Tactically - to allow him to live off the land, and ignore his increasingly vulnerable supply line.
Strategically - to attack the civilian underpinning of the Confederate armies, bri ng them closer to starvation, and signal to the world that the Confederacy was on its last legs.
This clearly shortened the war by months.
Prior to 1864, most of the Civil War battles had occurred in the region surrounding Washington DC, from Pennsylvania to northern Virgina. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln and General U. S. Grant decided that the time had come to take the war to the "Deep South", both for tactical and for psychological effect. Grant was occupied with General Robert E. Lee's Army, dug in and fortified in northern Virginia. Much of Lee's food and supplies were coming from Georgia, and from the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia.
So General Philip Sheridan was sent to the Shenandoah Valley to destroy its agricultural use by "scorched earth" tactics. General William Tecumseh Sherman was send to capture and to largely destroy the City of Atlanta and from there he proceded to march across the state to Savannah, applying the "scorched earth" policy by destroying crops, railroads and buildings across the middle of the Confederacy.
Sherman's march not only destroyed a great deal of the Confederacy's ability to supply its troops, but it placed Sherman to the south of Lee's huge army so that Lee now faced a double threat with Grant to the north and Sherman to the south.
He conducted "Total War" demonstrating to the Confederacy that a Union Army could march through the heartland of the Confederacy, in the hopes of bringing the lengthy war to a rapid conclusion
To demonstrate to everybody that the Confederacy was on its last legs. To punish Georgia (and then South Carolina) for quitting the USA. To attack civilian morale - the underpinning of the Southern war effort. To devastate the rich farmland, and bring the Confederate army closer to starvation.
After the Battle of Atlanta, Gen Sherman began his march from there and advanced across Georgia and ended at Savannah. He then turned north and marched through South Carolina and into North Carolina.
After the crushing defeat of Georgia and South Carolina and the hands of Sherman, the south had a big decrease in morale. ChaCha!
Farmland and buildings are always damaged during military campaigns. In the Shenandoah, Sheridan was told by Grant to devastate the farms. In Georgia, Sherman deliberately destroyed farms, burning crops, killing livestock, demolishing homes and wrecking railroads.
It was William T. Sherman.
To demonstrate vividly that the Confederacy was too weak to survive. To deprive the enemy troops of food. In the case of South Carolina, to punish the state that had started it all.
Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina.
Tactically - to allow him to live off the land, and ignore his increasingly vulnerable supply line. Strategically - to attack the civilian underpinning of the Confederate armies, bri ng them closer to starvation, and signal to the world that the Confederacy was on its last legs. This clearly shortened the war by months.
To demonstrate to everybody that the Confederacy was on its last legs. To punish Georgia (and then South Carolina) for quitting the USA. To attack civilian morale - the underpinning of the Southern war effort. To devastate the rich farmland, and bring the Confederate army closer to starvation.
Georgia - and then the same in South Carolina
W.T. Sherman
General Sherman took his army to the sea at Savannah, Georgia, but the march continued all the way to Columbia, South Carolina.
After he abandoned his attempt to pursue the Army of Tennessee, he turned South-East from Atlanta and crossed Georgia to Savannah, from where the Confederate General Hardee escaped across the river into South Carolina (saving the fine city of Savannah from a hammering.) Sherman soon followed him into South Carolina, the state that had started the war, and burned down the capital, Columbia. The war ended soon after Sherman crossed into North Carolina.
Sherman, with his punitive raids across Georgia and South Carolina.
Sherman - in the course of his punitive raids across Georgia and South Carolina.
Their behavior difference is that the troops felt more confident than they were in Georgia because of all the battles they had won
Lee surrendered in Virginia, by which time Georgia had been ravaged by Sherman before he crossed into Carolina.