Sherman's March to the Sea

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After his capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman undertook a military campaign that helped end the Civil War and establish his historical reputation. He sent one part of his triumphant army under General George H. Thomas to defeat John Bell Hood's Confederate forces in Tennessee and himself took 62,000 men to bring the war home to a twenty- to sixty-mile-wide section of Georgia between

Atlanta and Savannah. From November 15 to December 21, 1864, Sherman used a war of destruction to try to convince Southerners to stop the fighting and return to the Union. He promised them a hard war if they kept resisting but a soft peace if they quit.

Sherman divided his 62,000-man force into two wings and marched them along separate paths through Georgia. He feinted toward Macon and Augusta but bypassed those cities. His two wings came together only at the war capital of Milledgeville and finally again near Savannah. There were scarcely 8,000 Confederate soldiers in his path, and he so thoroughly confused them that their opposition was negligible.

Upon departure, Sherman's soldiers had with them twenty days' rations and a herd of 3,000 cattle. Otherwise they lived off the countryside, Sherman having used census figures to determine that there was enough food in his line of march to feed his army. Each wing traveled about fifteen miles per day, throwing foragers (called bummers) out in all directions to bring in supplies for the marching troops. Sherman prohibited useless destruction, but his men did take or destroy much material that was not needed for the army's survival. Whenever his troops arrived in an area, thousands of slaves left their bondage, eventually following the army to the coast, creating further chaos for white Georgians.

Sherman did not practice total war in the modern sense of the term. He brought the harshness of war to the civilian populace, but he did so to avoid further bloody conflict. He wanted to end the fighting as quickly as possible, and he believed that an attack on the Southern psyche through property destruction was the best way—the quickest and least bloody way—to accomplish this end.

White Southerners, however, did not see it that way. White Southern civilians were shocked and frightened at what they experienced in Georgia or heard about from a distance. Although Confederate General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry, Southern army deserters, fugitive slaves, and looting civilians did their share of damage, white Southerners blamed Sherman exclusively and considered him brutish for his brand of warfare. Blacks, on the other hand, viewed him as a deliverer.

Sherman's march to the sea helped bring the war to an end more quickly, and it played an important role in later white Southern attitudes. The pro-Confederate Lost Cause view of the Civil War places great reliance on castigating Sherman and his soldiers as villains, in contrast to the saintliness it attributes to Robert E. Lee and the heroism it attributes to the Confederate soldiers. Sherman's greatest influence on white Southerners was not merely the physical destruction he caused, but also the psychological scar he left behind.

Confederate States of America; Lost Cause.

Bailey, Anne. War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah Campaign. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman's Troops in the Savannah and Carolina's Campaign. 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.

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