Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady looks at the way nature played an active role in the Civil War, both in how it drove strategy on both sides and was often a foe in its own ride to both the Union and Confederacy. She does this in tight, thorough analyses of nature’s role in four different theaters of the Civil War, with each getting its own chapter. For example, as Ian covers in his post, Brady spends a chapter detailing how a desire to control nature determined much of General William Sherman’s strategy in his famous March to the Sea, as well as the challenges brought on by natural agents such as disease and weather. In another chapter, Brady looks at how Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley, led by Philip Sheridan, ravaged the landscape of what Brady calls the “granary of the confederacy.” (73) The strategy originated from Ulysses S. Grant, who ordered that resources in the Shenandoah Valley such as crops, farms, and mills be destroyed in order to weaken the Confederacy. (78) Grant’s strategy paid off in 1864 when he gave control of the area’s forces to Philip Sheridan, a young general who agreed with Grant on the importance of destroying enemy resources in the region. Brady quotes Sheridan as saying that the resource rich territory of the Shenandoah Valley was “a factor of great importance,” showing that Sheridan’s strategy was directly influenced by the region’s natural features. (79) Finally, Brady also points out how ruthless Sheridan was in implementing his strategy, quoting him as saying that he wanted the area to remain a “barren waste” for as long as the war lasted, which of course meant continued hardship for Confederate civilians in the area. (80)
In my Ethics and Warfare class, we have spent some time debating strategies such as Grant and Sherman’s that destroy enemy resources in such a way that the the opposition’s civilians must suffer. We learned that military leaders and ethicists of the Civil War era generally accepted the idea that it was ethically acceptable for civilians of an opposing state to be made to feel the hardships of war, and that therefore such strategies were permissible. I believe that looking at these strategies with a focus toward nature and ecology adds another wrinkle to the moral debates regarding those strategies. In this class, we often look at our subjects of study asking the question of “is this natural” or “was this a natural occurrence.” Therefore, my question is would we consider strategies like enemy crop destruction natural, given that they are driven by an understanding of the importance that control over nature (in the form of agriculture) plays in military strategy. One could argue that it is therefore inevitable in military conflict that opposing forces will mar the landscape in ways to make it less useful for the enemy. However, does that sense of inevitability mean it is morally acceptable to destroy crops when doing so will clearly harm enemy non-combatants? I enjoyed the chapter on Sheridan, as well as Brady’s book as a whole, because it prompts these kinds of tough questions and provides an interesting look at how nature has affected into military history.