The railroad yards and ruins of Atlanta, photographed shortly after the fall of the city.
Sherman felt strongly that the war had to be carried to the Southern people themselves before the Confederacy would collapse. He therefore laid plans to slash through the very heart of the South. The campaign that followed is known as the “March to the Sea.”
Sherman first sent part of his army under Gen. Thomas back to Tennessee to watch Hood, whose Confederates had moved northward in an effort to force Sherman from Georgia. With Thomas blocking Hood, Sherman on November 16 left Atlanta in flames and started toward the Georgia coast with 68,000 veteran fighters. Sherman met little opposition during his advance, and on December 22 he telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”
Kentucky-born John B. Hood first gained fame as commander of a Texas infantry brigade. He was an excellent division or corps commander, but unsuited for the leadership of an army.
Meanwhile, Hood’s strategy in Tennessee backfired tragically. At Franklin, Tenn., on November 30, Hood hurled his army against a part of Thomas’s force under Gen. John M. Schofield. Hood’s assaults cost 6,000 Confederates, including 5 generals and 53 regimental colonels. Two weeks later, Thomas’s troops all but destroyed Hood’s army when the Confederates made repeated assaults at Nashville.
Sherman’s strategy had cut the Confederacy in two. Although Grant was then no closer to Richmond than McClellan had been two years earlier, all that remained of the Confederacy were Virginia, the Carolinas, and isolated areas of the Trans-Mississippi.
Fort Darling, a Confederate defense overlooking the James River at Drewry’s Bluff. In the left foreground can be seen one of the bombproof shelters used by defenders.