He said in a telegram: "I can make this march, and I will make Georgia howl!"
Quote: "He could have just arrested the women who were a part of the war effort and made them leave their children behind, but he didn't."
We must take the action in context of the time it happened. I read somewhere that the women took their children to work with them because the husbands were mostly off at war. I'm sure there was some sort of day care facilities at the factory.
Anyway, say the children were there at the factory when the raid occurred. What would the arresting officer do with those children while he destroyed the factory? His choice would have been obvious if that were the case. If there were 400 women and 200 had children, then he would have to reconcile his decision to someone, one day, somehow? Maybe not.
But take 400 women, 200 with children, traveling to a strange place would have less chance to work or forage for a living with a child or more at her side, wouldn't she?
I don't see him letting the children travel with their mothers as being overly compassionate in one sense. Might be in another.
The thought is still atrocious to me, either way.
1) In your post about "making them howl" you were refering to the women in Roswell where Sherman says that the women will howl, not Georgia as a whole which is obviously a figure of speech.
2) Regarding leaving the children at the factory, killing them, or allowing them to die, aren't you trying to establish that Sherman's army was a bunch of baby killers? Now you are saying they would have to reconcile a decision to kill children? Which way do you want it?
3) Given that he was going to have the women arrested, if you don't think letting the children travel out of the war zone to Indiana with their mothers was the compassionate choice, would it have been better to have left them alone in a war zone in an area he was about to torch?
