WAR SHERMAN-STYLE

As far as Union Major General William T. Sherman was concerned, the Civil War had gone on long enough.

- Laura Phillips

He believed that Southerners’ willingness to fight had to be destroyed. The best way to do that, he thought, was to engage in “total war”—to make citizens feel the pain of war and hate it as much as he did. He believed that if Southern citizens experienced the horrors of war—and had to survive in the destruction left behind by an invading army that killed their horses and mules, tore up their railroads, and burned their factories—their support for the war and the Confederacy would fade quickly.

Sherman had applied this philosophy in his campaign through Georgia in the fall of 1864. In his famous March to the Sea, he cut his supply lines and told his army to live off the land. It was an effective and devastating military tactic. In places along Sherman’s route, citizens were left without food or shelter. Upon reaching the Atlantic coast and seizing Savannah in late December, Sherman spent the month of January 1865 preparing for his next move.

Pontoon bridges are temporary floating bridges that use a series of flatbottomed boats for support.

At first, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant planned to have the Union Navy transport Sherman’s army to join Grant and the Army of the Potomac in Virginia so that together they could defeat Confederate general Robert E. Lee. But Sherman proposed that he march his army through the Carolinas to Virginia. When not enough boats were available for his original plan, Grant approved Sherman’s suggestion.