Summary Of March To Sea, By William T. Sherman

“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”(1864) William T. Sherman writes in his letter to the city of Atlanta during the Civil War. Sherman wrote to the councilmen right before he forced the innocent bystanders of the war to evacuate their homes. Sherman set the entire city of Atlanta on fire without a second glance as to who was there or what they would lose. Imagine one day you’re told that you and your family have to leave your home, the home you’ve made so many memories in, or else you’ll be burned to a crisp along with whoever else stays behind. Well, this is what the victims of Sherman’s March To Sea were told. Sherman caused irreversible damage to innocent populations,

The marched from Savannah to Atlanta taking livestock, food, supply lines and the homes of innocuous people with them. Sherman caused significant damage to civilian populations and their homes. During his march Sherman and his troops caused at least three-thousand casualties some of which were the wives and children of the army men at war. Not everyone saw Sherman as a criminal though. Some slaves saw him as a sign of freedom but when faced with him found that although he was a Union general, Sherman found slaves inferior and lesser than white men. Sherman often treated slaves with disrespect and disdain and found them a nuisance when it came to the scarcity of food and shelter. Food should have been a small almost irrelevant problem for Sherman’s troops. They took from the homes of those who opposed him and his tactics before burning them and it’s contents to the ground. The troops went through the cities burning down governmental buildings and homes belonging to political and war figures. Sherman ordered his men to ruin the railroad tracks by tearing them up from the ground and twisting them. Sherman destroyed Georgia so badly that Georgia resigned from the war so that they could tend to their wounded and

The Geneva Convention prohibits the targeting of civilian necessities such as their livestock, food, and water supply. The endangerment of children is also prohibited as article fifty states. Sherman destroyed many privately owned properties which is another tactic prohibited by the Geneva Convention signing. Because he did so many things prohibited by the Convention, William T. Sherman would be considered a war criminal in this day and age. Even after seeing the pain he caused, pain that he claims he didn’t mean to cause, Sherman used his total war tactic again only a few years after the Civil War but this time he used it against the Plains Indians. Sherman used it against them as well as other devastating tactics in order to forcibly remove them from their homes that the transcontinental railroad was slowly tearing apart. The Natives were then thrown into reservations because of it. Before his march Sherman kept close connections with the White House and his superiors but then suddenly he severed all communication lines with them. Lincoln, when asked about Sherman’s March, told people, “We know what hole he went in, but we don’t know what hole he will come out of” before Sherman finally appeared on December 21, 1864, naming Savannah a Christmas gift for President