Existing comment:
Total War On Land:
-- "... We will destroy every obstacle; if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that seems to us proper... we will not cease till the end is attained..." -- Major General William Tecumseh Sherman - To the Commander-in-Chief -- September 17, 1863
Large and costly battles took place in 1863 such as Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga, but it was the relentless campaigns of 1864 that brought the South to the point of ruin. Throughout 1864-1865 the North pursued a policy of total war to crush the South. Major campaigns included the Atlanta Campaign, Sherman's March to the Sea, the Carolinas Campaign, and Grant's campaign to take Richmond.
By 1864, Wisconsin citizen-soldiers sensed, and some understood, the momentousness of the situation in which they found themselves. Letters to friends and loved ones in Wisconsin reveal support for the growing harshness of the war upon the South. One private wrote approvingly from Atlanta that: "All the places between here and Chattanooga is to be burned to the ground and the Rail Roads to be torn up. Everything between here and Savannah will be destroyed."
Another soldier wrote, "We can see nothing but a vigorous prosecution of the war and a final Victory not far distant." Total war on land was a reality. |