Well then I suggest you call Wikki and straighten their asses out!
In 1864, following the capture of Chattanooga, the Union Army moved southward and began its invasion of north Georgia. The region surrounding Atlanta was the location of several major army battles, culminating with the Battle of Atlanta and a four-month-long siege of the city by the Union Army under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood made the decision to retreat from Atlanta, ordering all public buildings and possible assets to the Union Army destroyed. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union Army, and on September 7, General Sherman ordered the citys civilian population to evacuate. On November 11, 1864, in preparation of the Union Armys march to Savannah, Sherman ordered Atlanta to be burned to the ground, sparing only the citys churches and hospitals.[32]
Hood stayed outside the city and continued attacking Sherman's supply lines into the city. The war was far from over.
In November of 1864, Sherman eventually made his decision to leave Atlanta but instead of retreating back to Tennessee, he decided to move his best troops through Georgia to Savannah and to send more than half of his army back to Tennessee to deal with Hood -- who they then completely destroyed because Hood was an idiot.
When Sherman left Atlanta, he burned anything of military value, but the city was not 'burned to the ground' as you claim. Factories and rail yards and such were torched, but most of the city was untouched.
That all happened 6 months before there was any 'surrender' by the Confederates, but Sherman's march through Georgia surely hastened that eventual surrender and saved tens of thousands of lives on both sides.
War is hell.
To bad the South didn’t have a scorched earth policy too. The South was to weak to make it very far into the North. But a good fantasy would be burning New York and DC to the ground. It would be such fun reading how it was the burned by vacating troops and how war is hell just get over it we won so shut up with the truth. I would love to see the same slough off of history but going the other way.