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Unlock This CourseBy 1864 the Union was winning, but the Confederacy had not given up. General Ulysses S. Grant, now in command of all Union armies, planned to hit it from two sides. He would pin down the main Confederate army in Virginia, led by General Robert E. Lee, while General William Tecumseh Sherman pushed into the deep South with a second army.
Sherman's target was Atlanta, Georgia. It was a small city, but four railways met there, and it was a centre for making and moving weapons and supplies for the Confederacy. If Atlanta fell, the South's railway network would be cut in two. Sherman's army fought its way towards the city through the summer. On 2 September 1864 Union troops entered Atlanta after the Confederate army had left. Sherman telegraphed that Atlanta was won.
The timing mattered. Many Northerners were tired of the war, and Lincoln feared he might lose the presidential election in November 1864. News of Atlanta lifted spirits in the North, and Lincoln was re-elected. That meant the war would be fought to the end.
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Sherman then made a bold choice. In mid-November 1864 he left Atlanta, burning its railway buildings and workshops behind him, and set off east with about 60,000 men towards the sea. He cut himself off from his own supply lines. His army lived by foraging, taking food, horses and mules from the farms it passed.
The army marched for about 300 miles on a wide front, so it could damage a belt of land many miles across. The soldiers tore up railway track, heated the rails on bonfires and twisted them round trees. The twisted rails were nicknamed Sherman's neckties. They also burned mills, warehouses and cotton stores, and killed or took livestock. There was little real fighting, because the Confederates had few troops left to stop them.
On 21 December 1864 Sherman reached Savannah, a major port on the Atlantic coast, and he offered the city to Lincoln as a Christmas present. He then turned north through the Carolinas, destroying more of the South's railways and stores. Thousands of formerly enslaved people left the plantations and followed his army, hoping for freedom.
Sherman believed the war would only end when the South could no longer fight and no longer wanted to. Writing to the leaders of Atlanta in September 1864, he said: "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." He wanted to break both the South's ability to supply its armies and its will to carry on. Sherman himself estimated that the damage in Georgia was about $100 million, and that most of it was simple waste and destruction.
Railways, mills and warehouses: to stop the Confederacy moving and making supplies. Food and farms: to take away what fed Lee's army and Southern towns. Belief in victory: to show that the Confederate government could not protect its own people.
It did not aim to kill large numbers of civilians, and few were killed. Its damage was to property and food. But the hardship was real, and many Southerners never forgave Sherman for it.
Sherman's march hit an economy that was already weak. From 1861 Union warships had blockaded Southern ports, stopping the South selling cotton abroad and importing goods such as salt, medicines, rails and engines. The blockade had cut the South's trade, and now the damage spread inland. Four problems stand out.
Wars are won by armies, but armies depend on food, railways and money. Lee's soldiers in Virginia were hungry and short of supplies by early 1865. Sherman's march did not win a single big battle, yet it helped make the Confederate position impossible.
While Sherman was in the south, Grant kept up the pressure on Lee at Petersburg, near Richmond, from June 1864. In early April 1865 the Union broke through. General Lee left Richmond, the Confederate capital, and tried to escape west. He was cut off and out of food. On 9 April 1865 he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
Grant's terms were generous. Lee's soldiers, about 28,000 men, had to give up their weapons, but they were allowed to go home, and soldiers who owned a horse or mule were allowed to keep it for the spring planting. Other Confederate armies surrendered over the next few weeks, including the one facing Sherman in North Carolina. The war was over.
In 1861 the war was fought mainly between armies, and civilians' lives went on. By 1864 it had become a war on the South's economy and its will to fight. What stayed the same was the Union's aim of ending the Confederacy. What changed was how far it was ready to go to reach it.
Explain TWO ways in which the effects of the Union naval blockade on the Southern economy were similar to the effects of Sherman's March Through Georgia in 1864. [6 marks]
First, both caused shortages. The blockade stopped the South selling cotton abroad and buying goods such as salt and medicines, so prices rose and supplies ran short. In the same way, Sherman's army took food, horses and mules from Georgia's farms and burned mills and stores, so families and soldiers had less to eat.
Second, both damaged the South's railways and so its ability to move supplies. The blockade stopped the Confederacy importing new rails and engines for worn-out track, and Sherman's army tore up track and bent the rails into 'neckties'. In both cases food and ammunition found it harder to reach the Confederate armies.
To reach the top level, each way must name a specific fact about the blockade and a specific fact about the March, as here (imports of rails stopped against track torn up).
In a 'similar' question, use words like 'in the same way' or 'also', and put a fact about each side in every paragraph. A way that only describes the March scores no more than half marks.