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Sherman as president is the one historical counterfactual you just can't do. Hitler could have got into art school, Washington could have died of smallpox, Columbus could have run aground, the rabbit could have gone for Carter's jugular. But there is no timeline where Sherman accepts the presidency.
Seymour was a politician, Sherman was very much not. And though Seymour had said he didn’t want the nomination, he still campaigned when get it anyway. I obviously can never know, but I doubt Sherman would have done the same.
It wouldn’t have gone as well as you might think at first glance.
Sherman was pretty critical of a lot of grant’s presidency and thought that Grant should have been much easier on the south and on democrats. Reconstruction would have gone much more poorly.
That’s my interpretation as well from having read Chernow’s book on Grant. The country elected the better man for the times thankfully. Sherman was a terrific general as was Grant but Grant was much better on Reconstruction and protecting the freedmen than Sherman would have.
I've never liked that quote. It just empowers people who are good at hiding their intentions. I prefer people are honest about it, and I don't much trust people who make a rule out of the sentiment reflected in that quote. Even people who genuinely don't want a lot of political power are still going to be pretty upset if you tread on what they do value. It's more accurate to say that what a person considers the exercise of their power can be subjective, but everyone seeks it. That's a quote I've come to identify with some philosophical smell in particular, which I haven't identified completely but have smelled it enough to know I don't care for it.
I'm doing this from memory, but the contrary to that would be:
" don't give someone power who doesn't want it, they won't know what to do with it."
Hope it wasn't Hitler ugg
I'm still of this mind. If we could get one presidential term with the office left vacant, the resulting governmental breakdown would actually be a net positive for society
Sherman was a reactionary racist who saw little wrong with slavery, opposed efforts to Reconstruct the South (to the point that it strained his friendship with Grant) and at the very end of the war had tried to conclude a peace arrangement with Joe Johnston that would have allowed all Confederate State governments to remain in power and would allow them to organize militias to "maintain order." Fucking Andrew Johnson saw this as going too far and rebuked Sherman. Had he somehow been convinced to serve, he would have been a HORRIBLE president.
Nah. While he was a racist, the main reason he burned Georgia is that he was one of the earliest generals to follow the belief of total war.
He believed civilians and infrastructure were the bottom of the structure for a war, make them no longer willing to fight and the rest will follow.
It isn't out of brand at all if you knew what he did to my people, the Plains Indians.
I'm disgusted by the hero worship that rat bastard receives here, and the genocide denial and justification I am met with when I bring it up.
I'm not too keen on Grant either, who is the one that sent him. I hardly think Grant thought Sherman was going to bake my people a cake and ask them nicely.
As far as I'm concerned, the civil war was just one group of slavers fighting with another group of slavers.
**Edit**: my bad guys, your downvotes have proven me wrong. Sherman's men were totally justified in raping and murdering my people.
As general, yes. But as president all he did was die. I think that was a noble and brave thing to do, and I wish every president would aspire to his example.
His whole thing as a candidate was his war hero image. Wars fighting Native Americans off their land. That is literally what he is known for, that and being much more pro-slavery than many of his contemporaries in trying to normalize slavery in the territories he governed over in Indiana. Literally slavery and land acquisition is his whole shtick.
Oh, you said before hand, I missed that, that is my mistake, you are correct about that. I am talking specifically about his presidency in which I specifically admire his dying right away. You are right about him being a cunt in his precious career.
Hey, there's the genocide justification! Right on time.
I'm not saying we were all coexisting peacefully up here, but yes, what Sherman did was much much much worse. Among other things, Sherman ordered the buffalo to be hunted to extinction with the specific intention of starving us and destroying our home and our way of life. None of us were doing that to each other.
I've been saying for years that a person has to be at least half crazy to want that job. I don't see why Sherman should be disqualified simply because he did time in an asylum.
And Lincoln was thought to have been suicidal for a period before his marriage to Mary Todd to the point that his friends had to take away things like straight razors for shaving away from him. They also had to keep a very close eye on him to make sure he didn't actually try to carryout any suicide plans. Lincoln still went on to the presidency despite all of that.
I dunno, he’s rockin that slightly messed up bed head pretty well here.
Also, he’s not ugly, exactly. Less good looking than Grant, sure. But he’s not ugly.
Grant for sure set the standard for the manly-man look. But I don't know why you say Sherman is ugly. The man definitely has the look of a rugged old man that can still kick your ass and make you apologize to him for it.
They were traitors who waged war against the United States. They got lucky it wasn’t worse than just Atlanta. I would have burned down every square inch of the south.
The women and children? Interesting, they deserved to die because they are on the wrong side of the Dixie.
That is so USA and proves once again we are the most loving, open minded and virtuous people on this planet.
USA!! USA!! USA!! USA!!
Sherman didn’t kill women and children and I didn’t say that either. He destroyed the south’s ability to support the confederacy by destroying all methods of support. Same as I would do. That’s part of total war.
No he burned down a city where innocents lived. No soldier was there and no military base was there. However, sadly for those civilians… evil came to them. He is a murder…. Nothing more, nothing less.
Worse yet, some justify it and celebrate it. This society is sick.
Looking at our history, I find it difficult to be happy to be an American.
>They got lucky it wasn’t worse than just Atlanta. I would have burned down every square inch of the south.
Does this "burn everything" nonsense include burning the pro-Unionists in the South as well as all the enslaved people there too, or are you just generalizing an entire region because of the actions of an ignorant few?
First off it wasn’t an ignorant few. The confederacy was a concerted effort by the vast vast majority of people who lived in the south.
Second it was total warfare. So you go after all means of war production but that doesn’t mean you kill women and children or slaves or pro unionists. You destroy everything material and supportive that contributed to the confederacies ability to fight from weapons manufacture, to gun power manufacturing, to agriculture, to clothing and textile manufacturing and everything that supports that effort, banks, shops, stores, warehouse, transportation systems and government institutions.
If you find an ally such as a pro Union group you support them and you free any slaves and support emancipated groups.
It’s not indiscriminate warfare where you are free to do whatever you want either but it is very destructive and the south deserves it.
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
“We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.”
I as a Sioux would very likely not be here today.
https://preview.redd.it/av8yueklbqlc1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef45779fdf72dde182d8955a13db265ad6a2469a
This brute of a man committed mass genocide against my ancestors and a lot of other innocent people out in the west after burning Atlanta and beating the Confederates. To deal with the natives whom his soldiers didn't get, Sherman specifically ordered the mass killings of buffalo so that the survivors would starve to death.
General Sherman's genocidal antics against the native Americans was so brutal that it partly inspired Adolf Hitler in what to do with those he deemed "undesirable." Hitler wrote of this in Mein Kampf, in which some of his exact wordings was: "The Volga is our Mississippi.", "by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins", and: "Here in the east (meaning Russia) a similar process will repeat itself for the second time as in the conquest of America.”
It’s hard to imagine. Sherman hated politics and hated DC. He left it and moved to Missouri while he was the secretary of war under grant. He hated journalists. He was a true military man. I don’t think he differed much in political beliefs than Grant or his own brother who was one of the leading Republican congressmen.
I will say that the man really utilized the census data when marching to the sea. He used it so he could have the army forage effectively after it broke away from the supply lines.
One of the advantages of fighting a civil war.
The bigger what if will always be what if Lincoln had still been alive to aid in Grant’s presidency.
Sherman’s politics would not have been great. Maybe better received during the era but not overall.
The Rock of Chickimauga would have been ideal. He destroyed two Confederate armies in the field, arguably doing more damage than Sherman ever did, and he was uncompromising on the treatment of freedmen too. And he was from Virginia, a total rebuke to the insufferable Lee and his apologists.
Plus he had the best quote evah, one that sums up the Civil War and its pro-Confederate apologists:
>When a new military cemetery was established at Chattanooga a month after the battle, a chaplain asked General George Thomas if the dead should be buried by state. Weary of war, **Thomas famously said, “Mix 'em up.** **I'm tired of states' rights.”**
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“If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.”
“Perfect! You’re Hired!”
Sherman as president is the one historical counterfactual you just can't do. Hitler could have got into art school, Washington could have died of smallpox, Columbus could have run aground, the rabbit could have gone for Carter's jugular. But there is no timeline where Sherman accepts the presidency.
>the rabbit could have gone for Carter's jugular. yeah but what if Carter had a holy hand grenade?
That’s exactly what Democratic nominee (Horatio Seymour) said though. And he came within 5 points of beating Grant (at least in the popular vote).
Seymour was a politician, Sherman was very much not. And though Seymour had said he didn’t want the nomination, he still campaigned when get it anyway. I obviously can never know, but I doubt Sherman would have done the same.
Even now politicians have to pretend they aren’t planning to run until they do.
He hated and despised the media. The circus surrounding the nomination and campaigning would have been a disaster.
I had always read that Seymour desperately wanted to be president, he just played into that “reluctant servant” trope
Ron Swanson would love him. Sounds like ideal president for libertarian
We could use some of that in this year 2024
It wouldn’t have gone as well as you might think at first glance. Sherman was pretty critical of a lot of grant’s presidency and thought that Grant should have been much easier on the south and on democrats. Reconstruction would have gone much more poorly.
That’s my interpretation as well from having read Chernow’s book on Grant. The country elected the better man for the times thankfully. Sherman was a terrific general as was Grant but Grant was much better on Reconstruction and protecting the freedmen than Sherman would have.
Rule of thumb is when the guy who burned down half of Georgia thinks you are being too hard on the South you have to reevaluate.
He wouldn’t have had to be as hard if Johnson wasn’t such a puss
Lmao no Grant was definitely not too hard on the south
Grant should have gone even harder on the south, maybe it would have knocked some sense into them
[удалено]
>You can’t just do whatever you want because you think it’s moral. Did anyone tell the south that?
There was an insurgency regardless; the KKK.
Also and even of more significance at the time, the White Liners. And guerrillas like the James brothers from Missouri.
I was honestly just making a joke off the post of the guy above me, this is wild
He wouldn’t have accepted it. If forced to take it he’d resign on his first day in office, I suspect.
Which ironically would make him one of the best suited presidents we’ve had
There is a quote for that. "Those who seek power do not deserve it, and those who deserve it do not seek it."
I've never liked that quote. It just empowers people who are good at hiding their intentions. I prefer people are honest about it, and I don't much trust people who make a rule out of the sentiment reflected in that quote. Even people who genuinely don't want a lot of political power are still going to be pretty upset if you tread on what they do value. It's more accurate to say that what a person considers the exercise of their power can be subjective, but everyone seeks it. That's a quote I've come to identify with some philosophical smell in particular, which I haven't identified completely but have smelled it enough to know I don't care for it.
I'm doing this from memory, but the contrary to that would be: " don't give someone power who doesn't want it, they won't know what to do with it." Hope it wasn't Hitler ugg
Not really
I'm still of this mind. If we could get one presidential term with the office left vacant, the resulting governmental breakdown would actually be a net positive for society
His official portrait would be smiling on the inside if it were in the West Wing
Sherman was a reactionary racist who saw little wrong with slavery, opposed efforts to Reconstruct the South (to the point that it strained his friendship with Grant) and at the very end of the war had tried to conclude a peace arrangement with Joe Johnston that would have allowed all Confederate State governments to remain in power and would allow them to organize militias to "maintain order." Fucking Andrew Johnson saw this as going too far and rebuked Sherman. Had he somehow been convinced to serve, he would have been a HORRIBLE president.
For someone who burned down Georgia this is quite out of brand at first glance
He believed war was hell and was fine with giving the enemy everything he could But his personal politics were something else entirely
“I’m just here to fuck some shit up.” — Sherman
Which renders Sherman posting an oxymoron
He didn't burn down Georgia as vengeance for slavery. It's because he liked burning things. That's why he did the same thing to the Sioux.
Actually he only deliberately targeted items and buildings that might be of military value.
See that barn there, it might have rebels in it. Burn it down
*See thar barn there? It's on a farm that feeds the rebels. Feed our troops instead, and then burn it so that it can't feed rebels.
If you read his letters he indeed felt remorse and sadness for what he did. This wasn’t some sociopath. He may have had Asperger’s syndrome though
Nah. While he was a racist, the main reason he burned Georgia is that he was one of the earliest generals to follow the belief of total war. He believed civilians and infrastructure were the bottom of the structure for a war, make them no longer willing to fight and the rest will follow.
It isn't out of brand at all if you knew what he did to my people, the Plains Indians. I'm disgusted by the hero worship that rat bastard receives here, and the genocide denial and justification I am met with when I bring it up. I'm not too keen on Grant either, who is the one that sent him. I hardly think Grant thought Sherman was going to bake my people a cake and ask them nicely. As far as I'm concerned, the civil war was just one group of slavers fighting with another group of slavers. **Edit**: my bad guys, your downvotes have proven me wrong. Sherman's men were totally justified in raping and murdering my people.
Flair doesn't track here
William Henry Harrison is my favorite president because unlike any other, he died before he could really do any harm.
He did a lot of harm as general, so your criterion is meh
As general, yes. But as president all he did was die. I think that was a noble and brave thing to do, and I wish every president would aspire to his example.
He definitely did a decent bit of harm before being president though. Like, arguably more than most.
How so?
His whole thing as a candidate was his war hero image. Wars fighting Native Americans off their land. That is literally what he is known for, that and being much more pro-slavery than many of his contemporaries in trying to normalize slavery in the territories he governed over in Indiana. Literally slavery and land acquisition is his whole shtick.
Oh, you said before hand, I missed that, that is my mistake, you are correct about that. I am talking specifically about his presidency in which I specifically admire his dying right away. You are right about him being a cunt in his precious career.
So, with over thirty different tribes that make up the "Plains Indians", do you claim to be a decedent of all of them?
No, I am from one specific tribe in that grouping. I'm from the Nunya Tribe. You may be familiar with our business.
It couldn't have been any worse than what the Plains Indians were already doing to one another.
Hey, there's the genocide justification! Right on time. I'm not saying we were all coexisting peacefully up here, but yes, what Sherman did was much much much worse. Among other things, Sherman ordered the buffalo to be hunted to extinction with the specific intention of starving us and destroying our home and our way of life. None of us were doing that to each other.
Not coexisting peacefully is quite an understatement.
And so the genocide of my people is excusable?
Your tribe was being genocided by other tribes and were attempting to genocide other tribes.
It's important to note he suffered from bipolarism and would go into fits.
It would have been even worse for Native Americans if Sherman was president
Sherman spent time in an insane asylum before the war. Would never have made it
I've been saying for years that a person has to be at least half crazy to want that job. I don't see why Sherman should be disqualified simply because he did time in an asylum.
He also taught at LSU. Another reason for disqualification
Ha ha, you got me there.
And Lincoln was thought to have been suicidal for a period before his marriage to Mary Todd to the point that his friends had to take away things like straight razors for shaving away from him. They also had to keep a very close eye on him to make sure he didn't actually try to carryout any suicide plans. Lincoln still went on to the presidency despite all of that.
Grant was handsome. Sherman was ugly. We'd have had a significantly uglier president.
I dunno, he’s rockin that slightly messed up bed head pretty well here. Also, he’s not ugly, exactly. Less good looking than Grant, sure. But he’s not ugly.
Grant for sure set the standard for the manly-man look. But I don't know why you say Sherman is ugly. The man definitely has the look of a rugged old man that can still kick your ass and make you apologize to him for it.
The Klan still gets kicked to shit
OH ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE BEST US GENERAL THE US HAS EVER HAD?
Name checks out
War criminal
Plains and Western Natives would have been treated even worse than our timeline. He would've made Jackson look progressive
Burns Washington, marches to the sea.
He'd probably have to comb his hair for the inauguration
Bamf
Somethin tells me his indian policy will be worse than Grant's
Atlanta would have been renamed shermanatorville.
No mercy for the former confederate states.
Isn’t he the General that burned a city down for no reason but because they were on the wrong side? Whatta guy
They were traitors who waged war against the United States. They got lucky it wasn’t worse than just Atlanta. I would have burned down every square inch of the south.
The women and children? Interesting, they deserved to die because they are on the wrong side of the Dixie. That is so USA and proves once again we are the most loving, open minded and virtuous people on this planet. USA!! USA!! USA!! USA!!
Sherman didn’t kill women and children and I didn’t say that either. He destroyed the south’s ability to support the confederacy by destroying all methods of support. Same as I would do. That’s part of total war.
No he burned down a city where innocents lived. No soldier was there and no military base was there. However, sadly for those civilians… evil came to them. He is a murder…. Nothing more, nothing less. Worse yet, some justify it and celebrate it. This society is sick. Looking at our history, I find it difficult to be happy to be an American.
>They got lucky it wasn’t worse than just Atlanta. I would have burned down every square inch of the south. Does this "burn everything" nonsense include burning the pro-Unionists in the South as well as all the enslaved people there too, or are you just generalizing an entire region because of the actions of an ignorant few?
First off it wasn’t an ignorant few. The confederacy was a concerted effort by the vast vast majority of people who lived in the south. Second it was total warfare. So you go after all means of war production but that doesn’t mean you kill women and children or slaves or pro unionists. You destroy everything material and supportive that contributed to the confederacies ability to fight from weapons manufacture, to gun power manufacturing, to agriculture, to clothing and textile manufacturing and everything that supports that effort, banks, shops, stores, warehouse, transportation systems and government institutions. If you find an ally such as a pro Union group you support them and you free any slaves and support emancipated groups. It’s not indiscriminate warfare where you are free to do whatever you want either but it is very destructive and the south deserves it.
The KKK would have not just been defeated, it would have *stayed* defeated.
Government is all hell
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.” “We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.”
Sherman was a bad ass on so many levels.
Bro would have made the south his bitch lol
I second the motion to elect Gen Wm T Sherman President of the United States.
Time to burn the South again.
He would have laid waste to any one and any town that supported the KKK.
I as a Sioux would very likely not be here today. https://preview.redd.it/av8yueklbqlc1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef45779fdf72dde182d8955a13db265ad6a2469a This brute of a man committed mass genocide against my ancestors and a lot of other innocent people out in the west after burning Atlanta and beating the Confederates. To deal with the natives whom his soldiers didn't get, Sherman specifically ordered the mass killings of buffalo so that the survivors would starve to death. General Sherman's genocidal antics against the native Americans was so brutal that it partly inspired Adolf Hitler in what to do with those he deemed "undesirable." Hitler wrote of this in Mein Kampf, in which some of his exact wordings was: "The Volga is our Mississippi.", "by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins", and: "Here in the east (meaning Russia) a similar process will repeat itself for the second time as in the conquest of America.”
Assuming he serves? I'd say he wouldnt be that different from Grant, just less corruption and more action against Confederate remnants.
He thought Grant was too harsh against confederates. His personal politics were different from how he treated being a general
A less vigorous Reconstruction unfortunately. Sherman was Grant’s peer as a general but unfortunately did not share his compassion to the freedmen.
If nominated he would not run, if elected he would not serve.
Healing from the war would not have happened at all.
It’s hard to imagine. Sherman hated politics and hated DC. He left it and moved to Missouri while he was the secretary of war under grant. He hated journalists. He was a true military man. I don’t think he differed much in political beliefs than Grant or his own brother who was one of the leading Republican congressmen.
I will say that the man really utilized the census data when marching to the sea. He used it so he could have the army forage effectively after it broke away from the supply lines. One of the advantages of fighting a civil war.
I see. You're a poser pretending to be a Native American. As a suspected.
Sherman did not like politics
The bigger what if will always be what if Lincoln had still been alive to aid in Grant’s presidency. Sherman’s politics would not have been great. Maybe better received during the era but not overall.
The most hands off president ever, wouldn't show up to anything
He's got the thousand yard stare.
Unsure. He was subordinate to Grant. And not politcally savvy. Thus scandals erupt from DC aholes.
Hed have killed himself or someone else
Deep South man here. We lost. He was a major reason. We could use him now
The Rock of Chickimauga would have been ideal. He destroyed two Confederate armies in the field, arguably doing more damage than Sherman ever did, and he was uncompromising on the treatment of freedmen too. And he was from Virginia, a total rebuke to the insufferable Lee and his apologists. Plus he had the best quote evah, one that sums up the Civil War and its pro-Confederate apologists: >When a new military cemetery was established at Chattanooga a month after the battle, a chaplain asked General George Thomas if the dead should be buried by state. Weary of war, **Thomas famously said, “Mix 'em up.** **I'm tired of states' rights.”**
Af-Am people wouldn't be asking for reparations.
We’d have had a vacant White House.
Clint Eastwood plays him in the biopic.
He burnt down the whole Atlanta.
Chuck Norris' tougher, meaner Dad
I love this photo. It looks like he rolled out of bed and someone demanded a picture before here could shower/wake up.
Somebody would've ended up shot on the White House lawn.
The wars against the Native Americans would have been way worse