James H. Burnett, 111 The Miami Herald

January 30, 2011

James H. Burnett, 111
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: “America’s Battle Scars” – A comment, or three, on your article in this morning’s Miami Herald about the American Civil War.

Mr. Burnett,

My father’s father had 2 uncles who fought at Gettysburg. One of them is still there “wrapped in his faded coat of Blue”.

July 2, 1863. The Irish Brigade. The Wheat Field. Perhaps “Garryowen” was being played. Two stepped off; one died. I hope it was “quick and clean”.

Usually a Civil War article mentions, however tangentially, the question of reparations for slavery. I mention this because I feel that I would be entitled to a carry forward tax credit to offset any tax liability for something I did not do. That this benefit would be earned for something I also didn’t do is irrelevant. Ah, but the fortunes of war are strange indeed. Should I find myself in truly reduced circumstances do you think I would be able to sell it to someone with a larger tax liability? A likely prospect would be the Secretary of the Treasury, don’t you think?

I also believe that no mention of the Civil War should be made without mentioning General Sherman.

Simply put, he shortened the war by at least 18 months. That he freed the slaves more quickly and saved countless lives on both sides there can be no doubt. Not bad for a man who called himself “crazy”.

He did this by bringing the war and all its attendant horrors to South Carolina, the place where the war began. They, borrowing a page from those “sunshine soldiers” of Massachusetts and their post Bunker Hill military participation in the American Revolution, sat out all but one month of it.

Despite the Democratic Party and the New York Times’ implicit endorsement of slavery by their demands for a negotiated settlement with the South what Sherman did was worth a year of Emancipation Proclamations and never ending productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.




His decision to “make them howl” was our first successful “surge”. It has since worked for Pershing. Patton, and Petraeus.

Perhaps it’s a case of “Homer nods” or, in a burst of multi-culturalism, “Only Allah can weave a perfect rug” but what the Hell did you mean when you said “the North’s motivation is not as manganous as previously thought”?

My dog-eared Webster’s suggests a meaning as far from a war as possible.

Is it time to dig up Granny’s Confederate currency?





Kevin Smith