William T. Sherman Argumentative Essay

The March through Georgia and South Carolina, lead by General William Techumseh Sherman, was the turning point in the American Civil War. There had been heavy fighting in Tennessee and Kentucky. General Sherman requested permission to take a very large army to the Atlantic Ocean through North and South Carolina, Georgia, then turning North back through the Carolinas and then Virginia. He would divide the Confederate states by blazing a path through the middle of them, foraging and destroying anything of military importance to the Confederates. General Sherman's March achieved his goal, from a military standpoint, but the way his army accomplished it, many southerners say was despicable. The most famous portion of

The Civil War, composed of the Union run by numerous generals replacing one another, and the Confederacy lead by Robert E. Lee, was and still is one of the most gruesome wars in American History, and the Battle of Gettysburg is considered by most as an incredible turning point of the war. This is due to how the Union brought down the Confederacy’s winning streak, and gave the Confederacy a huge blow to their manpower, supplies, and overall strength to win (Battle of Gettysburg, 1). Robert E. Lee, though a great general throughout the Civil War, was a failure during the Battle Gettysburg because he was not able to get his men to their jobs done in time. Another reason he was a failure was because of his plan to attack again on July 3rd which

After the defeat at Fort Sumter there were some northerners that tried to get Lincoln to let the south go. When deciding weather to take Fort Sumter by bombardment, one of Davis's ideas was a bargain with Washington , maybe purchase, for the peaceful turnover of the fort and other federal holding in the seceded states. Thinking Confederate independence was inescapable, Davis prayed that they would slow down long enough to recognize that they could save millions of dollars and many lives by stopping this. He believed that the honor of the Confederate States of America (CSA) would be reestablished if everyone seen Davis challenge Lincoln successfully. While dealing with all of this he still was ready to take Fort Sumter. Davis just wanted peace and to be left alone. The South was fighting a defensive war, which gave it inherent advantage.

Lincoln opposed the breakaway of the Southern states, and this led to the American Civil War. Lincoln had preserved the union during it. The Civil War had cost more than many people’s prediction. Lincoln appeared to lose the support from the populations, but Lincoln had enough patience. His leadership and the attitude of pleasing to work with his patience helped him to held the country together. At the beginning, the Civil War was to help the survival of Union, but as the war going on and getting progress, Lincoln gain more trust, love, and support from the general population. IN this situation, Lincoln made the issue of releasing the

The entire truly tragic sense of the Lost Cause was that the South’s men knew their cause was lost, they knew there was really no way they could possibly win, and yet they fought on with tremendous bravery and dedication. The Civil War was such a poignant and even heart-wrenching time (Bowman, 2006, p.756). Despite the long-held notion that the South had all of the better generals, it really had only one good Army commander and that was General Lee. The rest were second-raters, at best (Donald, 1996, pp. 9-21). The North, on the other hand, had the good fortune of bringing along and nurturing people like Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, Philip Sheridan, George Thomas, and others.

Union officer William Tecumseh Sherman observed to a Southern friend that, "In all history, no nation of mere agriculturists ever made successful war against a nation of mechanics. . . .You are bound to fail." While Sherman 's statement proved to be correct, its flaw is in its assumption of a decided victory for the North and failure to account for the long years of difficult fighting it took the Union to secure victory. Unquestionably, the war was won and lost on the battlefield, but there were many factors that swayed the war effort in favor of the North and impeded the South 's ability to stage a successful campaign.

SHERMAN, William Tecumseh (1820-91). Ranked second only to General Ulysses S. Grant as the greatest Northern commander in the American Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was a master of modern warfare. Like Grant, Sherman was born in Ohio when it was a frontier state. He was named Tecumseh for the Shawnee Indian chief who had terrorized that region a few years earlier.

On the other side was the Union, also known as the Yankees; a group determined to put out the rebels of the South, and preserve the nation that was created in 1776. Like the Confederates, the Union also found support in the memory of the Revolutionary War. Union soldiers fought the “Traitors who sought to tear down and break into fragments the glorious temple that our forefathers reared with blood and tears” (Mc.Pherson 28). If the south was to secede it would have destroyed and undermined the power and authority of the Constitution, and therefore break the union that made up the United States of America. The Union soldiers referred to the Confederates as the “Rebels”, who did not deserve to be part of the united nation for their selfish and inhumane habits, yet their land belonged to the country as a whole. A soldier in the Sherman army wrote to his wife “We want to kill them all off and cleanse the country… their punishment is light when compared with what justice is demanded” (Mc.Pherson 40-41). Union militias could not bear the thought of secession, for they “will be held responsible before God if we don’t

By 1864, Georgia was the most important state left to sustain the Confederacy’s war effort. Its factories and agriculture supplied Confederate armies throughout the South, and the city of Atlanta was at the center of Georgia’s war production and railroad network. As a junction between four railroads, Atlanta had grown to become a primary Confederate base to transport troops, supplies, and treat injured soldiers during the Civil War. For the Union, capturing Atlanta meant cutting the South’s vital railroad network and supply lines (Still). According to William Sherman, the Union general who led the Atlanta Campaign, “This city [Atlanta] has done more and contributed more to carry on and sustain the war than any other, save perhaps Richmond. We have been fighting Atlanta all the time … and now since they have been doing so much to destroy us and our Government we have to destroy them” (Still). By destroying one of the most important cogs in the

Union general William T. Sherman led nearly 60,000 men on a 285 mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864. Sherman’s motive behind this march was to intimidate Georgia’s civilians into renouncing their loyalty to the Confederate cause. While Sherman’s men did not eradicate any of the towns they passed, they stole livestock, food, and burned the houses and barns of the individuals who tried to fight back. The Union was “not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people,” Sherman explicated; as a result, they needed to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”. (history.com)

The Civil War can be described as one of the bloodiest and gruesome war ever fought on American soil. The Civil War was fought between the Union and the Confederates. The Civil War lasted for 5 years and during that 5 year period many people ended up dying, 620,000 people to be exact and millions injured, but while the numbers can be appalling; it isn 't even the beginning. The war led a schism to happen in the U.S, the whole country was divided and devastated. Abraham Lincoln the president who helped lead the Union against the Confederates, knew that the only way to make the U.S functional and great again was to join both sides back together during this time period after the civil war, which would later come to be known as reconstruction.

Here are three reasons why sherman's march needed to happen. First, someone needed a tactic to end the war. It was its third year in the civil war and people didn't want it to go on any longer so with Sherman's ¨Total War¨ tactic it did just that and ended the war in 1865. Without it who knows how much longer the Civil war would of lasted.

demoralizing those who remained. However, at the same time, Sherman attempted to win the hearts and minds of some of the south by making a point to focus on the wealthy when it came to foraging, and to leave the poor alone. The belief was that the rich were usually loyal to the Southern Agenda, while the poor were usually friendly or neutral to the North. In the same manner that the nation was at war with itself, Sherman attempted to turn the South against itself as well. Writing to General Halleck about civilians now involved in the war as a result of his march, Sherman said, “If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.” (Mitchell, 2014) Sherman’s psychological war of destruction was starting to take its toll on the South.

William Sherman seemed kind of obsessed with the idea of defeating the Confederacy. He seemed even more focused on the removal of the inhabitants of Atlanta, but then again, it was what the correspondences between him and General Hood and James Calhoun were about. Nevertheless, he was very focused on the removal of the population and he gives very adequate reasons for doing so. As a reader, it's never really certain whether Sherman had a "side" on the issue of slavery because as far as I could tell, you can only really tell his main concern is the preserving of the Union (much like Lincoln's). This is extremely evident because his intentions for the city of Atlanta were to utilize the city for fortification and to take advantage of it to help win the war. So I guess in a way his view of the war is similar to that of Lincoln's because of the fact that they both have no apparent decision on the existence of slavery. However, on the other hand, if you have to assume anything, it would be that Sherman was one of the people, that Lincoln referred to, who wanted to preserve the Union

President Abraham Lincoln, General William T. Sherman and Colonel Trowbridge's differing perspectives of the Civil War created very unique views of the war. President Lincoln saw the war as a painful and necessary burden for him to bear. General Sherman saw the war as a tool to rid the United States of the rebels that were attempting to dissolve the Union. Finally Colonel Trowbridge viewed the war on a much more personal level. He witnessed first hand men fighting the government of their former masters for their freedom. While all three of the men's views differed, all three held a singular belief that the union must be preserved. That need to preserve the union was the justification for the war that the three men used.