Sherman Unleashes Total War on Confederacy

Sherman Unleashes Total War on Confederacy

By Pat Horan

Nov. 12 marks the 150th anniversary of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous burning of Atlanta in the American Civil War.

Sherman had defeated Southern General John Bell Hood at the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864. After a long siege, the city finally fell on Sept. 2. Sherman’s victories were well-timed as they helped Abraham Lincoln sail to presidential victory that year against the “peace” candidate, Democrat and former Union General George McClellan (a few months earlier, Lincoln’s reelection hopes had seemed dim as the North had suffered heavy losses that summer at the Battles of the Crater and Cold Harbor).

By 1864, as commanding Union General Ulysses Grant and Confederate General Robert Lee became locked in stalemate, Sherman and Grant had come to understand that the conventional, Napoleonic style of warfare would not be enough to end the war without the American public losing morale. They decided that the Confederacy’s economic capacity and its will to fight had to be broken. He planned to march his army toward Savannah on the coast, destroying infrastructure and foraging for supplies along the way.

Meanwhile, Hood decided to wheel around Sherman and cut off his supply and communications lines that ran back to Chattanooga, Tenn. He maneuvered through Alabama and into Tennessee, hoping he could force Sherman into a battle, defeat him, move north, and eventually come to the aid of Lee, who was besieged at Petersburg, Va. But instead of pursuing him, Sherman dispatched General George Thomas, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, to fight Hood, Thomas’ former pupil at West Point, in the Franklin-Nashville campaign.

Before the march, Sherman gave the order to burn the Atlanta’s government buildings and anything of military value. Next to Richmond, Atlanta was arguably the most important city within the Confederacy because of its industrial sector and its transportation hub. Two months earlier, the sandy haired and bearded commander had ordered the evacuation of the city and had written to the mayor and city council, where he famously declared:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. 

Although he had initially planned to burn the city’s churches along with the government buildings, a Catholic priest named Thomas O’Reilly successfully appealed to General Henry Slocum, who persuaded Sherman to rescind the order. O’Reilly threatened to foment mutiny among the Irishmen fighting for the North. When Atlanta residents returned to the city, they found the churches as a place of refuge in the ruined city.

Sherman’s forces left Atlanta on the morning of Nov. 15. The March to the Sea consisted of two wings: one commanded by Slocum and the other commanded by General Oliver Howard (who later founded Howard University). With Hood moving toward Tennessee, there was little Southern resistance. 

Sherman gave explicit instructions on the conduct of the March. Soldiers received permission to forage for food and other supplies, including mules, horses, and wagons as needed. Only corps commanders could order the destruction of mills, houses, cotton-gins, and other structures. Soldiers were not to enter homes or to destroy property in areas with no resistance. Former slaves could be taken along, but only if the commanders determined they had sufficient supplies.

For two months, Sherman’s armies laid waste to the industrial and agricultural heartland of the Confederacy. Railway rails were heated and then twisted into loops, nicknamed “Sherman’s neckties.” The destruction of rail and telegraph lines throughout Georgia crippled much of the South’s ability to move resources and communicate.

Many Southerners reviled his “scorched earth” tactics, while others saw them as necessary to the end of the war. Sherman’s tactics along with those used by Union cavalry commander Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley are seen as the first use of modern total warfare. While Sherman’s tactics were brutal, a few cities, including Augusta, Madison, and Savannah were spared. Rumors spread that Sherman had saved these places because he had friends and former girlfriends there.

One of the most notorious incidents during the March was the abandonment of freed slaves at Ebenezer Creek in December. As the Union armies closed in on Savannah, thousands of former slaves had anxiously followed them. At Ebenezer Creek, with Confederate cavalry nearby, Union General Jefferson C. Davis’ corps waited as engineers built a pontoon bridge. Davis promised to let over six hundred blacks cross the river after the Northern soldiers, but instead, he ordered the pontoon bridge to be cut after all of his forces had crossed.

The freed slaves, caught in between the river and the approaching rebels, frantically attempted to swim across the icy, cold creek or to use logs as make-shift ferries. Many drowned. Those who did not attempt the crossing were enslaved once again. Despite complaints brought to the U.S. War Department, Davis, who had Sherman’s backing, was never punished for his actions.

Within a month, the Union armies had reached the outskirts of Savannah. After forcing the Confederates to abandon their position lest they be cut off, Sherman took the coastal city on Dec. 21. Telegramming President Lincoln, Sherman proclaimed his capture, “a Christmas gift.” In the fall and early winter of 1864, Sherman had dealt a critical blow to the Confederacy. He would then turn north toward the Carolinas where he would engage General Joseph Johnston, while continuing his tactics of destroying everything of military value along the way, until the war’s end in April 1865.

Pat Horan is a research associate at RealClearPolitics and a contributor at RealClearHistory. He is a recent graduate of the College of the Holy Cross.