Sherman's March to the Sea
From November to December 1864, after capturing and burning much of Atlanta, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman led some 60,000 men on a 'March to the Sea', cutting loose from his supply lines to drive roughly 300 miles across Georgia to capture Savannah. His army lived off the land and systematically destroyed railroads, factories, plantations, crops and anything of military or economic value in a swathe up to sixty miles wide. The campaign was a deliberate strategy of 'hard war': by wrecking the Confederacy's capacity to feed and equip its armies and by demonstrating that the Richmond government could not protect its own heartland, Sherman aimed to break Southern will as much as Southern armies. He continued the destruction northward through the Carolinas in 1865. The march became both a model of modern total war and an enduring symbol of the war's devastation in Southern memory.
- Year: 1864 CE
- Category: Military
