How is General Sherman's march through Georgia an example of total war?

Answer 1

The march through Georgia by General Sherman has always been defended as a means to end the US Civil War quickly. This is disputed. If General Lee had ripped apart the Northern areas he occupiedin his invasions of the North, he would have been condemned as a war criminal. The victors always get to write the history.

Answer 2

Sherman's Group of Army was advancing on a front of fifty kilometers, living on the country, scorching the earth and destroying railroads, crops, all kind of civil or military facilities which would have been useful for the Confederacy's war effort and irrespective of the consequences this new way of warfare could have brought about towards the innocent civilians.

Although Sherman could not predict how long the war would continue, destroying potential supplies to the Confederate forces was in a way cruel. This left many civilians without their farms or a good means to survive. The Northern press would have screamed bloody murder if Lee had conducted such activities in Maryland or Pennsylvania.

Answer 3

The term of "total war" was not used in the US Civil War, nor is it used today to describe General Sherman's tactics in Georgia and his infamous "March to the Sea". Sherman, US Grant along with the support of President Lincoln, decided that it would be impossible to win the war quickly because the North was unable to destroy Confederate armies. The North would win battles, but the South always managed to keep an army in the field to fight more battles.Earlier than the situation in Atlanta, for example, the Union realized that it needed not to win battles but to deny Southern armies of the needed supplies to fight battles. With that said, the North used two tactics, the "siege" which enabled the fall of Vicksburg and later Petersburg. The other tactic perfected by Sherman was to pillage civilian farms of crops and livestock. They also raided homes of civilians. This helped to deny Confederate armies of needed supplies.

Many people, North and South, did not value the idea of using force against civilians. This, as an aside was used by Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg in 1862.

Union General Henry Halleck, was recognized as the most educated general in the international terms and practices allowed in warfare. He was hesitant to support the tactics he saw used by his own armies.

Modern day military historians do not use the term of total war when describing the later stages of the US Civil War. They use the term of "exhaustion " . By this is meant that Southern armies were hampered in their battlefield operations due to the exhaustion of war supplies.

The term of "Total War" is used when describing military operations in WW 2. The term applies to each side in that war.

Answer 4

He destroyed everything in his path