Shermans March to the Sea followed his successful Atlanta Campaign of May to September 1864. He and the U.S. Army commander, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacys strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken.[2] Sherman therefore planned an operation that has been compared to the modern principles of scorched earth warfare, or total war. Although his formal orders (excerpted below) specified controls over destruction of infrastructure in areas in which his army was unmolested by guerrilla activity, he recognized that supplying an army through liberal foraging would have a destructive effect on the morale of the civilian population it encountered in its wide sweep through the state.[3] The second objective of the campaign was more traditional. Grants armies in Virginia continued in a stalemate against Robert E. Lees army, besieged in Petersburg, Virginia. By moving in Lees rear and performing a massive turning movement against him, Sherman could possibly increase pressure on Lee, allowing Grant the opportunity to break through, or at least keep Southern reinforcements away from Virginia.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:25:31 +0000
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