Sherman's March to the Sea (1864): From Atlanta to Savannah

Sherman’s March to the Sea was a Union military campaign from 15 November to 21 December 1864, in which Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led about 62,000 soldiers from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. Cutting loose from his supply lines, Sherman lived off the land and destroyed railways, mills and stores across a band of territory up to 60 miles (100 km) wide. The march demonstrated the Confederacy’s weakness, damaged its economy and became one of the most controversial episodes of the American Civil War.

Background

In the spring of 1864 Ulysses S. Grant, now general-in-chief, ordered coordinated offensives against the Confederacy. While Grant fought Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Sherman advanced from Chattanooga, the base won after the Battle of Chickamauga and the battles that followed, towards Atlanta, a vital rail and manufacturing centre.

After months of manoeuvre and battle, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta on 1 September 1864, and Union troops entered the next day. The capture lifted Northern morale and helped Abraham Lincoln win re-election on 8 November.

Hood then moved north-west into Tennessee, hoping to draw Sherman after him. Instead, Sherman sent George H. Thomas to defend Tennessee and proposed a bold plan: abandon the long railway supply line, march through the heart of Georgia to the Atlantic coast and make the South “feel” the war. Grant and Lincoln agreed after some hesitation.

The plan and the army

Sherman divided his force into two wings. The Right Wing under Oliver O. Howard contained the XV and XVII Corps; the Left Wing under Henry W. Slocum contained the XIV and XX Corps. Judson Kilpatrick commanded the cavalry. The soldiers were mostly hardened Western veterans.

Special Field Orders No. 120, issued on 9 November 1864, set the rules. The army was to “forage liberally on the country”, but only organised foraging parties were to enter homes, and destruction of mills and houses was reserved for corps commanders in areas where resistance occurred. In practice, discipline was uneven. Unofficial foragers, known as “bummers”, often looted freely.

Before leaving, Union engineers destroyed Atlanta’s railway facilities, depots and factories. The fires spread on 15–16 November and burned much of the city.

What happened

The two wings moved south-east on diverging routes to confuse the enemy about their targets, feinting towards Macon and Augusta. Confederate opposition was weak: Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry, some Georgia militia and scattered local troops, perhaps 13,000 men in all, could only harass the columns.

On 22 November Georgia militia attacked a Union brigade at Griswoldville and were repulsed with heavy losses, the largest infantry fight of the march. The same day Union troops entered Milledgeville, then the state capital, and some officers held a mock session of the legislature in the abandoned state house.

Soldiers wrecked railways by heating the iron rails over bonfires and twisting them around trees, producing what became known as “Sherman’s neckties”. They took livestock, corn and sweet potatoes, burned cotton gins and warehouses and freed enslaved people on the plantations they passed.

Thousands of enslaved African Americans left plantations to follow the army. Sherman worried that they slowed his columns. On 9 December, at Ebenezer Creek, troops of the XIV Corps under Jefferson C. Davis removed a pontoon bridge before the refugees could cross; with Confederate cavalry approaching, some drowned trying to swim the creek. The episode caused outrage in the North.

On 10 December the army reached the defences of Savannah. On 13 December William B. Hazen’s division stormed Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River, opening contact with the Union fleet. Confederate General William J. Hardee, with about 10,000 men, escaped across the Savannah River on a pontoon bridge on the night of 20 December. Union troops entered the city on 21 December.

On 22 December Sherman telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”

Key people

• William T. Sherman – Union commander who designed the campaign and defended its harshness as a way to end the war sooner.
• Oliver O. Howard – commander of the Right Wing, later head of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
• Henry W. Slocum – commander of the Left Wing.
• William J. Hardee – Confederate general who defended Savannah and saved his garrison by withdrawing.
• Joseph Wheeler – Confederate cavalry commander who shadowed and harassed the march.

Consequences

Sherman later estimated the damage in Georgia at about 100 million dollars, most of which he described as simple waste and destruction rather than of military benefit to the Union. The loss of railways and food weakened Confederate armies, and the sight of a Union army moving freely through Georgia badly hurt Southern morale and encouraged desertion.

In Savannah, Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton met Black community leaders. Days later, on 16 January 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, setting aside coastal land from South Carolina to Florida for freed families in plots of up to 40 acres, the origin of the phrase “forty acres and a mule”. Most of this land was returned to former owners during Reconstruction.

In February 1865 Sherman’s army marched north into the Carolinas, treating South Carolina even more harshly. Columbia burned on 17 February. The war ended weeks later with the surrender at Appomattox in April and Joseph E. Johnston’s surrender to Sherman in North Carolina on 26 April 1865.

Myths and facts

The March to the Sea is often remembered as a path of total destruction. In reality the destruction was concentrated on railways, public buildings, cotton and food stores, and on plantations of wealthy secessionists. Many towns and most private homes along the route survived, and killings of white civilians were rare. Savannah itself was occupied almost undamaged.

A popular legend claims Sherman spared certain towns because of a romantic attachment or because they were “too beautiful to burn”. There is no reliable evidence for these stories. Savannah was spared because it surrendered and was useful to the Union.

The famous saying “War is hell” is usually attributed to Sherman in a speech of 1879, though its exact wording is debated. Better documented is his September 1864 letter to Atlanta’s mayor, in which he wrote: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

Legacy

For many white Southerners, the march became a symbol of Northern cruelty, and it featured in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936). For African Americans, it was remembered as a march of liberation. The song “Marching Through Georgia” (1865) celebrated it in the North, although Sherman reportedly grew tired of hearing it.

Military historians still debate the campaign. Some see it as an early example of total war against an enemy society; others stress Sherman’s limits and call it “hard war” aimed at resources rather than people.

Timeline

• 1864, 2 September: Union troops occupy Atlanta.
• 1864, 9 November: Sherman issues Special Field Orders No. 120.
• 1864, 15–16 November: Sherman’s army leaves Atlanta; fires destroy much of the city.
• 1864, 22 November: Battle of Griswoldville; Union troops enter Milledgeville.
• 1864, 9 December: Refugees are stranded at Ebenezer Creek.
• 1864, 13 December: Union troops storm Fort McAllister.
• 1864, 21 December: Union troops occupy Savannah.
• 1865, 16 January: Special Field Orders No. 15 sets aside land for freed families.

Why it matters

Sherman’s March to the Sea helped bring the Civil War to an end by exposing the Confederacy’s inability to defend its own territory and by wrecking its economic base. It freed thousands of enslaved people and shaped debates about the treatment of civilians in war that continue today.