Sherman was a POS butcher who brought abject terror and misery on the innocent population of GA. May he rot in Hell.
What was the death toll from Sherman's March?
Any idea?
How many civilians died in the burning of Atlanta? How many soldiers? Do you know?
who brought abject terror and misery
Abject terror? Probably. Kind of the point of war, right? To put fear into the enemy?
and misery
Georgians in Sherman's March endured hardships, certainly.
the innocent population of GA.
Innocent? Not everyone in Georgia's hands were clean. Not by a long shot.
May he rot in Hell.
That's a nice sentiment. I'd say the incoherent rage undermines your case - but there wasn't much of a case.
Sherman was not an indiscriminate destroyer. Neither was Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah. Both WERE intent on wrecking southern logistics, and they accepted that food storage and transportation infrastructure were legitimate military targets, as they have been considered to be in most times and places throughout history and would be considered today. It was still unpleasant to be in the path of the armies, but (aside from Columbia SC) there was very little burning for the sake of burning, and by the standards of almost any armies any time, anywhere, astonishingly few instances of abuse of the civilian population.
Southern mythmakers, of course, have a different view. Every building that burned anywhere in the deep south for the next hundred years got attributed to Sherman’s march, even if the Yankees never came within a hundred miles and the fire took place in 1927.
I don’t know about Sherman’s march, but in the Shenandoah barns were burned if they were full, and left untouched if empty. The point was to prevent Lee from sending another army down the Valley, not to ruin the land (hence Grant’s comment about making a crow carry its own rations). A very few houses burned by accident, whem sparks from the barn were blown by the wind; Sheridan’s men generally tried to put out such fires but didn’t always succeed. Several times, they helped the families get their possessions out of the house. A few other homes were deliberately burned in retaliation for the murder of Union soldiers by confederate guerrilla, but that was a singular incident.