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Fact One: Most of the violence committed by the Union army during the march to the sea (which is MUCH less than fans of Southern "heritage" would have you believe) were committed by stragglers: Union soliders who had separated from their units to forage and/or plunder on their own accord, without order or supervision by their commanding officers. Of these men, a large percentage were bounty jumpers and criminals: surprise, surprise, both regions had bad folks in them! Contrast that with the massacre at Fort Pillow, in which Confederate soliders under the direct observation of their commading officers, massacred surrendering black troops and their white comrades. Or the second sack of Lawrence, Kansas (the first occuring during the pre-Civil War "bleeding" Kansas violence) in which outlaws under the command of William Quantrill (who held the rank of Colonel in the Confederate Army) massacred over one hundred civilians.
Fact Two: When Lee invaded the North, his army, in essence, kidnapped every black man and women it came across to take back to slavery, many of whom had been born free and were legally free people. Sherman never did anything that atrocious in all his time of "ravaging" the south.
Fact Three: a number of "war crimes" pinned on Sherman were actually the work of fleeing confederates, including the burning of Columbus, South Carolina which, to this day, is believed to have been started by Sherman's army by ignorant (but "heritage-filled") Southerners, but was actually started by Southerners seeking to deny Union control of Columbus's goods.
Fuck the Confederacy. I know it's hard to accept that your forfather fought for a corrupt cause, but remember: you had nothing to do with it.
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