29. A Nineteenth-Century Scorched Earth Campaign
By the autumn of 1864, the Civil War had dragged on for more than three bloody years, with a horrendous and steadily mounting toll in blood and treasure. Both the Union Army’s commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, and his friend General William T. Sherman realized that the conflict could only end if the Confederacy lost its ability to wage war. So Sherman planned an operation comparable in broad outline to modern scorched earth campaigns. He and his army would strike out from Atlanta and march along a broad front across the heart of Georgia.
They would live off the land and destroy all infrastructure in their path that was useful to the Confederate war effort. 62,000 Bluecoats marched out of Atlanta, which they left a smoldering ruin. They then divided into two columns, abandoned their supply lines and plunged into the Peach State. As Sherman put it, he wanted to “make Georgia howl“, and how it did. Union forces advanced along a sixty-mile front, wrecked military targets along the way, destroyed industry and infrastructure, lived off the land, and – against Sherman’s orders – looted civilian property. It conclusively demonstrated that the Confederacy was a hollow shell, incapable of protecting its heartland or citizens.