SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA

SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA. From 15 November to 21 December 1864 the Union general William T. Sherman and his 62,000 soldiers waged a purposeful war of destruction in Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah. Sherman destroyed property to convince Southerners that their cause was hopeless and that they should surrender. He believed that this psychological warfare would end the Civil War more quickly and with less loss of life than traditional battlefield conflicts.

Sherman began the march following his successful capture of Atlanta on 2 September 1864. When the Confederate general John Bell Hood tried to cut Sherman's railroad supply line, forcing Sherman to chase him, Sherman decided to try a new approach. He proposed to leave sixty thousand soldiers under General George H. Thomas to handle Hood. Cutting himself off from the railroad, Sherman intended to live off the land while waging a psychological war of destruction. The commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant, reluctantly went along with the plan.

Implementing the strategy he had used in the Meridian, Mississippi, campaign (3 February to 4 March 1864), Sherman divided his army into two wings, the right or southern wing under O. O. Howard and the left or

northern wing under Henry W. Slocum. Judson Kilpa-trick commanded the cavalry, which acted as a screen for the marching army. The two wings moved along separate paths from twenty to fifty miles apart, in four parallel corps columns, the left wing moving toward Augusta and the right wing toward Macon. They merged at Milledgeville, the state capital, and at Savannah. With no major Confederate army in the state, Joe Wheeler's Confederate cavalry and the weak Georgia militia provided ineffective opposition.

Sherman did not burn Atlanta to the ground when he began his march, and he did not destroy everything in his path through Georgia. His army systematically destroyed only property connected with the Confederate war effort, Union prisoners of war, or slavery. However, Sherman's Union soldiers, Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, deserters from both sides, fugitive slaves, and pillaging Southern civilians wantonly destroyed property. The anarchy aided Sherman's psychological cause and resulted in heavy though not total damage. Military and civilian casualties were extremely low. When Sherman completed his march, he offered the captured city of Savannah to Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present. Meanwhile Thomas crushed Hood at the battle of Nashville on 15 December 1864.

Sherman's march to the sea brought the Civil War home to Southern civilians. Few became casualties, but many lost property and felt demoralized. In Virginia, desertions in Robert E. Lee's army increased. Sherman's psychological warfare of destruction had a major effect on the outcome of the war. It also made Sherman a brute to many Southerners and a hero to Union supporters. By the twenty-first century the purpose for the march was forgotten, but Sherman's methods remained the subject of spirited debate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bailey, Anne J. The Chessboard of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

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.

Kennett, Lee. Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman's Campaign. New York: Harper-Collins, 1995.

Marszalek, John F. Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order. New York: Free Press, 1993.

John F.Marszalek

See alsoAtlanta Campaign ; Nashville, Battle of ; Savannah, Siege of (1864) .

March to the Sea, Sherman's a five-week, 285–mile raid from Atlanta to Savannah in late 1864 that ultimately devastated the Confederate morale. Displaying a rare grasp of psychological warfare, Gen. William T. Sherman, with somewhat reluctant support from President Abraham Lincoln and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, instructed his troops to destroy crops and property, especially that of the planter class, but to leave citizens physically unharmed. Despite Sherman's characteristic bravado and occasionally undisciplined troops—and notwithstanding what his superiors labeled the treasonous peace terms he negotiated with Confederate leaders—the march probably saved lives and shortened the war, and certainly punctured Southern hopes for victory.

SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA

From mid-November to late December, 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman led 62,000 Union soldiers on a march through Georgia towards the sea, leaving in their wake a trail of destruction sixty miles wide. During this Civil War (1861–1865) expedition, which started in Atlanta and ended in the port-city of Savannah, Sherman and his men sought to demolish not only the state's military resources but also its economic structure. The Union troops worked to cut off food supplies by setting fire to cities; stripping fields, barns, and houses; and raiding villages for food and livestock. The men laid waste to Georgia's commercial infrastructure city-by-city. Sherman's ultimate goal was to crush the Confederate states' will to fight, and his tactics were merciless and un-relenting. The war did not end here, however, though the general's campaign did accomplish nearly all of its objectives. The march was long remembered as an epic gesture of violence that swept the North toward its victory.

General Sherman, the son of a Supreme Court justice, hailed from Lancaster, Ohio. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Sherman served as second lieutenant in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) in Florida, then as first lieutenant on assignment in South Carolina. At the onset of the Mexican War in 1846, he was assigned to the Pacific Division in California. In 1853 he resigned from the military and set out for San Francisco, where he briefly pursued a banking career; economic unrest in California, however, put an end to that venture in 1857. After another short-lived career as a lawyer in Kansas, Sherman returned to his former vocation in the army accepting a superintendent post at the state military academy in Alexandria, Louisiana. Upon that state's secession from the Union in January 1861, Sherman went north out of loyalty. In May of that year he was appointed colonel of the 13th infantry, beginning a decorated Civil War career.

After fighting at Bull Run in July 1861, Sherman rose to the position of brigadier general of volunteers. His first campaign in Kentucky was unsuccessful, which earned him a reputation for being unstable and manic-depressive. In April 1862, he regained the confidence of his peers following a victory at the Battle of Shiloh. Promoted to major general, Sherman took charge of the Union troops that occupied Memphis, Tennessee, in 1862. The following year, after a victory under Lieutenant General (and post-war president) Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi, he rose again in the ranks, assuming command of the Army of Tennessee. But it was in Atlanta, Georgia, that Sherman secured his place as a key figure in the war. His 1864 campaign, which lasted from May to September, ultimately ravaged the metropolis—fire consumed numerous buildings, and the Union soldiers used brute force to demolish or disable the city's machinery. It was this destruction of the commercial infrastructure of the South for which Sherman became known and feared.

The general's march through Georgia represented a continuation of his "total war" strategy. Leaving the burning city of Atlanta behind, he led two massive columns of troops, which operated under Generals Oliver H. Howard and Henry W. Slocum, on an eastward course. Supplying his men only with bread, Sherman organized raiding parties that allowed them to live off the food and livestock of the land. In a December 16 letter to Lieutenant General Grant, Sherman described in explicit detail the way in which his troops weakened Georgia's cities while reinforcing themselves: "We started with about 5,000 head of cattle, and arrived with over 10,000; of course, consuming mostly turkeys, chickens, sheep, hogs, and the cattle of the country. As to mules and horses, we left Atlanta with about 2,500 wagons, and our transportation is now in superb condition."

After Atlanta Sherman set out for Milledgeville, where his high-spirited men held a mock court session in which they repealed Georgia's secession ordinance. From Milledgeville they went on to the state capital, then to Sandersville, Louisville, and Millen, ravaging and pillaging along the way. Wildly outnumbered by Sherman's men, the Confederate troops could do little to halt the trend of violence. Ultimately, on December 21, 1864, Sherman ended his hell-raising march just as he had planned: by nearly demolishing Savannah, the port city at the end of his route. The victory followed a campaign to cut-off food supplies to the city and to take possession of its rice fields and mills. After a 10-day siege Sherman forced out the Confederates and took control of the city, presenting it grandly to President Lincoln as a "Christmas present."

In the end Sherman estimated that his Georgia campaign amounted to $100 million in damages. A large portion of that sum represented the destruction of the state's economic resources, which crippled its cities and left them open to occupation by Union forces. Pleased with the success of his total-war campaign, Sherman went on to organize an equally devastating march through the Carolinas. Although the general found much of his strength in numbers, he refused to take on African American soldiers. Clearly racist, he disburdened his troops of freed slaves, issuing an order that allowed them to inhabit land rather than join the war. Nevertheless, the general succeeded in his campaigns. Sherman went on to vanquish Confederate troops under Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph Johnston, and, in 1869, to succeed Lieutenant General Grant as commander of the U.S. Army.

See also: Civil War (Economic Impact of), War and the Economy

FURTHER READING

Barrett, John Gilchrist. Sherman's March Through the Carolinas. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Burke, Davis, Jeff Stone, ed., and Carolyn Reidy, ed. Sherman's March. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

Dictionary of American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976, s.v. "Sherman's March to the Sea."

Marszlek, John F. Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Royster, Charles. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

you cannot qualify war in harsher terms than i will. war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

william tecumseh sherman, letter to the mayor of atlanta, september 12, 1864

Sherman's March to the Sea the march of an army of 62,000 men under the command of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman from Atlanta toward Savannah, Georgia in the final months 1864. He left in his wake a path of almost total destruction. It is often cited as the first example of total war and an inspiration for the German blitzkrieg.