Originally Posted By marvingardns
Universally it is Sherman by Southerners who don't really know anything about the Civil War anyway. 

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331
       

Originally Posted By marvingardns
        Universally it is Sherman by Southerners who don't really know anything about the Civil War anyway.         

        I find this comment extremely insulting.  You should know better.    

Originally Posted By marvingardns
        Universally it is Sherman by Southerners who don't really know anything about the Civil War anyway.          Personally I would say it was indeed "Beast" Butler, or, alternatively, "Spoons Butler."  He caught the headlines in the South early as a villian of a particularly foul and unchivalric disposition.  Aside from the regime of looting and extortion engaged in by his New Orleans stint, he also was known by the North and South to have originated the 'contraband' concept of holding escaped slaves in a contempt of the fugitive slave act.          I can only assume, though, that Sherman, unpopular though he is with Southerners in general, is generally vindicated by history today. Aside from the 'contraband' concept, Butler was not.     

Originally Posted By Martok
        This question was spurred by a thread over in the Matrix forums (specifically, a post that was made in it several weeks back), and I've only now finally remembered to actually post my question here:              From the material I've read and seen over the years, I'd long held the belief that of the Northern generals, the South easily despised Sherman the most.  Given what he did to Georgia and the Carolinas, I could certainly understand why.          However, a post in the Matrix thread claimed that it was Benjamin Butler who was actually the most loathed by Southerners, largely due to his treatment of the white civilian population of Louisiana (and the ladies of New Orleans in particular).              I'm curious as to what your guys' opinions are on this question.  Also, I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of books or other material out there that makes the case of Butler being the Confed's "Most Reviled".     

Originally Posted By marvingardns
Personally as a Southerner I have a particular distaste for that most vile and perfidious Yankee foreigner Ivan Turchinoff (as it is spelled on a historical marker).   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Turchaninov   His regiment raped and pillaged my hometown of Athens, Alabama. 

Originally Posted By Dion
How about President Lincoln? Wasn’t it his idea to build the Arlington Cemetery in General Lee’s front yard? I think it was an act of spite, just in case the South won the war General Lee would have to live with all those dead soldiers that died in vain. Well, I guess President Lincoln doesn’t count because he wasn’t a General.

Originally Posted By Dion
In fact I think they were close friends.

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331

Originally Posted By marvingardns
Universally it is Sherman by Southerners who don't really know anything about the Civil War anyway. 

I find this comment extremely insulting.  You should know better.

Originally Posted By Dion
How about President Lincoln? Wasn’t it his idea to build the Arlington Cemetery in General Lee’s front yard? I think it was an act of spite, just in case the South won the war General Lee would have to live with all those dead soldiers that died in vain. Well, I guess President Lincoln doesn’t count because he wasn’t a General. Anyway, I bet most southerners didn’t know about it at the time anyway. I think I heard about it on a documentary on the Civil War, though I'm not sure which one. A lot of people didn’t like General Grant either, both southerners and northerners, because he was so calculating, to the point that he would calculate the number of dead needed to make the south surrender. At that time the number of dead was more important than strategical locations, as the south was limited on man power, and just about everything else. Some, say he was more of an exterminator than a general. But isn’t that what a general is supposed to do if that is a feasible solution? This pissed off a lot of people, as he would attack, attack, and attack again. A lot like Sherman. In fact I think they were close friends.

Actually it was Meigs who ordered that Union war dead be buried in Lee's front yard in Arlington.  He had a son killed in Virginia and swore that Lee would never reclaim his house.  As for most hated Union General it would probably depend on where you were at.  Butler would have won that poll in New Orleans and Louisianna but Sherman would have won it in Georgia and South Carolina.  If you said most hated General in the South it might have went to Braxton Bragg!

Originally Posted By Dion
How about President Lincoln? Wasn’t it his idea to build the Arlington Cemetery in General Lee’s front yard? I think it was an act of spite, just in case the South won the war General Lee would have to live with all those dead soldiers that died in vain. Well, I guess President Lincoln doesn’t count because he wasn’t a General. Anyway, I bet most southerners didn’t know about it at the time anyway. I think I heard about it on a documentary on the Civil War, though I'm not sure which one. A lot of people didn’t like General Grant either, both southerners and northerners, because he was so calculating, to the point that he would calculate the number of dead needed to make the south surrender. At that time the number of dead was more important than strategical locations, as the south was limited on man power, and just about everything else. Some, say he was more of an exterminator than a general. But isn’t that what a general is supposed to do if that is a feasible solution? This pissed off a lot of people, as he would attack, attack, and attack again. A lot like Sherman. In fact I think they were close friends.

Actually it was Meigs who ordered that Union war dead be buried in Lee's front yard in Arlington.  He had a son killed in Virginia and swore that Lee would never reclaim his house.  As for most hated Union General it would probably depend on where you were at.  Butler would have won that poll in New Orleans and Louisianna but Sherman would have won it in Georgia and South Carolina.  If you said most hated General in the South it might have went to Braxton Bragg!

Interesting thread!

Hard to say what opinions were 140 years ago. I'd have to agree with KG that it would probably depend on where you were, but I would confine it to when Grant initiated more or less total war during 1864. The early war behavior of Meigs, Butler, and Burnside (defining escaped slaves as "contraband") were propaganda sideshows compared to the scorched earth policies Grant employed later in the war.

If you were in the TransMississippi, probably Sherman. A good book that pretty much runs him down as pure evil incarnate from a Southern perspective is John B. Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973. Wikipedia has a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman's_March_to_the_Sea 

If you were in the Eastern Theater, probably Hunter and Sheridan for "The Burning" -- laying complete waste to the Shenandoah Valley to eliminate it as a source of supplies and to put an end to the sort of Valley campaigns practiced by Jackson and Early; the latter being the closest to approach Washington during the war, actually bringing President Lincoln under fire at Fort Stevens in July 1864. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sheridan

But behind Sherman and Sheridan was Grant's overall total war policy. He's the one who directed Hunter to "eat out Virginia clear and clean...so that crows flying over will have to carry their provender with them."

JH and Azz cant really lay claim to being Southeners as theyre both Texans.

then, as now, Texas is its own.

just sayin'

Originally Posted By Jarhead0331

Originally Posted By marvingardns
Universally it is Sherman by Southerners who don't really know anything about the Civil War anyway. 

 

I find this comment extremely insulting.  You should know better.

Assuming marvingardns knows the use of punctuation, there is no reason to take offense.  If he had placed a comma after Southerners ["by Southerners, who don't really know anything..."], he would have been stating that Southerners in general know nothing.  However, without the comma, he is merely speaking about that portion of Southerners who know nothing.  Clearly, not everyone in the South knows anything of any significance about the Civil War. 

I remember reading, several decades ago, the report from a college professor who had a conversation with a female undergrad who didn't know that the US had fought a war with Japan about forty years previously, and who asked the professor, "Who won?"  If that can happen, surely many who dwell in the South--and the North--know nothing about the Civil War.

Originally Posted By GDS_Starfury

JH and Azz cant really lay claim to being Southeners as theyre both Texans.

then, as now, Texas is its own.

 

just sayin'

I have to agree with this. As a fellow Texan I always thought I was a southerner because we fought for the Confederacy.....but then I moved to Mississippi for 4 years. Mississippians are Southerners. Alabamans are Southerners. Georgians are Southerners. Texans are Texans.

 George Henry Thomas was certainly hated by Southerners, in his case by his own family!

 But I am a bit biased as he was in command at Nashville where my avatar was killed (Col William Shy, 20th Tennessee, a relative) when the left flank was over run. Franklin-Nashville was, in my opinion, the climax of the whole bloody war.

 I also can't resist saying that Hood was out of his mind at Franklin and Nashville. You have to wonder how the end would have developed without throwing away the Army of Tennessee.