Most Civil War military commanders gained experience fighing the Indians, and one noteworthy example was General William Tecumseh Sherman, Union hero and scourge of the South, who once said: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children." For many Americans, Sherman embodies the spirit of military terror, the belief that "demoralizing" the civilian population is the best way to acheive military victory, a path that travels through the WWII firebombings of Germany and Japan, the flight of the Enola Gay, and countless places since.
Sherman, Spain's top miler for a spell
In the summer of 1994, the highlight of that Western family vacation and the apex of our automotive yo-yo was Giant Sequoia National Park in Central California. To reach the great trees you have to spend an hour driving up a winding Sierra-Nevada road, and due to an extended stay at the Bakersfield Dennys we were late reaching the base of the mountain. We drove up the hairpin curves in the gathering dusk, swimming against an uninterrupted stream of headlights coming down the mountain, and by the time we made it to the park gates they were just closing. But God bless the brave Rangers of the National Park Service that let us in at the last minute, because after following a woodchipped park path we found ourselves alone with the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman tree. As we stood there in the twilight, necks craned up towards the 200 foot tall, 2000 year old living thing, our hands touched its bark as rods and cones fought a losing battle to notice the forest color, and as we wound our way down the mountain, satisfied, I can still remember how the moon appeared through the boughs overhead.
The American main battle tank during the Second World War was a medium tank called the Sherman. While they were smaller and less powerful than all of the German tanks, whose armor was so thick that the Sherman could only penetrate it from certain angles, their mechanical simplicity made it possible for American factories to manufacture the Sherman in astounding numbers. Reliable, easy to maintain, and sporting an excellent mechanical clutch, the Sherman tanks were an instrumental part of Allied campaigns throughout the war.
Cindy Sherman
General William Sherman was a native of Ohio and attended the Academy at West Point, Virginia. He served as an executive for a San Francisco bank before becoming superindendent of a Louisiana Military Academy when the Civil War broke out and after many notable battles, not all of them successful, including the first Bull Run/Manassas and the battle of Shiloh, Sherman was made commander of the Western Army. In 1964 U.S. Grant ordered him to lead a campaign to "destroy anything useful to the South," and so Sherman led 60,000 Union troops in a march through Georgia, his famous "march to the sea," where his army methodically set fire to Southern warehouses and manufacturing centers. His most notorious act was the burining of Atlanta's city center, accounts of which are still subject of heated debate. The indisputable fact: most of the city was burned to the ground.
Braves:
In the fall of 1991 the Minnesota Twins improved on their last place showing to narrowly defeat the Oakland Athletics and win the American League Western Division. Advancing to the World Series, they met the Atlanta Braves, who had also finished last in their division the previous year, and watching the series was a focal point of my impressionable childhood days. I particularly remember watching the middle three games on TV and seeing the Atlanta fans doing "the tomahawk chop," a cheerled chant where thousands of supporters wave styrofoam tomahawks in a unison chopping motion to the sound of beating tribal drums. Recently rated by ESPN as the best World Series in baseball history, my sister and I got to watch Game 7 from two seats in Section 238, high over right
The Sunshine Coast Police Citizen's Youth Club Braves
field, way back in the upper deck. My sister was 8 and I was 13, that game was the first time I'd been allowed to go out unsupervised, and when the Left Fielder, Dan "The Dazzle Man" Gladden scored the series winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning, the crowd erupted. It felt like the whole world was screaming in unison, the sound bouncing off the swimming pool-esque concrete acoustics of the indoor stadium. I must have high-fived a hundred complete strangers during the hour it took to exit the Metrodome, find my parent's car, and head home.
The population of Georgia increased six-fold between 1790 and 1830, putting a lot of pressure on the tenuous relationship between the Cherokee nation and the European settlers. This pressure reached critical levels in 1828, when rumors broke that gold had been discovered in the North Georgia mountains, smack in the middle of Cherokee territory. At the time the Cherokee Nation had been one of the best examples of "Indian assimilation," living proof of the progress missionaries and educators had made in "civilizing" the natives. For example, Sequoiah, the chief for whom the famous trees were named, had pioneered a written alphabet for the Cherokee language, the first of its kind.
The baseball club that became the Atlanta Braves was founded in Boston in 1869, and is one of the oldest continuing organizations in American professional sports. In Boston the team went through a series of names,
The Crossville Braves of Crossville, Alabama
The Red Stockings, The Beaneaters, and The Doves, before finally settling on The Braves in 1912, although in 1936 the team name was changed to The Bees as a result of a fan poll and their playing field was called "The Beehive" until five years later when the club nixed the idea and readopted the Braves moniker. In 1953 the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee and stayed for thirteen years before relocating again to Atlanta, Georgia.
As a result of President Jackson's famous Indian Removal act of 1830, the entire population of Cherokee nation, spread throughout five states, were taken from their land, herded into spartan, makeshift forts, and forced to march a thousand miles to a new reservation in Oklahoma. At first the army commanders who supervised the march were largely indifferent to the harsh conditions, and losses of Cherokee women, children, and men were extremely high. After some time the head Cherokee Chief, John Ross, made an urgent appeal to General Scott, the commander of the relocation, requesting that the General let his people take over the march logistics. Ross organized the Cherokee into smaller groups and let them move separately through the wilderness so they could forage for food. All told, about 4,000 Cherokee died as a result of the removal, which they called nunna daul tsuny, or "The Trail Where They Cried." The paragraph in my school history book translated this as "The Trail of Tears."
