In December 1864 William T. “Uncle Billy” Sherman concluded his March to the Sea by capturing Savannah, Georgia. Sherman burned his way through Georgia, taking the idea of Total War – inflicting the hell of war on everyone, not just soldiers – to the local populace and making them not want to support the war anymore. General John Bell Hood ransacked most of the garrisons in the lower southeast on a failed trip into Tennessee (maybe one of the worst military blunders in US history), leaving only around 13,000 Confederate soldiers to oppose Sherman’s 60,000+. Sherman wrote to Lincoln:
SAVANNAH, GA., December 22, 1864
(Via Fort Monroe 6.45 p.m. 25th)…