Sherman's March to the Sea
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
"Terrorism" is defined as "the use of violence to intimidate, especially for political purposes." There was not a little of this in the 1864 American Civil War campaign known as "Sherman's March to the Sea," in which U.S. (northern) troops marched from Atlanta--which they had burned on November 15--to Savannah on the Georgia coast.
Along the way, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his 62,000 men effected what since has been called a "scorched earth" tactic, leaving a wide swath of destruction that included factories and farms, public property and private land, roadways and railways. The 480-kilometer march took over a month, from November 15 to December 21.
Union Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln had both had misgivings about the strategy, but acquiesced to Sherman's plan to break the back of the Confederacy, especially as regarded the South's morale. Sherman wrote to his superiors that he wished to make Southerners "so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." "I can make this march, and I can make Georgia howl!" he assured Grant.
And howl they did. One lady referred to the general in her diary as "Sherman the brute," and elsewhere wrote of Sherman's army, "I wonder if the vengeance of heaven will not pursue such fiends! Before they came here I thought I hated them as much as was possible--now I know there are no limits to the feeling of hatred."
Of course, Sherman was not seeking hatred, but was willing to risk it. He saw his actions as a just response to the Confederacy for having started the war in the first place. Reflecting that sentiment, he later wrote in his memoirs: "We rode out of Atlanta by the Decatur road... [and] we naturally paused to look back upon the scenes of our past battles. We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle [of Atlanta] of July 22d, and could see the copse of wood where [General James B.] McPherson fell...." (McPherson, age 35, died in the battle.)
Four months after Sherman reached Savannah, the South surrendered.