If Sherman hadn’t taken Atlanta when he did, Lincoln wouldn’t have been reelected and an end to the war would have been negotiated. Both sides were sick of it by that point.
>>>If Sherman hadn’t taken Atlanta when he did, Lincoln wouldn’t have been reelected and an end to the war would have been negotiated. Both sides were sick of it by that point.<<<
And he would have lost to General Mcclellan a democrat. He was also responsible for not destroying the Army of Northern Virginia by being to timid after Antietam. The democrats have a long history of going for the anti-war candidate.
McClellan would have been inaugurated in March 1865. Lee would have still been penned in Petersburg. Sherman would have captured Atlanta, or bypassed it and gone on through Georgia, or surrounded it and penned in the rebel army. In any scenario you care to mention, the Confederates would have been on their last leg and barely standing. You really think McClellan would have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and surrendered to them under those circumstances?
Do you think that might have been why it was prosecuted that way? Taking Atlanta was a foregone conclusion, the Confederacy couldn't stop it.