What did the union troops do to Savannah?

Answer 1

They didn't do anything - somewhat surprisingly.

In Sherman's March to the Sea across Georgia, Savannah was the end of the line. It was when Sherman got close to Savannah that he made contact with the Union Navy, whichwas able to send his communications to Washington for the first time in five weeks (because the telegraph wires had been cut.)

Sherman was expecting a battle for Savannah, with the small Confederate army under General Hardee, but that army escaped across the river into South Carolina, while Sherman was absenton a reconnaissance that got held-up by rough seas.

For that reason, Sherman did not strictly need to destroy Savannah. Perhaps he felt hehad proved his point in Georgia, and was waiting to put the boot into South Carolina, the state that had started the war,whose capital (Columbia SC) he would soonburn to the ground.

But a strange legend still persists about Sherman's reason for not destroying Savannah, as he had destroyed so much else, and why the troops were put on their best behaviour in that city - as they weren't elsewhere.

Some say that Sherman had onceloved a girl from Savannah, and thathe identified the city with her memory. It sounds most unlike the brutal, half-mad Sherman that we think we know.

Either way, the liberation of Savannah was a body-blow to the blockade-runners, and like the whole of the March to the Sea, it shortened the war by many months, at almost nil casualties.