Sherman’s mission was to take his army deep into the South.  To that point the majority of the Civil War was fought in Virginia, Tennessee and around the West along the banks of the Mississippi down to New Orleans, leaving the central Southern states relatively untouched.  By laying waste to Atlanta and cutting a swathe of destruction all the way to Savanah, he was to cut the heart out of the Confederacy destroying plantations and infrastructure along the way.

向海洋進(jìn)軍戰(zhàn)役

While Sherman raided through Georgia, Union General Philip Sheridan did the same to the mountains of Virginia and General Ulysses Grant kept Lee bottle up in a siege of Petersburg, VA.  These “total war” tactics of inflicting hardships on the Confederacy’s civilian population were a departure from the previous strategy of simply trying to defeat the Confederates in a single battle which had not worked.  While primary proof that the war was a “War of Northern Aggression” from a Southern perspective, it appears to have worked in bringing the war to a conclusion.