Existing comment:
Total War: Unrelenting Campaigns Against the South:
-- "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it. We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible... and make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." -- Major General William Tecumseh Sherman -- Army of the Tennessee -- 1864
The Civil War took place across thousands of miles of territory, on inland waters, and on the high seas. By 1864, it became clear to leading Union generals such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman that victory for the North would come about only if the entire South were subjugated and made to feel the harsh reality of war.
The Civil War, according to Grant, was a "people's war" wherein the populace of the South as well as the Confederate armies would have to be conquered. "We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people," explained General Sherman, recommending that the North, "make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war... I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms."
President Lincoln agreed, and instructed his generals to launch a series of unrelenting campaigns to defeat the South. After 1863, total war became the North's avowed strategy. |