HIS 226 - Civil War: Sherman and the March to the Sea

Almost two months after William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta, the Union general's new military secretary reported for duty and learned what his chief planned for an encore.

On Nov 1864, with Atlanta lying in ruins behind him, Union Gen William Sherman confidently headed for the sea. His powerful march caused psychological torment and bitterness among Georgians that lasts to this day. Here, Woodworth opines that the Union Army's passage was undoubtedly frightening, but it was not the atrocity that latter-day legend has painted and many Americans still believe it to have been.

General William Tecumseh Sherman's 1864 "March to the Sea," a devastating Civil War campaign, inspired "salvation stories" that have become part of collective memory in Georgia. These stories recall not what Union soldiers destroyed, but what was saved by the quick thinking and crafty hospitality of townspeople or by Northerners' appreciation of the beauty of homes and the charm of Southern women.