Today in History—November 15: General Sherman Begins His March to the Sea

Hard war. Scorched earth. Later generations would call it “shock and awe”: On this day in 1864, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led some 62,000 Union troops on a campaign of physical and psychological destruction from Atlanta to Savannah—the modern era’s first example of “total war.”

The American Civil War had entered its final stages.

Sherman had previewed his strategy during the Atlanta Campaign, which forced the city’s surrender. With the Confederate war machine on its knees, Sherman proposed to twist the knife. He wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: “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.”

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Grant was initially skeptical, but Sherman was persuasive—the destruction of Georgia’s economic and industrial power would be “proof positive that the North can prevail in this contest.” In early November, Grant agreed: Sherman would march from Atlanta toward the Atlantic, effectively cutting the Confederacy in half.

Sherman’s troops, divided into two wings to obfuscate their final destination, would travel light. According to his plan, the army should live off the land and “forage liberally on the country during the march.” Approved foraging parties gathered supplies, while rogue soldiers known as “bummers” looted and terrorized civilians. Though prohibited, their conduct reinforced the objective of Sherman’s psychological campaign: The Confederacy could not protect its people.

Confederate resistance would be met with destruction—“a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.” Union soldiers wreaked havoc with relatively little fighting. There were fewer than 3,000 casualties during the march.

Sherman’s drive to the sea was catastrophic for Georgia’s white residents, but it brought military emancipation to enslaved people along the route. Under the Second Confiscation Act, people enslaved by those supporting the Confederacy were “forever free” in areas occupied by the Union Army. Freedom seekers followed Sherman’s troops east, some clearing roads ahead of the march. The throngs of freedmen and women only compounded white Georgians’ despair.

The 37-day campaign ended on December 21 with Savannah’s surrender. Sherman telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah.”

With the end of the war in sight, Sherman turned north to the Carolinas, again unleashing the full destructive power of the Union Army.