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

William Sherman's March to the Sea. In November, 1864, Sherman began a march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, carving a sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction. His goal was to use destruction to convince Southerners to stop fighting and return to the Union © BETTMANN/CORBIS

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...