Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman marched 60,000 men from Atlanta to the sea in November and December 1864, cut loose from his supply lines, and made the war unbearable for civilians. He had taken Atlanta in September, burned its military resources, and then proposed something the army had not done: abandon his railroad, live off the country, and march 285 miles to Savannah through the heart of Georgia. Grant and Lincoln were doubtful and let him go. The reasoning was explicit in his own letters. The Confederate armies could not be beaten faster than the South could replace their will to fight, so the war had to be carried to the population that sustained them. The army moved in four columns on a front up to sixty miles wide, with orders to forage liberally, to destroy mills, cotton gins, railroads and anything of military use, and to distinguish — in the orders, at least — between hostile and peaceable districts. Track was heated and twisted round trees into what the soldiers called Sherman's neckties. The looting exceeded the orders, and the destruction is estimated at a hundred million dollars, of which Sherman reckoned four-fifths pure waste. Thousands of enslaved people left with the columns; at Ebenezer Creek a general pulled up the pontoons behind him and left them to Confederate cavalry. He reached Savannah at Christmas and offered it to Lincoln as a present, then turned north into South Carolina, where the troops were harsher still. He reached Savannah at Christmas and offered it to Lincoln as a present, then turned north into South Carolina, where the troops were harsher still because it was the state that had seceded first. Columbia burned in February 1865, and who set the fire is still argued over. The march is the standard reference point in the argument about where hard war ends and war on civilians begins.
- Year: 1864 CE
- Category: Military
