Sherman hauled off plenty, but he did leave this verb

“Writing her reminiscences, a North Carolina woman affectionately recalled her cousin Ann, who had lived through the war, then in her later years had become a garrulous terror to the unwary. Having once survived a visit by Yankee bummers, the old woman thereafter, to her dying day, was ‘never better entertained than when set to Shermanize a stranger.’ ”

— From “The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans” by Charles Royster (2011)

Not surprisingly the verb “Shermanize” seems to have originated in Atlanta, where a century or so later a Confederate-themed restaurant would prepare steaks “Shermanized (burned to a crisp), Lincolnized (warm, red heart), and Stonewalled (rare).”

 

How Carolinas differed, as seen by Sherman’s army

On this day in 1865: George W. Nichols, a major in Sherman’s army, writing in his journal in Laurel Hill, N.C.:

“The line which divides South and North Carolina was passed by the army this morning. . . . The real difference between the two regions lies in the fact that the plantation owners [in North Carolina] work with their own hands, and do not think they degrade themselves thereby. For the first time since we bade farewell to salt water I have to-day seen an attempt to manure land. The army has passed through thirteen miles or more of splendidly-managed farms; the corn and cotton fields are nicely plowed and farrowed; the fences are in capital order; the barns are well-built; the dwelling houses are clean, and there is that air of thrift which shows that the owner takes a personal interest in the management of affairs.”

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State spared worst punishment by Sherman’s troops

” ‘The army burned everything it came near in the State of South Carolina,’ Major [James] Connolly concurred, ‘not under orders, but in spite of orders…. Our track through the State is a desert waste.’

“But, Connolly added, ‘Since entering North Carolina the wanton destruction has stopped.’ It was true…. North Carolina was not a part of the Deep South, was known to harbor significant Unionist sentiment, and had been one of the last states to secede [the last, in fact]….

“The abrupt cessation of the maelstrom that engulfed South Carolina formed one of the strongest proofs of the sense of discriminating righteousness that animated the Federal rank and file. For some it had an Old Testament flavor to it….”

— From “The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865” by Mark Grimsley (1997)

 

‘Never mind — if it was bad, Sherman did it!’

“According to William Surface of the Museum of the Cape Fear in Fayetteville, North Carolina, ‘It became a badge of honor for some Southerners to have an ancestor whose house was burned by Sherman’s troops.’

“Betty McCain, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, exemplified this mindset while testifying [in 1994] before the North Carolina Historical Commission in opposition to a proposed memorial to Sherman’s troops at Bentonville Battleground.

“She declared that her foremother fought off Sherman’s men with a broom three different times, when they tried to burn down her house near Wilmington. With no McCain ancestors to stop them, Sherman’s men did burn the warehouses in Wilmington, McCain claimed, as part of their swath of destruction across the state.

“Apparently McCain did not know that Confederates set the Wilmington warehouses ablaze before pulling out of the town, to deny materiel to the Union. Nor did she know that Sherman’s men never came within a hundred miles of Wilmington! Never mind — if it happened in North Carolina and was bad, Sherman did it !”

— From “Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong” by James W. Loewen (2007)

 

Ross McElwee Fan Club meets here

Ross McElwee‘s ‘Sherman’s March’ forever altered my writing life. By being as self-reflexive as it is, a heat-seeking missile destroying whatever it touches, the film becomes a thoroughgoing exploration of the interconnections between desire, filmmaking, nuclear weaponry and war, rather than being about only General Sherman….

“…  The best nonfiction jumps the tracks, using its ‘subject’ as a Trojan horse to get at richer material than the writer originally intended. McElwee’s ‘Bright Leaves’ pretends to be about his conflicted relation to his family’s tobacco farm, whereas it’s really about the way in which we all will do anything — make a movie, smoke cigarettes, collect film stills, build a birdhouse, hold a lifelong torch for someone, find religion — to try to get beyond ourselves.”

— From “How Literature Saved My Life” by David Shields (2013)

Shields, whose latest has drawn reviews both appreciative and not so, may be an even bigger fan of the Charlotte-born McElwee than I am.  (“A heat-seeking missile destroying whatever it touches”? — can’t top that.)

 

N.C. spared ‘wanton’ destruction by Sherman’s troops

“The ferocity with which Union foragers collected provisions in South Carolina diminished once they crossed into North Carolina. ‘The army burned everything it came near in the State of South Carolina,’ Maj. James Connolly wrote to his wife. ‘The men “had it in” for the State and they took it out in their own way…. Since entering North Carolina the wanton destruction has stopped.’

“If the ‘wanton destruction’ ended, the regular form of it did not. Charles Jackson Paine wrote to his father from Raleigh in April, ‘We take of course everything eatable from the inhabitants…. The country is cleaned out behind us — & it will be hard work for the people to live till fall.'”

— From “War Upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes During the American Civil War” by Lisa M. Brady (2012)

 

‘Flames licking up tall trunks was striking and beautiful’

“For some of Sherman’s men, like Daniel Oakey, scenes of burning forests verged on the sublime. Describing the army’s advance into ‘the wild regions of North Carolina,’ he wrote,

” ‘The resin pits were on fire, and great columns of black smoke rose high into the air, spreading and mingling together in gray clouds, and suggesting the roof and pillars of a vast temple. All traces of habitation were left behind, as we marched into the grand forest with its beautiful carpet of pine-needles….

” ‘As night came on, we found that the resinous sap in the cavities cut in the trees to receive it had been lighted by “bummers” in our advance. The effect of these peculiar watch-fires on every side, several feet above the ground, with flames licking their way up the tall trunks, was…  striking and beautiful.’

“Despite the scene’s allure, however, Oakey concluded that the ‘wanton’ destruction was ‘sad to see’….”

— From “War Upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes During the American Civil War” by Lisa M. Brady (2012)

 

Sherman’s army: ‘ragged, bareheaded, shoeless, brave, jolly’

On this day in 1865: George W. Nichols, a major in Sherman’s army, writes in his journal in Goldsboro:

“Our army [needs] not only to be reclothed, but to gain the repose it needs. Mind, as well as body, requires rest after the fatigues of rapid campaigns like these. These ragged, bareheaded, shoeless, brave, jolly fellows of Sherman’s legions, too, want covering for their naked limbs.”