Rebs and Indians

Harry Stout’s Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War is a chilling book, but one of the most chilling moments comes at the end, in a quotation of a letter from General Philip Sheridan to Sherman in 1873: “In taking the offensive [against Indians] I have to select that season when I can catch the fiends; and, if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack. During the war did any on e hesitate to attack a village or town occupied by the enemy because women or children were within its limits? Did we cease to throw shells into Vicksburg or Atlanta because women and children were there?”

Sherman’s own views were expressed in a response to an earlier massacre: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.”