This naivety has spread just as the media spews its propaganda today without divulging into facts and documented historical proof.

From the Brady War Collection

The Union’s Total War Policy

The Beginning: Staving and Terrorizing Citizens

According to Romans 13, governments are ordained by God for the public good. Among the benefits of a just government we surmise from the Commandments are the protection of life, property, and responsible freedom. Governments are given the power of the sword to enforce its ordained purposes are sustained. That sword may be used to enforce its ordained purposes within the limits of its geographical sovereignty or to defend itself and its people from foreign intrusion or harassment. War is thus sometimes necessary to maintain peace, safety, justice, and liberty. Categorical pacifism is unbiblical, unrealistic, and unloving.

The concepts of Just War Doctrine were developed principally by the Christian churches on biblical grounds, but many aspects of Christian Germanic and Celtic warrior societies. There are several criteria for a just war, but the most essential is that it must be for a just cause. That would include protecting, restoring, or recovering a nation’s territorial integrity, the identity of its people, and its legitimate government, as well as the lives, properties, and freedoms of its citizens. In actual practice the concept of Just War is sometimes complex on its fringes. Certainly, state sponsored terrorism is an unjust war, and defensive and even preemptive measures against state sponsored terrorism would be just.

The Christian concept of war requires not only a just cause but also just conduct and just means in its prosecution. A principal requirement of just conduct is that military action must discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Targeting innocent civilians or their private property is an unjust means of warfare. Just conduct requires that noncombatants, prisoners of war, and wounded be treated humanely. The food supplies, shelter, clothing, medical supplies, harmless personal properties, and peaceful means of livelihood of noncombatants should always be respected. Any military means and action must be proportionate to the threat. Minor incidents do not justify massive retaliation.

For several centuries before the U.S. Civil War, Western nations adhered closely to the Christian concept of just conduct in war, if not always just cause. Confederate forces, with only a few exceptions, conducted military operations according to the Western and Christian tradition of just conduct and means. Union forces, however, soon began a systematic escalation to a Total War concept. Total War differs from the Christian concept of limited war in its erosion of the distinction between combatants and noncombatants. Total War is war on an entire society, often escalating by degree according to military of political expediency or desire for vengeance on a demonized enemy. Total War pursues victory and dominance by whatever means without regard to moral or humanitarian considerations.

Many people familiar with the Bible may recall that God ordered on several occasions the destruction of entire tribes. But such decrees belong to an all-wise and perfectly just God alone and most emphatically not to human leaders. Total War decreed and practiced by human leaders finds no sanction in the Bible.

General William T. Sherman, perhaps the most famous practitioner of Total War, summed up the Total War philosophy that prevailed in Washington:

“This war differs from other wars, in this particular; we are not fighting armies but a hostile people and must make the old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”

Southern civilians, especially Southern women, were adamantly unsympathetic to Northern invasion and occupation of the South. Sherman who believed that “fear is the beginning of wisdom,” thought it very important to humble the South and put a fear and dread of Union might and power in their hearts. In June of 1864 he wrote to the like-minded Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that:

“There is a class of people, men women, children, who must be killed or banished before you and hope for peace and order.”

From the Brady War Collection

TOTAL WAR POLICY IN MISSOURI

Some of the first indications of Union leanings towards a Total War philosophy occurred in Missouri. Most of the Missouri’s population was of Southern origin and sympathy. One of the thirteen stars in the Southern Cross honors Missouri. Union forces quickly occupied Missouri before secessionist sentiment could be marshaled in the state legislature. Pro-secessionist Governor Claiborne Jackson and former Governor Sterling Price

In S left to form the Missouri State Guard and join the Confederate forces in Arkansas. Other Southern sympathizers engaged in partisan warfare in Missouri. These Confederate partisans were generally treated as outlaws by Union officials. This outlaw status and mistreatment of their families and other Missouri civilians by Federal troops spawned the bloody vengeance raids of William Quantrill and William Anderson. This extended into the Reconstruction era with the exploits of the James and Younger brothers.

More than one thousand military engagements took place in Missouri during the Civil War. Missouri was the scene of the most drastic and repressive military action directed against civilians in U.S. history. The Palmyra Massacre of October 1862 is only one of many of these incidents.

From the Brady War Collection

THE PALMYRA MASSACRE

In September of 1862 Col. Joseph Porter, commanding a Missouri Confederate calvary unit, moved into Northeastern Missouri to recruit volunteers and to achieve some limited military objectives. On September 12^th Porter raided Palmyra, rescuing 45 Confederate prisoners and capturing among other, Col. Andrew Allsman. A recently retired Union calvary leader in his sixties, Allsman had been assisting the Union Provost Marshall in Palmyra in identifying Southern sympathizers. Porter apparently released Allsman within a few days, but Allsman disappeared on the road back to Palmyra. On October 8^th, suspecting foul play against a valuable Unionist informant, the Union commander in the area, Col. John McNeil, acting through Provost Marshall William Strachan, posted a notice to Col Porter that if Allsman was not returned safely by October 18^th, ten of the several dozen Southern sympathizers then held in Palmyra and Hannibal jails would be selected for execution on that day. McNeil’s action was probably influences by his instructions from Brigadier General J.W. Schofield on June 12^th not to rest “until you have exterminated the rascals’ (Southern partisans).

No one knew if Col. Porter was still in Missouri, and by the 17^th no one had come forth with any news of the missing Unionist informant. Though many doubted that such an order would be carried out, ten men were selected that evening to die by firing squad at 1:00 p.m. the next day. One of these, Willis Baker, was suspected of murdering a Union neighbor. Another, Captain Thomas Sidener, who soon to be married to a local girl, was a captured Confederate calvary officer. According to the local Palmyra newspaper, The Missouri Courier, except for their Southern sympathies, the crimes of the other eight were unknown. Later that night at the Palmyra jail, Rev. James Green prepared them to meet their maker on the next day. On the next morning, according to Judge Henry Clay Dean and Cole Younger, the young wife of William Humphrey, the mother of several small children, went to Col. McNeil to plead for her husband’s life. When he cursed her, she fled to Provost Marshall Strachan to persuade him to intercede. Strachan sais it could be done for $300, and so through the kindness of two gentlemen she quickly raised the money. But when she returned, Strachan also demanded that she submit to his lustful desires. Mrs. Humphrey collapsed before him, and she was found later in a state of physical exhaustion and mental incoherence. Strachan then went to jail and demanded that a substitute replace Humphrey. At first, Humphrey adamantly refused to be replaced but reminded that he was the sole provider to his young family by a nineteen-year-old orphan, Hiram Smith, at last agreed to the change. And so it was that courageous young Hiram Smith took Humphrey’s place among the condemned men.

Three wagons carrying the ten condemned men and their coffins left the jail shortly before 11:00 a.m. and proceeded to the fairgrounds about a half mile east of town. Captain Sidener was wearing the suit he had purchased for his wedding. At the fairgrounds a small military band played. Then the prisoners knelt in prayer and were briefly attended by Rev. R.M. Rhoades. Provost Marshall Strachan shook their hands, and they were seated in their coffins. They were offered blindfolds, but only a few took them. Facing them were 30 riflemen from the 2^nd Missouri Militia. On each side were reserves. Only a few of the condemned men seemed to show any sign of fear. At the command to fire the volleys did not occur simultaneously. Three of the prisoners including Captain Sidener were killed instantly. Six wounded lay writhing and moaning on the ground, one was not hit at all. The reserves dispatched the six wounded men and finally the seventh with pistol shots to the head. This ghastly series of executions took fifteen minutes.

The pro-Union Missouri Courier justified the execution of the ten Southern sympathizers, who had not received the benefit of formal charges, hearing, or trial, with these words:

“It seems hard that ten men should die for one. Under ordinary circumstances you would hardly be justified. But severe diseases demand severe remedies. The safety of the people is the supreme law. It overrules all other considerations. The madness of rebellion has been so deep seated that ordinary methods of cure are inadequate. To take life for life would be little intimidation to men seeking the hearts blood of an obnoxious enemy. They would well afford to make exchanges under many circumstances. It is only by striking the deepest terror in them, causing them to respect the lives of loyal men that they can be taught to observe the obligation of humanity and of law.”

The Missouri Courier’s appalling self-righteous philosophy was typical of Radical Republicans and radical abolitionists of that era. It does not stem from any legitimate morality and expedient pragmatism of secular humanism. This was shameless self-justifying brutality masquerading as patriotism. But it was not patriotism. It was totalitarian statism.

To their credit, many other Northern newspapers including the then conservative New York Times were outraged. The bad publicity from the Palmyra executions was discussed in at least two of Lincoln’s Cabinet meetings. Less than six weeks later, after attempting to suppress further news and outcry, President Lincoln promotes Colonel McNeil to the rank of Brigadier General. A fellow Union officer brought charges against Provost Marshall William Strachan, finally resulting in his conviction in 1864. However, Union General William Rosecrans overturned the conviction.

Palmyra was not the only demonstration of Total War philosophy in Missouri. Two similar mass executions involving a total of 26 Confederate POW’s and civilians occurred in the northeastern Missouri towns of Kirksville in August and Macon in September. Under Union Generals Ewing and Schofield, more than four-fifths of the families of three western Missouri counties were forced from their homes and lands and made to flee the state because of their sympathy and aid to Confederate partisans. Burning and pillaging of the homes and farms of Southern families elsewhere in Missouri were commonplace. Torture by strangulation became a standard method for forcing civilians to reveal the location of money and valuables or for deriving information on Confederate partisans. The stepfather of Jesse and Frank James was strangled to the point of brain damage.

Many courageous Union officers, including General George B. McClellan, opposed the Lincoln administration’s Total War policies, but were unable to prevail in Congress. In 1907 the people of Palmyra, Missouri, erected a monument honoring their ten Southern patriots.

From the Brady War Collection

DEVELOPMENT OF UNION TOTAL WAR POLICY

Before the arrogant and bombastic Major General John Pope was summoned by President Lincoln to command a combination of reorganized forces called “the Army of Virginia,” in June of 1862, he had distinguished himself as a ruthless opponent of Confederate partisans in Missouri and as an aggressive commander in Mississippi. He encouraged his troops to plunder civilian food sources, burn homes in any area of Confederate resistance, hang civilians suspected of aiding Confederate forces, and shoot civilians in reprisal for Confederate guerilla attacks. He continued his severe philosophy of war in Virginia, drawing the resolute enmity of Confederate Generals Lee and Jackson. But during this rise to fame and favor with Lincoln, he received much praise in the Northern press until his ignominious defeat in September 1862 at the hands of Jackson and Longstreet at Second Manassas. Pope’s praise in the Northen press prior to Second Manassas for his ruthless effective Total War tactics was noted by other Union officers of similar tactical inclinations. One of these was the Russian émigré, Col. Ivan (John) Turchin.

In the spring of 1862, the Army of Ohio under Union Major General Don Carlos Buell was occupying Kentucky and Tennessee and raiding into North Alabama. In April, Huntsville, Alabama, was occupied by Col. Turchin, Commander of the 19^th Illinois and temporarily in command of the 8^th Brigade, consisting of Illinois and Ohio regiments. He quickly gained the reputation in North Alabama as the “Robber” Colonel for his rampant pillaging and indignities of all kinds heaped upon its citizens. His thievery and violence against civilians had been a matter of official record since July of 1861.

From the Brady War Collection

THE RAPE OF ATHENS, ALABAMA

In the middle of April, the 18^th Ohio under Turchin’s command occupied Athens, Alabama, a prosperous town of about 1,200 people. On May 1^st, however, they were driven out by a combined regular and partisan Confederate calvary force of only 112 men and retreated back to Huntsville. The Confederate Calvary was greeted with cheers and waving handkerchiefs by the citizens in the streets. Reports indicate that some Athens civilians may have fired on the Union troops from their homes as they left. The Confederate forces, however, quickly pulled out of town.

The next morning Turchin marched into Athens unopposed with at least three regiment of his brigade. The townspeople, including the ladies, turned their backs on him as he rode into town. Turchin was furious with this gesture of impertinence and told his troops he would close his eye for a few hours while they took pleasure in looting the town and terrorizing its citizens. He left them to their depredations for the rest of the day. At least some of Turchin’s troops stayed a few weeks.

Later testimony indicated that numerous homes, offices, and stores were pillaged. Money, jewelry, dishware, silver, watches, clothes, shoes, medical supplies, medical instruments, and anything else of value were stolen. Furniture, carpets, artwork, and fixtures were destroyed. Books and especially Bibles were viciously destroyed. Numerous testimonials indicated that the soldier’s language to women was rude, insulting, threatening, and vulgar. One white woman, a pregnant wife of a Confederate cavalryman, was singled out and gang-raped, shortly thereafter dying from a miscarriage. Several black servant girls were raped, and several more had to fend off attempted rapes. The commander made his headquarters in the home of a prominent citizen and refused to let his sick daughter receive any medical treatment. She subsequently died. Shots were fired into the homes and terror reigned. Some of the troop billeted themselves into the slave quarters on a nearby plantation for weeks, debauching the females. They roamed with the males over the surrounding country, plundering and pillaging.

Some Union officers of integrity among Turchin’s troops, however, reported this to his Division Commander, Major General O.M. Mitchell. Mitchell immediately rebuked Turchin and notified General Buell and Secretary of War Stanton. After some delay on the part of Stanton, General Buell, a very effective officer of high integrity who was especially concerned that his soldiers conduct themselves with honor, stepped in and relieved Turchin of command, insisting on his court-martial.

Most of the information in the previous paragraphs was taken from the actual court-martial proceedings of August 1862. Brigadier General James A. Garfield, a future President of the United States, presided over the court-martial, Turchin and one of his regimental commanders, Col. Gazlay, were found guilty and dismissed from the Army. Charges against several other officers were dropped on proof they were only acting on Turchin’s orders. General Buell approved and signed the verdict.

The proceedings of Turchin’s court-martial received considerable national attention and became the focus of a debate on the prosecution and conduct of the war. The Chicago newspapers bitterly condemned Buell for Turchin’s dismissal and court-martial. Their howl for harsh policies including devastation and plundering by the Union armies was picked up by many more papers. The Radical Republicans in Congress were especially pushing for a more vigorous and punishing war policy.

From the Brady War Collection

Turchin’s wife, evidently a very formidable woman in many regards, personally went to Lincoln and persuaded him that not only should Turchin be reinstated, but that he should also be promoted to Brigadier General. Hearing this, General Buell protested to Secretary of War Stanton that:

“If as I hear, the promotion of Colonel Turchin is contemplated I feel it is my duty to inform you that he is entirely unfit for it. I placed him in command of a brigade, and now find it necessary to relieve him from it in consequence of his utter failure to enforce discipline and render it efficient.”

But within a few days of the court-martial, President Lincoln reinstated Turchin and promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General. A few months later Lincoln would make a similar promotion. In November Lincoln promoted Col John McNeil, one of the senior officers responsible for the October 1862 Palmyra Massacre in Missouri, to Brigadier General. It was obvious that Total War policy had many advocates in Washington.

Brigadier General Turchin and his wife returned to their home in Chicago to large cheering crowds. He was presented a sword, and a band played “Lo, the Conquering Hero Comes.” On August 30, General Buell was informed that a large part of Athens, Alabama, had been burned by Union troops passing through town.

Matthew Brady Official Photographer for the Civil War

Rare copy of the History of the Civil Warillustrated and photographed by Matthew Brady

Recommended reading for the Union Total War Policies:

• A City Laid Waste: The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia: by William Gilmore Simms 2005

• War Crimes Against Southern Citizens: by Walter Bryan Cisco 2007

• Facts and Falsehood Concerning the War on the South: by George Edmond 1904

• Facts the Historians Leave Out: by John S. Tilley 1951. This is very short book is an excellent summary of the causes and conduct of war.