Tell that to the farmers whose crops he looted and burnt the remainder of in the Susquehana Valley. Tell that to the city of Atlanta. It was modern all right. The British did the same to the Boers. The American rebels did the same to the Iroquois before Sherman. Justified, though? As for saving lives, that’s a moot argument, since the scorched earth campaign also cost lives. The question is, which course would have cost more lives. Same argument about Hiroshima. Only one course was taken, though. If Sherman had simply contended with rebel troops on the battlefield, would it have cost more lives? If I had wheels, would I have been a trolly?
Bottom line is, he burnt Atlanta to satisfy voters, because the Dems were running a campaign in ‘64 saying that the war was unwinnable (familiar?), it’s time to negotiate a settlement, and rebels were sallying into Pennsylvania and looting shops for their supplies, and Pennsylvania shop-owners and their customers were pissed. This was after Gettysburg, and the voters were still unimpressed. There had been a subsequent battle with 5,000 men lost in one day. So when he got to Atlanta, he burnt it down. Lincoln won.
And thank God he did. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives. Had the war not ended when it did millions of Japanese would have starved to death not to mention the soldiers who would fight to the death costing the US hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Like Sherman said “War is Hell.”