Total War: Legacies and Worldviews

Let me begin with a quote from Union General Phillip Sheridan: “ First, deal as hard blows to the enemies soldiers as possible, and then cause so much suffering to the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace and press their government to make it…nothing should be left to the people but eyes to lament the war.”  As shocking and revolting as this statement is, it has been a widely accepted policy in many wars following the "Civil War.” - Ex: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Castro and Chavez, to name a few. -  One asks, how could anyone perpetrate so much evil on unarmed civilians?  How can they justify total war on women and children, their own countrymen?  As Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (author of The Gulag Archipelago - a book describing the terrible prison system of the former Soviet Union) said: “ To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.”  But by what, or whom, do we define good and evil?  As we know, God is the Supreme Ruler and Lawgiver, but in many instances man sets himself up as lawgiver and the state as lawgiver, which leads to statism.  Statism puts the state in God’s place and therefore, the leaders of the state determine what is “right and wrong.”  Anything that advances the state and gives it more power is “good” and this end justifies any and all means of achieving it.  Statism is often combined with a distorted sense of patriotism - as communists said “ a lie in the service of Marxism is the truth,” unfortunately this ideology has been accepted and used to justify countless atrocities against dissenters worldwide, and the “Civil War” was no exception.  Of course, all this is covered up by some moral reason that “justifies” what they’ve done and, in many cases, by surprising the truth and persecuting the truthful.  as Solzhenitsyn also said: “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.”  So now we ask, how could Union generals and politicians support the destroying of most food and medical supplies in the South?  How could they terrorize civilians, burn down houses, churches and even whole communities?  How did they justify the destruction of 40% of all private property in the South?  The looting, pillaging and killing and the estimated 50,000 Southern civilians who died as a result?  How could this happen in America, brothers committing such acts against brother?  the answer is simple: Statism and distorted patriotism. After all, “the end justifies the means” correct? And thus it was that total war was waged on the South.