By employing what later came to be known as the tactics of total war and doing almost everything possible to demoralize the enemy, General William Tecumseh Sherman carved a path of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas that materially moved the Union closer to victory in the U.S. Civil War.
Following his victory at Chattanooga, General Ulysses S. Grant went to Washington, D.C., where he was promoted to commander in chief of the Union army. His successor in the western theater was General William Tecumseh Sherman. In the spring of 1864, both generals launched new offensives. Grant advanced on General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
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Sherman began his own campaign on May 7, starting from Chattanooga with 100,000 troops and heading toward Atlanta
Despite having inferior numbers, Hood then attacked Sherman twice, at Peachtree Creek on July 20 and in the Battle of Atlanta on July 22. Hood lost 8,500 soldiers to Sherman’s loss of 3,700 and had to abandon Atlanta
General Grant, Union chief of staff Henry Halleck, and President Abraham Lincoln all wanted Sherman to follow Hood and to destroy his army. Instead, Sherman left a comparatively small force under George Thomas at Nashville and prepared to march across Georgia to the Atlantic port of Savannah. After burning Atlanta
Sherman’s men lived off the land. “Bummers” went out each morning to the flanks, collecting chickens, cows, vegetables, and whatever else they could find. Along the way, they burned down homes and buildings and destroyed the railroad system. Sherman was determined to see to it that Georgia’s civilians realized the horrors of war, and he succeeded. He also wished to cut off Lee’s
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. . . . I can make the march, and make Georgia howl.
Sherman’s troops pulling up railroad tracks in Atlanta, Georgia.
After Sherman reached Savannah on December 10, he sent President Lincoln a telegram stating that he wished to offer Savannah as “a Christmas present” to the commander in chief. After refitting his army with supplies carried from Washington by sea, he marched north into the Carolinas.
We can punish South Carolina as she deserves. . . . I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina to devastate that State, in the manner we have done in Georgia.
South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, was engulfed in flames in late February.
By late March, 1865, Sherman was in the middle of North Carolina
Lee,
With Johnston’s surrender to Sherman, the Civil War was effectively over. As Sherman, who earlier in his career had directed a Louisiana military school, explained succinctly, “The South bet on the wrong card and lost.” His fifty-seven-mile-wide path of destruction had demoralized the South’s population and, with Grant’s military success, helped hasten the war’s end. By that time, to many, the Civil War had become a total war, and this fact finally led to the Confederacy’s capitulation. Sherman’s march to the sea was also an early intimation of the German Blitzkrieg of World War II.
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Bailey, Anne J. War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah Campaign. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003. Chronicles Sherman’s March to the sea, from its inception in Atlanta to its culmination in Savannah, describing its impact upon Georgians. Bailey contends that the physical damage was less severe than the psychological horror inflicted by the march; the campaign depleted Southerners’ morale and spurred Confederate defeat. -
Boyd, David F. General W. T. Sherman as a College President. Baton Rouge: Ortlieb’s Printing House, 1910. Documents Sherman’s early service in the South and his fondness for the people of the region. -
Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. An eyewitness account of the destruction of the South’s heartland during Sherman’s march. -
Davis, Burke. Sherman’s March. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. This well-written narrative chronicles Sherman’s rapid march through Georgia and the Carolinas. -
Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. An excellent analysis of the makeup and attitudes of the common soldier in Sherman’s army during his marches. The author analyzes the soldiers’ views about their cause, black Southerners, white Southerners, camp life, and pillaging. -
Kennett, Lee. Sherman: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Generally sympathetic biography, focusing on Sherman’s military career, including descriptions of his military training and Civil War battles. -
Liddell Hart, Basil Henry. Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1929. Dated but still useful biography of Sherman by a leading authority on military history. -
Marszalek, John F. Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War Press. Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1981. Explores Sherman’s rocky relationship with the critical press. -
Osborn, Thomas W. The Fiery Trail. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. An examination of Sherman’s conception of total war. -
Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1875. Reprint. Introduction by William S. McFeely. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. Sherman’s controversial and absorbing account of his life from 1846 to the end of the Civil War, originally published in 1875. This is an essential source for gaining an understanding of Sherman’s perception of the battles in which he participated and the leaders with and against whom he fought.
Establishment of the Confederate States of America
U.S. Civil War
First Battle of Bull Run
Union Enacts the First National Draft Law
Battles of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga
Reconstruction of the South
Surrender at Appomattox and Assassination of Lincoln
Watie Is Last Confederate General to Surrender
Jefferson Davis; Ulysses S. Grant; Abraham Lincoln; William Tecumseh Sherman.