Guess a little history lesson for those that know everything..
http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2011/12/21/considering-genocide/
Imagine then if the United States and its leaders had been held to such a standard following its actions, which by the above definition were clearly criminal, against the Southern people. Consider perhaps the man most obviously guilty of committing genocide against Southerners – US General William T Sherman. Far from embarrassed by the actions of Sherman, the US media and educational system regularly celebrates his “March to the Sea,” the burning of Atlanta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina and the total war he waged upon Southern civilians. For example, the History Channel describes Sherman in this manner:
Perhaps the originator and the first practitioner of what the twentieth century came to know as “total war,” William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864 commanded the Union armies of the West in the decisive drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta and the famous “march to the sea” across Georgia. In these campaigns and his later push northward from Savannah through the Carolinas, Sherman’s troops carried the war to the Southern home front and blazed a wide path of destruction that delivered the death blow to the Confederacy’s will and ability to fight. For the accompanying destruction, his name is still cursed in some parts of the South; but he is also recognized as a great strategist, a forceful leader, and–together with Ulysses Grant –the ablest Union general of the war.
Indeed, Sherman was rewarded by the US Federal Government by being appointed as the senior-most officer of its army (where he over-saw the US genocidal war against the Plains Indians after conquering the Southern States). This “great strategist” and “forceful leader” openly advocated genocide against the Southern people, as detailed by historian and author Dr Thomas DiLorenzo:
Quoting again from the Fellman biography, Sherman said this about Southerners: “To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources” (emphasis added).
War criminals: US generals Sheridan and Sherman
Here you have a clear statement that Sherman’s goal was to commit genocide against the people of Georgia. Remember that his famous “march” was not met by any serious military resistance other than a few cavalry skirmishes. It was almost entirely a campaign of death and destruction of civilians and their property. And he wanted to “repopulate” the state with fine New England stock such as himself, the son of a New England lawyer of Puritan descent.
Readers who are familiar with the U.S. Constitution may find it difficult to find the part of the document that permits the U.S. government to murder its own citizens or to completely suspend the Constitution during wartime, but Sherman apparently read between the lines better than most. “The Government of the United States has in North Alabama,” he once declared, “any and all rights which they choose to enforce in war — to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . . war is simply power unrestrained by constitution or compact.” “We will . . . take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper,” said the maniacal murderer in the blue uniform.
Writing to his wife in 1862, Sherman informed her that “the war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people . . . . There is a class of people, men women, and children, who must be killed or banished . . .”
In a January 1865 letter to General Grant, Sherman once again explained his philosophy of mass murder: “We are not fighting against enemy armies but against an enemy people; both young and old, rich and poor must feel the iron hand of war . . .
Europeans, meanwhile, were comparing Sherman to the Marquis de Sade and predicting that future wars outside of America would likely be waged against innocent civilians, once Sherman’s “success” was understood. They also considered Sherman’s war crimes to be the mark of an unsuccessful military man. He did not establish any particularly stellar record as a military commander under fire; his “forte” was the mass murder of civilians and acts of terrorism reigned upon Southern cities with weapons of mass destruction.
Lincoln always knew about all of this, as Walter Brian Cisco explains in his must-read book, War Crimes Against Southern Civilians. He gladly rewarded and praised generals such as Sherman and Sheridan for murdering and terrorizing citizens — American citizens — all in the name of defending “law and order in America.”
The US genocide against the Southern people was quickly followed by another genocide, this one committed against the American Indian nations of the West. The stated goal of US military officers, Sherman included, was to kill as many of the Indians as possible and impose the rule of the US government over their lands.
In 1867, he wrote to Grant that “we are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress of [the railroads].” After the 1866 Fetterman Massacre, Sherman wrote Grant that “we must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” After George Armstrong Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Sherman wrote that “hostile savages like Sitting Bull and his band of outlaw Sioux … must feel the superior power of the Government.” He further wrote that “during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.”
Sherman was hardly alone in his genocidal campaigns against Southerners and later American Indians. He was joined by the infamous US General Philip Sheridan who burned down much of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and is attributed with the quote “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Whether he said these exact words or not, his policy and that of the military and government he served certainly closely resembled those sentiments. Such actions today would be called ethnic cleansing or genocide. And yet there was no justice for Sherman or Sheridan or their fellow criminals in blue who marched under the stars and stripes and sowed death and destruction across North America. There was certainly no justice for their victims.
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