Shermans March to the Sea
On November 15th, 1864 Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the Grand Army of the West, embarked on a raid which would become known as the march to the sea designed to cut a 60 mile wide swath from Atlanta to Savannah. Once in Savannah he would turn north through South and North Carolina and on into Virginia to help Grant defeat Lee at Richmond. As Sherman's soldiers were leaving Atlanta, now in flames, they went forward with the intent of shortening the Civil War. Sherman's troops accomplished this with a brand of warfare seen only sporadically in the previous four years of battle. Sherman decided to turn his attention on destroying the "enemy's war economy" (Oates, 1998, p.594), going after the infrastructure of the South. Along the way his troops burned, pillaged, stole personal belongings, and confiscate possessions and property of the civilian population. Did the end justify the means and was this a just course of action? By November 1864, the Civil War had seen gruesome days to be sure. By the end of the war the total number of soldiers killed in combat and by disease and other non-combat re
Hood attacked Sherman almost immediately, launching several failed attacks intended to push Sherman away from Atlanta. Bibliography ReferencesCarter, S. This actually is a very commendable and noble goal. This act is, in military justice, illegal. Did the end justify the means? Sherman had other options when he was in Atlanta. Enraged, he made a group of Confederate prisoners use picks and shovels to uncover the rest of the mines in the road, even though they insisted that they had no idea that they were even there. While his intention was not to disturb civilian homes on the march, he would in fact authorize the burning of homes if it was found that owners had willfully destroyed crops or other things which the Union army could use. Even though Hood was defeated at Atlanta as Robert E. Both Patton and Sherman are considered to be among the greatest generals this country has ever produced. New York: Harpers Collins Publishers.
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