USA HISTORY

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR(1861 1865)

SHERMANS MARCH TO THE SEA

[SOURCES]
What was it called when Sherman’s soldiers bent railroad tracks?

(A) Sherman’s Shoes

(B) ** Sherman’s Neck ties

(C) crooked fence posts

(D) Railroad wrap

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -Sherman’s neckties were a railway-destruction tactic used in the American Civil War. Named after Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army, Sherman’s neckties were railway rails destroyed by heating them until they were malleable and twisting them into loops resembling neckties, often around trees.

Concept note-2: -"Sherman’s Neckties” was the term used to describe the twisted rail lines left behind by Union raiders in the Confederacy during the Civil War. The name referred to Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who devised the strategy for heating and twisting the rail lines so that they were rendered unusable.

Concept note-3: -This railway destruction tactic was referred to as Sherman’s neckties. The rails were heated and then bent into a loop around the trunks of trees, in the shape of a necktie, so that they could not be easily or quickly repaired.

Concept note-4: -After the fall of Atlanta, Sherman used his troops to destroy the rail lines. Sherman continued to destroy the rail lines as he marched his troops down through Georgia and the Carolinas, knowing that the Confederacy had only one industrial factory capable of replacing them.

Concept note-5: -The Army wrecked 300 miles (480 km) of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5, 000 horses, 4, 000 mules, and 13, 000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills.