USA HISTORY

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR(1861 1865)

SHERMANS MARCH TO THE SEA

[SOURCES]
What was Sherman’s plan to end the war quickly?

(A) Asking soldiers to surrender

(B) ** Total war

(C) Capture as many confederates as possible

(D) Free all the slaves in the South

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -His forces followed a “scorched earth” policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property, disrupting the Confederacy’s economy and transportation networks. The operation debilitated the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender.

Concept note-2: -Through the employment of a scorched-earth policy, Sherman successfully disrupted the flow of supply of Confederate forces, broke the will of the civilian South to support the Confederate cause, and thus, hastened the end of the civil war.

Concept note-3: -To them, Sherman’s devastating march through the South opened the way to the kind of warfare that culminated in World War II. Called total war, it goes beyond combat between opposing military forces to include attacks, both deliberate and indiscriminate, upon civilians and non-military targets.

Concept note-4: -Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman believed that it was necessary to break the South’s will to fight. Sherman summed up the idea of total war in blunt terms: “We are not only fighting hostile armies, ” he declared in 1864, “but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war."