Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

by James M. McPherson

Sherman insisted. But if I “move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea . . . instead of being on the defensive, I would be on the offensive.” And the psychological effect of such a campaign might be greater even than its material impact. “If we can march a well-appointed army right through [Jefferson Davis’s] territory, it is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power which Davis cannot resist. . . . I can make the march, and make Georgia howl!"4

“War is cruelty and you cannot refine it,” Sherman had told Atlanta’s mayor after ordering the civilian population expelled from the occupied city. But “when peace does come, you may call on me for anything.

“We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

Georgia unionists and liberated slaves hung on the flanks and rear of the army and lost few chances to despoil their rebel neighbors and former masters.