Just finished reading "War Crimes Against Southern Civilians" by Walter Brian Cisco.
Here is a book to make your blood boil. While other books on the Late Unpleasantness have touched on such incidences this book is a compilation of numerous affronts and cites their origins. While all wars see soldiers acting less than chivalrously, they seldom seem to have the approval, tacit or otherwise, of their leadership. The author points out the political orders and then military general orders that permitted atrocities of every sort to be visited upon Southern civilians both WHITE and BLACK.
The so called "emancipators" proved beyond a doubt that they were no respecters of status or skin color. The wanton destruction of private property, including slave cabins, clothing, food, and personal items was everywhere. Officers either encouraged it or "looked the other way." Generals like, Banks, Kilpatrick, Sheridan, and Sherman, just to name a few, will forever remain infamous for the disregard for civilian lives that they showed. Their leader, Abraham Lincoln, can have the blame laid squarely at his feet, as he and his war department approved of such methods.
Aside from simply murdering anyone, man, woman, or child, who resisted them, the Union soldiers were not hesitant to rape both white and black women. Only one soldier of the Union army was ever tried for rape, that of a slave woman, and while found guilty his sentence was reduced and he went home a free man. Dear readers, this book will disspell a good many myths about the North as liberators and patriots concerned about "maintaining the Union."
This book belongs in any serious American History library, but I recommend you read it after taking your blood pressure medication.
