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US General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891) had a dark fantasy: "When I imagine what is in bloom in this state, I get scared, but it actually seems to me that it deserves everything that comes its way." The state that Heaven wished for Sodom and Gomorrah was South Carolina.
As the first colony in North America, it had declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776, just as it had initiated the establishment of the Confederate States in December 1860 when he left the Union.
That sparked the civil war.
Now, five years later, Sherman was preparing to punish this primeval US for it.
Sherman had experience with it.
As a close confidante of General Ulysses S. Grant, who until the end of 1863 commanded the Union troops between Mississippi and Tennessee, he had played a decisive role in his novel strategy.
In order to become independent of the vulnerable supply lines, which were interrupted time and again by raids by the southerners, Grant's troops were supplied from the country through which they moved and thus devastated.
Related strategists: the Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant (l .; 1822–85) and William T. Sherman (1820–91)
Source: picture-alliance / Mary Evans Pi
After Grant's promotion to commander in chief of all Union armies, Sherman succeeded him in the western theater of war and was able to come up with a spectacular triumph with the conquest of Georgia's metropolis Atlanta in September 1864.
But instead of following the destruction of the remaining Confederate power west of the Appalachians, the general drafted a plan that revolutionized the civil war:
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"We cannot change the hearts and minds of these people in the south, but we can make the war so terrible for them and so despise them that they will not resort to this method for generations to come," Sherman explained his concept.
This includes that "we not only fight enemy armies, but also a hostile population, and we must let everyone, old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war".
With this in mind, in November he burned everything that could be of any importance to the war effort in Atlanta (that was quite a lot) and began his infamous march to the Atlantic coast.
In doing so, his armored army struck a broad corridor of devastation through the country “to open the eyes of the Georgia people to the fact that this war will bring nothing but personal misery upon them and that their 'authorities,' their state and the Confederation, absolutely helpless and unable to protect them ”.
Margaret Mitchell impressively described how the Union troops did this from a southern point of view in her world bestseller "Gone with the Wind" (1936).
By the end of 1864, Sherman had achieved his goal.
His people were in Savannah on the Atlantic, and Georgia was a sea of rubble;
Sherman himself put the damage he caused at $ 100 million.
Since he had dispelled the fears of US President Abraham Lincoln and Grant, who had not been convinced of the success of the company until the end, Sherman was able to look for a new target for his destruction strategy in January 1865: South Carolina.
"This is where the betrayal began, and this is where it should end," said one subordinate.
Sherman's people made "Sherman ties" out of railroad tracks by bending the iron over fire and throwing it into water
Source: picture alliance / ZUMAPRESS
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The weather turned out to be the greatest adversary.
While the train through Georgia had been a decidedly dry fall, it rained almost incessantly in South Carolina.
This caused the water level of the numerous rivers to rise, which, unlike in Georgia, did not flow parallel to the route but cut through it.
Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, who had the delicate task of confronting the invaders with the scraps of several gray armies scraped together, assumed that it would be utterly impossible to cross the southern parts of the state in winter.
Sherman, however, recruited labor battalions from the numerous freed slaves who followed his army to build billet dams and bridges.
Since mobile reconnaissance groups with repeating rifles drove the few defenders out of their positions, the army was able to cover an average of 15 kilometers per day.
An African American Union regiment entering Charleston
Source: picture alliance / Everett Colle
At the same time, the "Bummers" went about their business.
This is how the forage troops were called, who had specialized in finding the last hiding places with food and cattle on plantations and farms, but left their owners alive.
The Blues implemented their general's concept in every detail: "My goal was to punish the rebels, to humiliate their pride, to find them in their most secret hiding places and to spread fear and terror everywhere," Sherman explained in retrospect.
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Though the rain made it difficult for his Zündel specialists, pillars of fire lined the march, which culminated in Columbia on February 17.
A few hours after the Northerners marched in, the capital of South Carolina was a smoking sea of rubble.
Southerners blamed drunken Yankees, escaped slaves, or vengeful prisoners who escaped from a camp.
South Carolina's capital, Columbia, after Sherman's troops passed through
Source: picture-alliance / akg-images
The historian and Civil War specialist James McPherson takes a more nuanced view: “Sherman did not burn Columbia, but some of his people undoubtedly helped, and his officers did not intervene in time or with enough force.
On the other hand, instead of starting a fire, a far larger proportion of the Union soldiers - including Sherman himself - helped extinguish the fire all night long.
Anyway.
Sherman's calculation worked.
“Our army is demoralized, people are panicking,” explained one of those affected, “the will to defend against is extinguished.
Fighting on would be madness. "
At Bentonville, North Carolina, the Confederates tried unsuccessfully to stop Sherman's forces
Source: picture alliance / Heritage Imag
Johnston and his people didn't see it that way.
On March 19 - Sherman had meanwhile reached North Carolina - 20,000 southerners opposed 60,000 Union soldiers near Bentonville.
After initial successes against Sherman's left wing, he brought his reinforcements into position, but refrained from destroying the enemy.
Instead, he reorganized his troops with reinforcements and began the advance on the Confederate capital Richmond, which had been encompassed by Grant since June 1864.
There, too, weapons and tactics were used that referred to the world wars of the 20th century: trenches, heavy siege artillery, mines, railways and ironclad ships;
and the almost complete sea blockade of the Confederate coasts by the Union's fleet.
Most of all, Sherman's strategy was intended to anticipate the horrors of total wars.
Certainly, marauding armies and attacks against non-combatants had always existed;
Last but not least, the speed of Napoleon I was based on the fact that his soldiers lived from the country and were not dependent on depots and long supply routes like the armies of the Ancién regime.
But using the annihilation of livelihoods as a targeted terror against "a hostile population" to undermine their morale makes Sherman an unscrupulous visionary who made the horror of modern war a reality.
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