Russian-czarist brutality inspired Abraham Lincoln’s war against non-combatant, Confederate civilians

In May 1862, during Lincolns War (1861-1865), Col. John Basil Turchin encouraged his regiment, the 19th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, along with the 24th Illinois (a regiment of German immigrants), to carry out atrocities against the citizens of Athens, Alabama, and their property. These included stealing non-combatant-civilians property, burning buildings, and rape.

Turchin’s behavior represented an extreme break in the way military actions had been carried out in that war, until then, and for more than 200 years in Western Europe. Turchin’s commanding officer learned about the atrocities, and ordered Turchin court-martialed for them and for having his wife with him in the field. In the weeks after the Athens atrocities, Turchin openly disobeyed orders to protect all private property, and ordered his men to burn the nearest farm house when they were fired at from an ambush.

During a 10-day-long court martial, Turchin refused to refute the atrocity charges. He said, “I have to teach rebels that treachery to the Union is a terrible crime…My superior officers do not agree with my plans. They want the rebellion treated tenderly and gently. They may cashier me, but I shall appeal to the American people and implore them to wage this war in such a manner as will make humanity better for it.” Turchin was found guilty and dishonorably discharged, on August 6, 1862.

Turchin was born Ivan Vasilovitch Turchinoff, in Russia. He was graduated by Russia’s Imperial Military School; fought in Russia’s Hungarian campaign; was graduated from its general staff academy; reached the rank of colonel, during the Crimean War; and served as senior staff officer of the active corps. He immigrated to Chicago, in 1856 and changed his name. In June 1861, he was appointed a colonel of the 19th Illinois.

While the court martial met, Turchin’s policy of war against civilians began to win support in the midwestern U.S. states. The press praised him as a “man who handled our enemies roughly”. Turchin’s views were indicative of a basic change in U.S. opinion. In 1861, the U.S. had attacked the Confederacy to prevent its member states from leaving the U.S. union. It had also used military force to take over Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and separate western Virginia from Virginia. Slavery was not an issue for the U.S., and secession was thought to have been caused by a minority of southern leaders. After a year of fighting, however, most Illinois residents became convinced the Confederacy had extensive citizen support and defeating it would be a bloody struggle.

Many U.S. citizens opposed the war. Lincoln had the U.S. army summarily arrest at least 14,401 men that criticized him or his war and imprison them without trials, or try them by courts martial, and imprison or execute them. That was one in every 377 white men, aged 20 and older, in U.S. controlled states and territories.

Newspapers that supported the Republican Party, including the Chicago Tribune, strove to demonize Confederates by spreading false reports of atrocities against U.S. soldiers. They also wrote that Southerners were full of “the malignant fury and the foul lust of the savage” and, therefore, different than other Americans.

Turchin returned to Chicago, and a hero’s welcome. His wife went to see U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln and told how the Russian Imperial government attacked, killed, and destroyed everything useful to enemies when it waged war, and thus helped to shorten its wars. Destroying the homes, farms, live-stock, crops, and other property of non-combatant Confederate civilians would do the same.

Lincoln accepted Mrs. Turchin’s reasoning. U.S. armies had been able to move into the Confederacy, but could not defeat Confederate armies. Russia’s war policy offered a way to destroy the society that supported Confederate armies. So, Lincoln annulled Turchin’s dishonorable discharge and had him made a brigadier general commanding an Illinois regiment. In a Chicago hall packed with Republicans, politicians told the audience Turchin’s promotion meant “this kid glove business is all played out”.

U.S. military actions, in Lincolns War, began modern, total warfare, and included the slaughter of Indian men, women, and children during and after that war. Later came concentration camps and killing 300,000 Philippinos, during the U.S. conquest of the Philippines; blockading Germany, before U.S. entry into World War I, and knowingly causing civilian deaths there; bombing of German and Japanese cities, in World War II; bombing of North Korean towns and villages, during the Korean War; killing large numbers of Vietnamese civilians, during the U.S. phase of the Viet Nam War; deliberately killing Panamanian civilians, when invading Panama, in 1989; deliberately bombing of civilian targets, in Iraq, in 1991 and again in 2003 and after.

Demonizing enemies began in New England, when the Puritans arrived. It was flagrant, during the U.S. Revolution-Civil Wars (within colonies), but did not again become a national phenomena, until the U.S. press that supported Lincoln and the Republican Party began a campaign of lies and vilification of southerners (and Indians). From World War I on, the vehemence with which enemies have been vilified increased.

In 2005, in his book entitled The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," C. A. Tripp, Ph.D., gave psychological insight into Lincoln’s vicious departure from civilized warfare. Tripp, who worked closely with Alfred Kinsey, the groundbreaking American sexologist, used Kinsey’s 0-to-6 scale for classifying mixed sex patterns and found Lincoln was a classical 5, or predominantly homosexual, but incidentally heterosexual.

It is known today that violent crimes by homosexuals are much more violent than those committed by non-homosexuals. This information and Tripp’s classification, enables us to understand why Lincoln, a closet homosexual, had no compunctions about destroying Confederate society. (Lifelong depression aggravated Lincoln’s errant behavior.)