[injin]

my great grandfather was a member of the 15th Mississippi Infantry and it is quite possible he was still with it and the Army of Tennessee CSA after Bentonville and up until Bennitt's Farm . Therefore , had Sherman not held his forces in check as they cried for revenge on the vastly outnumbered CSA forces , after the assassination of Lincoln, the Yanks would have and could have wiped them out to a man, my dear GG as well. The Union forces wanted to....were it not for Sherman staying their hand . For that I thank him , and my family thanks him for that mercy . As for the rest , he sure didn't need to do all that burnin and pillaging ....

[PzLdr]

Sherman was the first general to realize that in the industrial age, the society that supported an Army was as important to defeat as the army itself. And easier. One of the amazing facts about the Civil War to me is that, except for the Army of Tennessee at Nashville, no major Army from either side, despite heavy casualties, was ever damaged to the point that it became combat ineffective, or was annihilated.

By operating the March to the Sea, and the march north through the Carolinas as he did, Sherman forced the Confederate forces in front of him to disperse over a wide front [optional objectives, being unable to prevent the "bummers". This in turn adversely impacted the morale of the population base. Hell,Gov. Brown of Georgia flirted with the idea of seceding from the Confederacy and making a separate peace.

By the time Sherman headed into North Carolina, Many, if not most of Lee's Georgians and Carolinians were deserting to go home to their families. So while the material damage was heavy, Sherman probably saved a great many lives, Confederate as well as Union, with his operational methods. He certainly shortened the war, because: [a] the desertions from Lee impaired his ability to man the Petersburg defenses and still cover Union flanking operations, and [b] convinced a lot of folks down South that the war was lost, since the Yanks could move at will through the Southern heartland. {I always thought one of the key mistakes the Confederacy made was putting the capitol in Richmond, and focusing too much attention on Virginia].