What was the impact of Sherman's March to the Sea?

Answer 1

Um... Atlanta was burned to the ground and was completely rebuilt from its ashes, earning the name "The City of the Phoenix." It also allowed for all the cities in the South that were destroyed to be rebuilt with future technology (ie cars) in mind causing less parking congestion than in many northern cities.

• In 1865 the automobile hadn't even been thought of, so they did not design anything to allow for them.

Actually Atlanta was 30% destroyed - mostly factories and warehouses. The destruction of Columbia, NC was largely because of cotton fields and bales set on fire by the retreating Confederates. The South surrendered after Lincoln was assassinated. Since Lincoln was not there to oversee the surrender agreement, the South was "taught a lesson" and very badly treated. This caused very hard feelings against the North - some would say still exists today. Civilian Southeners lost faith in their soldiers, believing that they would protect them and their borders from the Union soldiers.

I would like to improve the answer as follows.

From the strategic point of view the March to the Sea was the decisive factor which sped up the collapse of the Confederacy.

Sherman's victorious army took strategically although not tactically from behind Lee's army and the Confederate, after having been defeated at the battle of Bentonville had no sufficient forces to prevent Sherman from invading North Carolina, capturing its Capital, Raleigh and interrupting the vital railway line Raleigh-Greensborough-Danville.

So Lee's army was hopeless isolated and its surrender was but only a matter of few weeks.

Answer 2

Sherman telegraphed to President Lincoln, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." On December 26, the president replied in a letter:

Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift - the capture of Savannah. When you were leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that 'nothing risked, nothing gained' I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honour is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce. And taking the work of Gen. Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantage; but, in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole - Hood's army - it brings those who sat in darkness, to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave Gen. Grant and yourself to decide. Please make my grateful acknowledgements to your whole army - officers and men.

From Savannah, Sherman marched north in the spring through the Carolinas, intending to complete his turning movement and combine his armies with Grant's against Robert E. Lee. After a successful two-month campaign, Sherman accepted the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston and his forces in North Carolina on April 26, 1865.

We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience.

Letter, Sherman to Henry W. Halleck, December 24, 1864.[7]

Sherman's scorched earth policies have always been highly controversial, and Sherman's memory has long been reviled by many Southerners. Slaves' opinions varied concerning the actions of Sherman and his army. Those slaves who welcomed him as a liberator left their plantations to follow his armies. Jacqueline Campbell has written, on the other hand, that some slaves looked upon the Federal army's ransacking and invasive actions with disdain. They felt betrayed, as they "suffered along with their owners." These particular slaves often remained loyal to the Southern way of life, and continued to care for the land and families to which they were tied.[8]As for the fate of those slaves who chose to flee their plantations and follow Sherman's army, a Confederate officer estimated that 10,000 followed, and hundreds died of "hunger, disease, or exposure" along the way.[9]

The March to the Sea was devastating to Georgia and the Confederacy. Sherman himself estimated that the campaign had inflicted $100 million (about $1.378 billion in 2010 dollars)[10] in destruction, about one fifth of which "inured to our advantage" while the "remainder is simple waste and destruction."[9] The Army wrecked 300 miles (480 km) of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills.[11] Military historians Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones cited the significant damage wrought to railroads and Southern logistics in the campaign and stated that "Sherman's raid succeeded in 'knocking the Confederate war effort to pieces'."[12] David J. Eicher wrote that "Sherman had accomplished an amazing task. He had defied military principles by operating deep within enemy territory and without lines of supply or communication. He destroyed much of the South's potential and psychology to wage war."[1]

Answer 3

Sherman's idea was to attack the infrastructure that supported those armies, reducing them to starvation, and destroying civilian morale. He lowered the bar on civility, by making war on the civilian population.

This shortened the war by months in the South, however the inability to capture Petersburg and Richmond lengthened the war by at least six months.

Answer 4

After the conquest of Atlanta the Union forces were deployed along a kind of isosceles triangle, having its base at Chattanooga and the top at Atlanta, with a high of about 140 Kilometers.

Sherman's situation was now critical than that of Grant had been near Vicksburg, because the backbone that supported the salient was given only by the thin strip of the rails exposed to be everywhere attacked and destroyed and not by the course of Mississippi, which was completely dominated by the Union gunboats.

So the Commander of Confederate Army of Tennessee Major Gen. Hood, endorsed by Jefferson Davis decided to operate against Sherman's exposed line of communication, in order to force Sherman to withdraw from Atlanta, leaving Georgia practically undefended.

Sherman solved the situation deciding to cut his communication line and with two-third of his army to start an offensive through Georgia, whose final goal was that of reaching the sea at Savannah, taking from the back the Confederate Eastern Front.

For the first time in the war, the campaign was part of a coordinated Union general offensive against the Confederacy, which put in motion both western and northeastern fronts.

Its task was that to reach the sea at Savannah, and then take from the rear the so called "Atlantic Fortress".

Taking advantage from the weak resistance they met, due to the impossibility for the Confederates to send reinforcements from Virginia's front, the Federals applied the tactic of "Total War", destroying farms, mills, railroads, bridges and other civilian and military infrastructures for a strip of 50 kilometres along which they were advancing. Sherman's divisions were penetrating into the hearth of Georgia like an iron club through a cardboard wall: in seven days 120 kilometers of advance. Georgia's Capital was seized and on Dec.13, 1864 the Federals conquered Fort McAllister, pivot of Savannah's defenses, opening the communication with Admiral Dahlgren's Union Fleet.

So Lee's Army had been hopeless isolated and its surrender was but only a matter of a few months.

From both tactical and strategic point of view, the March to the Sea was a forerunner example of blitzkrieg fought first during the WW2, compared to the time in which it had been carried out.

Answer 5

Sherman's troops destroyed railroads, mills, factories, and crops. It scorched the earth in a sixty mile swath between Atlanta and Savanna. The resulting destruction disrupted food, arms, clothing, and supplies from reaching Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and caused starvation in the civilian population, on top of the complete collapse of the Southern economy. Virtually everyone in the South was affected.

Answer 6

The tactics of General Sherman during his march into Georgia, the burning of Atlanta, and his so-called "march to the sea" changed the US Civil War into one of vengeance instead of warfare. In his own memoirs, Sherman states that he had the desire to wreak so much damage to the South , ( not Southern armies ) that they would remember his actions for the next 50 years. Sherman revealed that his actions were not just the Southern rebels, for when he was placed in charge of subduing American Native tribes after the Civil War, his tactics displayed his hatred for any enemy, Southern rebel of Native Tribes. He acted cruelly against the Tribes.

Answer 7

Union General William T. Sherman made Atlanta, Georgia his headquarters after it surrendered in September, 1864. He then left the city on his way to capture Savannah, Georgia. He burned the city of Atlanta down, as much as possible. Only a Catholic priest begged him to spare the city's hospital, Sherman agreed. Then, with his vast number of troops he marched to the sea, meaning the Atlantic Ocean and the port city of Savannah. He pursued a controversial scorched earth policy, destroying crops and livestock belonging to civilians. The idea was to damage the Southern armies the food and other supplies required to carry on the war.

Answer 8

The main result of Sherman's March to the Sea was the supply lines in the South were effectively cut. The city of Atlanta was almost completely destroyed.