Sunday, November 15, 2009

This Day in Civil War History (Sherman Leaves Atlanta Burning on His “March to the Sea”)


November 15, 1864—Breaking away from vulnerable supply lines, dealing a blow to Confederate morale from which it could never recover, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman left a burning Atlanta behind and set off on the campaign that transformed the Civil War irrevocably into a total war: the March to the Sea, from the Deep South’s bustling commercial and industrial complex to the stately coastal city of Savannah.

Sherman’s description of the scene 11 years after the event in his Memoirs emits an odd beauty for such a harsh event: “Behind us lay Atlanta, smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Away off in the distance, on the McDonough Road, was the rear of [General O.O.] Howard’s column, the gun barrels glistening in the sun, the white-topped wagons stretching away to the south, and right before us the XIV Corps marching steadily and rapidly, with a cheery look and swinging pace that made light of the thousand miles that lay between us and Richmond.”

Much like superior and friend Ulysses S. Grant, Sherman possessed a restless military intellect that emphasized movement in his armies. Ever since he had taken Atlanta in September, the Confederacy had been encouraging this instinct, not realizing the terrible consequences they would reap.

The rebels’ General John Bell Hood might have been licked in three successive bloody actions before Sherman entered the city, but the one-armed Southerner could still harass Federal supplies, a single railroad line that stretched all the way back to Nashville, Tennessee. And Confederate President Jefferson Davis engaged in much big talk given the desperate circumstances of his government, suggesting that Sherman might find himself in the same position as the post-Moscow Napoleon.

The unflappable Grant was having none of this: Who will supply the snow? he had asked, with typical matter-of-factness.

But Sherman was a different matter. He was tiring of this military version of trash-talking, itching to end a conflict that had unleashed almost every demon of destruction he had predicted to Southern friends before Fort Sumter—and smarting from criticism he perceived as more than a little hypocritical.

The Union general, fearing that city residents would constitute a drain on the resources of his army, proposed that they be relocated away from this war zone. Hood, assenting to the order with reluctance, protested that “the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war.”

Sherman’s response began with cool logic (his relocation of civilians outside the war zone was more humane than the actions of Hood and fellow generals Joseph Johnston and William Hardee, who defended the city perilously close to civilians) before unleashing the most ferocious rhetorical power levied by a military commander against the other side in the war:

“You who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war—dark and cruel war—who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of peaceful ordnance-sergeants…; tried to force Kentucky and Missouri into rebellion, spite of themselves; falsified the vote of Louisiana; …expelled Union families by the thousands, burned their houses, and declared, by an act of Congress, the confiscation of all debts due Northern men for goods had and received! Talk thus to the marines, but not to me…If we must be enemies, let us be men, and fight it out as we propose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical appeals to God and humanity.”

By this time, Sherman was not so determined to eliminate Hood as a fighting force—he would detach part of his army for General George H. Thomas to pursue the Confederate to Nashville—but had instead resolved on a far bolder step. At least partly inspired by Grant’s campaign at Vicksburg, when the Union commander had cut loose from his supply lines and lived off the countryside, Sherman proposed to do something similar, except to march eastward through Georgia.

“It is overwhelming to my mind,” Sherman wrote Grant, "that there are thousands of people abroad and in the South who reason thus: If the North can march an army right through the South, it is proof positive that the North can prevail.”

Hadn’t you better take care of Hood first? Grant inquired. But, after being convinced that Thomas’ forces could handle the Southerner, Grant assented.

We know—or think we know—how Sherman’s strategem turned out, from the famous scene of the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind. But that fire resulted from two decisions: 1) the Confederates burned ordnance and anything else of military value; and 2), Northern engineers were instructed to leave residences alone, but to torch public buildings, depots and arsenals.

The resulting sight would remain etched in the memory of anyone, North or South, who witnessed it. Capt. Daniel Oakey of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteers would later write: “Sixty thousand of us witnessed the destruction of Atlanta, while our post band and that of the 33rd Massachusetts played martial airs and operatic selections. It was a sight never to be forgotten. Our regular routine was a mere form, and there could be no ‘taps’ amid the brilliant glare and excitement.”
In his memoirs, Sherman stressed that the conflagration "did not reach the parts of Atlanta where the courthouse was, or the great mass of dwelling-houses." The citizens of Atlanta might have begged to differ on the last part of that statement.

After Sherman left, Confederate colonel W.P. Howard reported to the governor of Georgia. Railroads, foundries, shops, mills, schools, hotels and business offices were completely destroyed, and, despite Sherman’s order about residences, "from four to five thousand houses" were burned. Only 400 homes were left standing.

Now Sherman set his eyes toward the coast. His troops proceeded out of the city in two columns, with anything that could slow them down—including the wounded—left behind. The resulting army, Oakey wrote, was reduced to “fighting trim.”

Using two columns instead of one was a bit unorthodox, but not entirely unlike Robert E. Lee’s daring decision to split his army in the face of the enemy at Chancellorsville. A large, concentrated army would be easier to block and harass, making it harder to pass through choke points on roads. Two columns would make it harder for the Confederates to guess their destinations—Macon or Augusta—and concentrate on that particular point. Finally, the path of destruction—60 miles wide at points—would be greater.

Not just the North and South, but the entire world watched in astonishment as Sherman’s plans unfolded. The British Army and Navy Gazette accurately summarized the state of foreign opinion on this: “If Sherman has really left his army in the air and started off without a base to march from Georgia to South Carolina, he has done one of the most brilliant or one of the most foolish things ever performed by a military leader. The data on which he goes and the plan on which he acts must really place him among the great Generals or the very little ones.”

A hundred years later, with the benefit of hindsight, another British military expert, Basil Liddell Hart, would write in American Heritage Magazine that Sherman was “the world’s first modern ‘man of war.’”


Union troops took minimal provisions and foraged through the countryside for the rest.
Moreover, with a heightened appreciation of the possibilities and challenges offered by modern communications, Sherman not only split off from his own railroad line but ensured that the Confederates couldn’t use their own. His troops ripped up railroad tracks, then heated them and twisted them around trees in what came to be called “Sherman’s neckties.”

Four weeks after starting out, Sherman reached Savannah, succeeding in his desire not just to “make the Confederacy howl,” but to break the will of the South. However much he might have meant it that his campaign was designed to end the war swiftly and forestall further bloodshed, it had brought significant suffering to civilians. His March to the Sea, occurring in late fall, meant that thousands would be turned out of home with winter approaching. He had blurred traditional lines between damage dealt to soldiers and the toll on civilians.
You cannot help reading his self-justifications and weighing the damage he created without thinking of the denouement of WWII in the South Pacific. In that later conflict, the U.S. faced an enemy whose offenses--not just the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but the "Rape of Nanking" perpetrated beforehand and the Bataan Death March afterward--exceeded any outrage Sherman cited to General Hood. And yet, no matter how many lives were saved through the shortening of the conflict, the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki created far more damage than could ever be justified.

War as Sherman practiced it, and as others did, following his lead, in the 20th century was, as he later said, in perhaps his most quotable line, “hell.”

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