In recent years, I have heard so much from many left leaning revisionist who constantly argue the morality of the atomic bombings of Japan and the Dresden boming of Germany. Yet, I have heard very little from those groups on the issue of the Burning of Atlanta and the devestation that was recked on the South during the American Civil war.

First of all let me make one thing clear. I am a Southerner who feels that slavery was the worst of all evils and should never have been allowed to fester anywhere in the world. Having said that I must also add that I know enough about American history, to know that while Lincoln was sending many brave union soldiers South to fight what he later adopted as a war to end slavery, forever. He was also sending troops west to kill Native Americans and steal their lands. So in my opion his and the Union's moral justifaction was either a clever and successful attempt at political spin or downright hypocritical.

I will not debate the issue of States Rights but more or less the morality of the Union's conduct in waging America's bloodest war.

In his March to the Sea, Sherman's army laid waste to large swafts of land between Tennessee and North Carolina, with Atlanta being in the middle. History has proven in later cases, that had the Burning of Atlanta taken place in a more modern time, Lincoln and many of his Generals would have been put on trial for crimes against humanity.

It must be remembered that the United States Government spent very little to help the south recover, politicaly and economicly while the same United States governmemt would later spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding Germany, Japan and western Europe after the second world wars.  As a more recent example America has spent $87 billion rebuilding Iraq alone in the aftermath of the last Iraqi war.

The South, on the other hand, was left to starve and didn't fully recover for another hundred years. Many states of the South are still concidered to be among the poorest in the nation.

Whether due to the surface nature of the struggle, (slavery) or just simply an indiffernt biggotry towards the souths traditional way of life. (Bible Belt.) This has gone unnoticed by many historians and the educated elite in America and around the world.

In terms of numbers killed Sherman's march to the sea in no way compares to the Allied bombing campaign of world war 2, though I see both as necessarry.

Lincoln's Indian policy was much softer than any president before or after up until the 20th century, during the Santee uprising in Minnesota he pardoned 300 members of the Santee.

So would Hap Arnold and the entire commanding staff of the US Army Air Corp of the second world war.

Little to rebuid?  First it was not entirely accepted to spend Federal money on state projects.  Second the South was backwards and impoverished before the war, sure there may have been some wealthy plantation owners but the doesn't include the mass of southern society.  If anything the south would be more impoverished and backwards had the war not occurred.  It was the civil war that broke the planter class's stranglehold on southern society bringing northern investment and public schooling to usher dixie into the industrial age.  Even if Reconstruction did not measure up to the Marshal Plan do not make the mistake of dissmissing the considerable Northern financial investment into the south. 

If anything the reason for the impoverished nature of the south is because of their state government's refusal to invest sufficient public money into their own public infrastructures.