Sherman’s March to the Sea
Sherman’s March to Sea — Watch video
William T. Sherman believed that the Confederacy derived its strength not from its fighting forces but from the material and moral support of sympathetic Southern whites. Factories, farms and railroads provided Confederate troops with the things they needed, he reasoned; and if he could destroy those things, the Confederate war effort would collapse. Meanwhile, his troops could undermine Southern morale by making life so unpleasant for Georgia’s civilians that they would demand an end to the war.
To that end, Sherman’s troops marched south toward Savannah and Southern troops fled South ahead of Sherman’s troops, wrecking their own havoc as they went: They wrecked bridges, chopped down trees and burned barns filled with provisions before the Union army could reach them.
The Union soldiers were just as destructive. They raided farms and plantations, stealing and slaughtering cows, chickens, turkeys, sheep and hogs and taking as much other food-especially bread and potatoes-as they could carry. The Yankees needed the supplies, but they also wanted to teach Georgians a lesson: “it isn’t so sweet to secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home, “as [they] thought it would be.”
Sherman’s troops arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864, about three weeks after they left Atlanta. The city was undefended when they got there. (The 10,000 Confederates who were supposed to be guarding it had already fled.) Sherman presented the city of Savannah and its 25,000 bales of cotton to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.Early in 1865, Sherman and his men left Savannah and pillaged and burned their way through South Carolina to Charleston. In April, the Confederacy surrendered and the war was over.
Explain what Sherman’s army did and explain, in your own words, the reason this was done
Total War
Sherman’s “total war” in Georgia was brutal and destructive, but it did just what it was supposed to do: it hurt Southern morale, made it impossible for the Confederates to fight at full capacity and likely hastened the end of the war. “This Union and its Government must be sustained, at any and every cost,” explained one of Sherman’s subordinates. “To sustain it, we must war upon and destroy the organized rebel forces,-must cut off their supplies, destroy their communications…and produce among the people of Georgia a thorough conviction of the personal misery which attends war, and the utter helplessness and inability of their ‘rulers’ to protect them…If that terror and grief and even want shall help to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting us…it is mercy in the end.”
Was Sherman’s actions successful? Explain
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Watch video
On April 11, 1865, two days after LEE’S SURRENDER at Appomattox, Lincoln delivered a speech outlining his plans for peace and reconstruction. In the audience was JOHN WILKES BOOTH, a successful actor, born and raised in Maryland. Booth was a fervent believer in slavery and white supremacy. Upon hearing Lincoln’s words, he said to a companion, “Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”
After failing in two attempts earlier in the year to kidnap the President, Booth decided Lincoln must be killed. His conspiracy was grand in design. Booth and his collaborators decided to assassinate the President, Vice President ANDREW JOHNSON, and Secretary of State William Seward all in the same evening. Lincoln decided to attend a British comedy, OUR AMERICAN COUSIN, at Ford’s Theater, starring the famous actress LAURA KEENE. Ulysses S. Grant had planned to accompany the President and his wife, but during the day he decided to see his son in New Jersey. Attending the play that night with the Lincolns were MAJOR HENRY RATHBONE and his fiancée, CLARA HARRIS, the daughter of a prominent Senator.
In the middle of the play that night, Booth slipped into the entryway to the President’s box, holding a dagger in his left hand and a Derringer pistol in his right. He fired the pistol six inches from Lincoln and slashed Rathbone’s arm with his knife. Booth then vaulted over the front of the President’s box, caught his right leg in a flag and landed on the stage, breaking his leg. He waved his dagger and shouted what is reported to be SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS ? Latin for “thus be it ever to tyrants.” Some reported that he said, “The South is avenged.” He then ran limping out of the theater, jumped on his horse, and rode off towards Virginia.
The bullet entered Lincoln’s head just behind his left ear, tore through his brain and lodged just behind his right eye. The injury was mortal. Lincoln was brought to a nearby boarding house, where he died the next morning. The other targets escaped death. Lewis Powell, one of Booth’s accomplices, went to Seward’s house, stabbed and seriously wounded the Secretary of State, but Seward survived. Another accomplice, GEORGE ATZERODT, could not bring himself to attempt to assassinate Vice President Johnson.
Two weeks later, on April 26, Union cavalry trapped Booth in a Virginia tobacco barn. The soldiers had orders not to shoot and decided to burn him out of the barn. A fire was started. Before Booth could even react, SERGEANT BOSTON CORBETT took aim and fatally shot Booth. The dying assassin was dragged to a porch where his last words uttered were, “Useless … useless!”
The conspirators in the President’s assas
The conspirators in the President’s assassination were tried in front of a military tribunal known as the Hunter Commission.
A train carried Lincoln’s body on a circuitous path back home for burial in Springfield, Illinois. A mourning nation turned out by the hundreds of thousands to say good-bye to their President, the first to fall by an assassin’s bullet.
Why was President Lincoln assassinated?