Sherman’s lesson for Iran: America’s ruthless power can end wars fast

If James McPherson’s classic 1988 American Civil War history “The Battle Cry of Freedom” has been translated into Persian, the remaining leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard might want to quickly read the book, especially the chapters on General William Tecumseh Sherman’s two famous marches.

The first of these was the legendary “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah. The second was the lesser-known but longer, more difficult and, for the local population, much more devastating march from Savannah to North Carolina; It was a march that swept through South Carolina, home of secessionist fanaticism, and did so in a way that the state’s people did not think was possible, given the geography of the swampy plains.

Of course, America has waged and won wars against tyrants before, but we do not like to fight. We have never been a conquering empire, but our leaders have been ruthless in ending war when necessary.

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Sherman appealed to skeptical General Ulysses S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln: “If we can lead a well-appointed army through Jefferson Davis’ territory, it will be an indication to both the home and the outside world that we have a force that Davis cannot resist.”

“I can march and make Georgia cry,” Sherman added to the skeptics, Grant and Lincoln. To preserve the Union and save slaves, Sherman was proposing something that had not been done before in the long years of war: abandoning supply lines and subsisting on the land his army would plunder.

McPherson writes that Sherman, like Lincoln, “believed in a hard war and a soft peace,” and once approved by the chain of command, Sherman did the “hard” in devastating fashion.

“War is cruelty, and you cannot cure it,” Sherman said.

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“It takes a simple, direct and ruthless man to wage war,” wrote a different American general in a different war.

According to another popular historian, Rick Atkinson, General George Patton recorded this explicit statement in his diaries in his book “An Army at Dawn” about Operation Torch in World War II.

Sherman predicted Patton by almost 80 years.

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Sherman said of the Confederate elite, “We must make old and young alike, rich and poor, feel the harsh hand of war,” adding that their armies would make them “so weary of war that generations will pass by without resorting to war again.”

“There is mercy in the end,” he concluded.

Throughout Sherman’s two marches, Lincoln was open to peace on his terms. The greatest president even made a surprise trip to Grant’s headquarters to meet in person with the South’s peace commissioners on February 3, 1865.

Because Lincoln was committed to preserving the Union and freeing the slaves, the proposals were rejected by Confederate President Jefferson Davis when they were returned to him. Lincoln even offered some compensation to Southerners who wanted their slaves freed, but that wasn’t enough for the fanatics in Richmond.

The South was already shattered at that point. The value of the Confederate dollar had fallen to 2% of its 1861 value, and there was no more meat left for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, which continued the inevitable effort to relieve Richmond. However, the Confederation’s leadership had come to deny the truth.

Davis spoke to the Confederate Congress three days after Lincoln’s proposal, and press reports at the time conveyed to the North that the Confederate president’s tone was one of “unconquerable defiance.”

“We will never submit to the shame of surrender,” Davis thundered.

But of course, the South actually surrendered on April 9, 1865, when Lee conceded defeat and surrendered the largest of the Confederate forces to the Union. The unnecessary two-month battle between Lincoln’s bid and Appomattox saw Sherman’s “70,000 Blue avengers” rampage through South Carolina, where the Civil War began. “I almost tremble at his fate,” said Sherman, but he did not hesitate to unleash his forces.

“The battle in South Carolina was pleasant and not very glorious,” McPherson concluded, “but Sherman thought it was effective. ‘My purpose then was to whip the rebels. To humiliate their pride, to follow them to their very core, and to make them fear and fear us.'”

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Sherman did just that. Like the ruthless Grant did to his long-time enemy Lee. He was a man of supreme vision and moral clarity who presided over the long and bloody war from Washington, DC; the indomitable Lincoln, who had been misjudged by almost everyone since the beginning of the war. It had never sought emancipation before the war was waged by separatist fanatics who dreamed of a slavery empire stretching from the Old South to Mexico and Cuba.

Lincoln ordered action to be taken to break the will of the fanatics in Richmond and spread it throughout the confederacy. Like Presidents Wilson, FDR, and Truman over the next century, Lincoln had his terms and would accept nothing less.

As the cost of Union lives rose, so did the price Lincoln paid for peace. Presidents of the 20th century were far from Lincoln in wisdom and eloquence. Despite his vast intelligence and tact, it could be argued that Wilson was our worst president. Wilson failed to win peace after America won World War I, and the failure sowed the seed for World War II.

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FDR was a deeply flawed man of character, of course, but he was an excellent leader in World War II and, like Churchill, ruthless when necessary. Truman did what had to be done and did not lose sleep over the atomic bombs that saved the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. Presidents do what they think is best in wartime. History evaluates them and often second-guesses them, but they have to act in the moment.

Lincoln was a man of great spirit and pain, but also of indomitable spirit. Like the famous “Team of Rivals” of Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln, Lincoln persevered even as a major peace party emerged in the North and even lost 25 of 123 Republican seats in the 1862 midterm elections.

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We have no idea what will follow President Donald Trump’s IRGC deadline tonight — we can put aside the fiction that mullahs now rule Iran — but there is a very solid foundation at the heart of the American experience that we hope the IRGC generals are aware of. If Trump takes advantage of this and decides to do to Iran’s oil, energy, and transportation infrastructure from the air what Lincoln allowed Sherman to do to the Confederacy in Georgia and South Carolina via an army on the ground, it would not be unprecedented. In fact, this could result in the freedom of an enslaved people.

Trump’s critics are numerous, and they are especially outraged when Trump shares posts that are judged to be rude and unnecessarily provocative. We do not know what impact these posts had on the Revolutionary Guard. We will eventually. Meanwhile, the Iranian people long for a freedom that only Trump, and probably only with harsh measures, can provide.

Hugh Hewitt, Fox News contributor and “The Hugh Hewitt Show” weekday afternoons from 3 to 6 p.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh takes Americans home to the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on more than 400 affiliates nationwide and on all broadcast platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest of Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier on weekdays at 6 p.m. ET A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he started his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, written for all major American newspapers, and authored a dozen books. He has moderated most Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami, and four Republican presidential debates in 2015-16. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics, and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians During his 40 years as a broadcaster, Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

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