Sherman's March to the Sea

Date November 15, 1864-April 18, 1865

By employing what later came to be known as the tactics of total war and doing almost everything possible to demoralize the enemy, General William Tecumseh Sherman carved a path of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas that materially moved the Union closer to victory in the U.S. Civil War.

Locale Georgia; Carolinas

Key Figures

• Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), commander of the Union forces at Vicksburg and Chattanooga
• William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), commander of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee
• Oliver O. Howard (1830-1909), commander of Sherman’s right wing
• Henry Warner Slocum (1827-1894), commander of Sherman’s left wing
• Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891), first commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee
• John Bell Hood (1831-1879), Johnston’s replacement
• Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia

Summary of Event

Following his victory at Chattanooga, General Ulysses S. Grant went to Washington, D.C., where he was promoted to commander in chief of the Union army. His successor in the western theater was General William Tecumseh Sherman. In the spring of 1864, both generals launched new offensives. Grant advanced on General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia , and Sherman moved against General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. Grant spent the spring and summer fighting Lee in northern Virginia, where his men suffered heavy casualties but forced the Confederates to fall back. By fall, the Union forces were besieging the Confederate capital at Richmond in overwhelming numbers.

Sherman began his own campaign on May 7, starting from Chattanooga with 100,000 troops and heading toward Atlanta. Johnston, his opponent, had a strength of about 62,000. Johnston used delaying tactics, refusing to fight a major battle and falling back toward Atlanta. Johnston’s tactics—which are called “Fabian,” after the ancient Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, who defeated Hannibal by avoiding decisive confrontations in the Second Punic War—exasperated Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who replaced him with John Bell Hood.

Despite having inferior numbers, Hood then attacked Sherman twice, at Peachtree Creek on July 20 and in the Battle of Atlanta on July 22. Hood lost 8,500 soldiers to Sherman’s loss of 3,700 and had to abandon Atlanta. Hood then slipped around Sherman’s flank, heading toward the Union supply dumps at Chattanooga and Nashville, Tennessee.

General Grant, Union chief of staff Henry Halleck, and President Abraham Lincoln all wanted Sherman to follow Hood and to destroy his army. Instead, Sherman left a comparatively small force under George Thomas at Nashville and prepared to march across Georgia to the Atlantic port of Savannah. After burning Atlanta, he began the march on November 15. With Hood moving against Thomas in Nashville—where Hood eventually lost most of his army—the Confederates could oppose Sherman’s 60,000 troops with only 13,000 soldiers, mostly cavalry. Sherman advanced in two wings, brushing all opposition aside. Oliver O. Howard commanded his right wing, and Henry Warner Slocum commanded the left wing.

Sherman’s men lived off the land. “Bummers” went out each morning to the flanks, collecting chickens, cows, vegetables, and whatever else they could find. Along the way, they burned down homes and buildings and destroyed the railroad system. Sherman was determined to see to it that Georgia’s civilians realized the horrors of war, and he succeeded. He also wished to cut off Lee’s food supply and encourage desertion in the Army of Northern Virginia. He hoped that Confederate soldiers would want to return to their homes to protect them from his “bummers.” As Sherman expressed his philosophy,

Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it; but the utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their military resources. . . . I can make the march, and make Georgia howl.

After Sherman reached Savannah on December 10, he sent President Lincoln a telegram stating that he wished to offer Savannah as “a Christmas present” to the commander in chief. After refitting his army with supplies carried from Washington by sea, he marched north into the Carolinas. Again his troops, facing no major opposition, devastated the countryside. The Northern troops were even more ruthless in South Carolina than they had been in Georgia, since they tended to blame South Carolina, the first state to secede, for the war. As Sherman put it,

We can punish South Carolina as she deserves. . . . I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina to devastate that State, in the manner we have done in Georgia.

South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia, was engulfed in flames in late February.

By late March, 1865, Sherman was in the middle of North Carolina , where his old Confederate opponent, Joseph Johnston, had scraped together a small force to resist him. In Virginia, meanwhile, Grant had forced Lee to abandon Richmond and retreat toward western Virginia. By early April, Grant was in close pursuit.

Lee, with his army almost gone as a result of starvation and desertion, surrendered on April 9 at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. By then, the proud Army of Northern Virginia was reduced to a force of 26,700, while Grant still had nearly 113,000 troops. Johnston, with the major Confederate army gone, decided to follow Lee’s example, and on April 18 he signed an armistice with Sherman.

Significance

With Johnston’s surrender to Sherman, the Civil War was effectively over. As Sherman, who earlier in his career had directed a Louisiana military school, explained succinctly, “The South bet on the wrong card and lost.” His fifty-seven-mile-wide path of destruction had demoralized the South’s population and, with Grant’s military success, helped hasten the war’s end. By that time, to many, the Civil War had become a total war, and this fact finally led to the Confederacy’s capitulation. Sherman’s march to the sea was also an early intimation of the German Blitzkrieg of World War II.

Bibliography

Bailey, Anne J. War and Ruin: William T. Sherman and the Savannah Campaign. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003. Chronicles Sherman’s March to the sea, from its inception in Atlanta to its culmination in Savannah, describing its impact upon Georgians. Bailey contends that the physical damage was less severe than the psychological horror inflicted by the march; the campaign depleted Southerners’ morale and spurred Confederate defeat.

Boyd, David F. General W. T. Sherman as a College President. Baton Rouge: Ortlieb’s Printing House, 1910. Documents Sherman’s early service in the South and his fondness for the people of the region.

Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. An eyewitness account of the destruction of the South’s heartland during Sherman’s march.

Davis, Burke. Sherman’s March. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. This well-written narrative chronicles Sherman’s rapid march through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns. New York: New York University Press, 1985. An excellent analysis of the makeup and attitudes of the common soldier in Sherman’s army during his marches. The author analyzes the soldiers’ views about their cause, black Southerners, white Southerners, camp life, and pillaging.

Kennett, Lee. Sherman: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Generally sympathetic biography, focusing on Sherman’s military career, including descriptions of his military training and Civil War battles.

Liddell Hart, Basil Henry. Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1929. Dated but still useful biography of Sherman by a leading authority on military history.

Marszalek, John F. Sherman’s Other War: The General and the Civil War Press. Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1981. Explores Sherman’s rocky relationship with the critical press.

Osborn, Thomas W. The Fiery Trail. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. An examination of Sherman’s conception of total war.

Sherman, William T. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1875. Reprint. Introduction by William S. McFeely. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. Sherman’s controversial and absorbing account of his life from 1846 to the end of the Civil War, originally published in 1875. This is an essential source for gaining an understanding of Sherman’s perception of the battles in which he participated and the leaders with and against whom he fought.