He traveled before he shot...the basket is disallowed.
A couple of points:
First, in these discussions about the origins of the Civil War you yankee boys always insist that the South fought to defend the institution of slavery, and totally reject any arguments that the South went to war to preserve "states rights." On that argument rests the northern assertion that their war was just, while the South's war was cruel and morally repugnant. While what Sherman is referring to when he mentions the South's "bad cause" may be open to interpretation, there can be no doubt that he considered it a morally reprehensible reason to go to war; a "crime against civilization."
Secondly, you've neatly side-stepped my original reference to Sherman's genocidal war against the Indians, which was the focal point of my original argument. What was that, if not a "crime against civilization" and a "bad cause"? If public opinion had not begun to turn against the government's "Indian Policy," who knows to what conclusion Sherman might have pushed that policy.
Sherman was no saint. Despised in the South as the "Attilla of the West", even some of his peers were appalled at the tactics he used in his drive through Georgia to the sea. His scorched-earth policies brought suffering to both black and white alike.
So, again, I assert that he was a hypocrite.
