In 1995 our Civil War Roundtable in Frederick, Maryland heard a presentation on W.T. Sherman and the Law of Land Warfare. The guy who gave the lecture was a JAG O-5 from HQDA who was wearing his dress greens when he spoke to us. He said he was from South Carolina or Georgia and that he had spent much of his JAG career working with Special Forces.

He told us he had given many talks to foreign officers and NCOs on the Law of Land Warfare when he accompanied SF training teams overseas, adding that most foreign military personnel had expressed admiration for how the U.S. armed forces play by the rules, Then he said there was a notable exception to that reputation in American military history, the case of William T. Sherman.

“Does this look like a crazy man or not?” he asked, flashing a photo of Sherman on the screen. From there it was all downhill, a sordid tale of rapine, pillage and plunder. It made the guy’s wearing of dress greens a bit unseemly to say the least. It made one wonder whether the lecture was the official position Of the U.S. Army.

Grant’s instructions to Sheridan on how to scorch the Shenandoah Valley in 1864-65 and Sheridan’s guidance to his army implenting it are in about the same league as Sherman. The idea was to make the Valley inhospitable to Jubal Early & Co. and to destroy the "Granary of the Confederacy."