"War is Hell."

Near the end of the Civil War, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman perfected an offensive strategy that foreshadowed twentiethcentury total war. Marching from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, in the fall of 1864, Sherman directed his army to destroy everything of military significance. Sherman hoped to break civilian support for the war by marching through the Georgia countryside and instilling an air of insecurity among the inhabitants. Scorching a sixty-mile swath across Georgia, Sherman's army of sixty thousand men leveled almost everything in their path while being careful not to abuse the rural people physically. Major cities such as Atlanta and Columbia, South Carolina, went up in flames. In Columbia the anticipated fear of Sherman's arrival caused fleeing Confederate soldiers to burn cotton bales in the streets and, subsequently, start the fire which nearly burnt the entire capital to the ground...