One house on the family property remained standing, a log home that was built in 1840 after Indian lands were opened by the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. It still stands today, incorporated into a modern home by one of my cousins.
The log house was outside of town somewhat, but the nearby city was burned to the ground in a practice run by Sherman, in preparation for what he would do to Georgia. Famine and exposure were very real to the people who remained, and what had been a very prosperous region suffered for decades after. There was no Marshall Plan. Sherman’s intention was to cause as much suffering as he could, and starving civilians with no shelter meant nothing to him.
It has occurred to me that America’s subsequent kindness to conquered people had its roots in reaction to how the North treated the South. Southerners like Woodrow Wilson and George Marshall, Patton for that matter, didn’t intend to be part of repeating that sad chapter in American history.
I watched a documentary on a northern prison camp from the civil war. What they did to the southern troops was dispicible.