The Fame of Sherman’s Grand Marches
I have referred to the possibilities of a direct march from Atlanta via Columbia or Charlotte, with a much larger army, at exactly the same time, for the purpose of showing that even Sherman’s grand strategic plan to assist in the capture of Lee’s army did not necessitate or justify his action in marching to Savannah and quitting his own theater of operations before his adversary there had been disposed of. The plan above suggested would have negatived even more positively the boast and promise of the Confederate chief that Sherman should be driven out of Georgia. The fact that Sherman personally, with an army about as large as, or larger than, Hood’s, could and did remain quietly at Atlanta while one of his subordinates disposed of Hood and his army, would have been the most emphatic possible defeat of the Confederate plan to force him back by operations in his rear. Only one part of Sherman’s earnest desires would have been unrealized—namely, to destroy Georgia. But even that could have been, at least in a great measure, compensated for by the more complete destruction of South Carolina, the cradle of secession and rebellion.
The more carefully Sherman’s great operations are examined, the more clearly it will appear that while his plans were magnificent, their execution was not perfect. And this is the legitimate aim of just military criticism, not to build up or pull down the reputations of commanders, but to assist military students in their efforts to perfect themselves in the art and science of war.
Sherman’s great marches, especially through the enemy’s country and over such obstacles as those found from Savannah to Goldsboro’, showed him to be a master of the auxiliary art of logistics no less than of the great science of strategy. Even to those who have had no means of duly appreciating the higher merits of Sherman’s general plans, his marches have seemed the wonder of the world. Yet, strangely enough, the march through Georgia, which was in fact the simplest thing possible, has been regarded as the great exploit, while the vastly more difficult and important march through the Carolinas appears to have been taken as a matter of course, perhaps because of the conviction, which had by that time become general, that Sherman could do anything he might undertake.
In respect to Sherman’s skill in grand tactics, I have only a few words to say here. The part assigned him in Grant’s general plan of operations for all the armies, in 1864, in his “private and confidential” letter of April 6, was as follows: “You I propose to move against Johnston’s army to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” It is a simple, plain matter of history that Sherman did not accomplish the first and more important part of the task assigned him—“to break it up”—in the four months of almost constant fighting with Johnston’s army. In the comments I have made upon the Atlanta campaign, I believe I have shown clearly why Sherman did not accomplish that result by the tactical operations to which he limited himself. The manner in which that army, then under Hood instead of Johnston, was finally broken up by Sherman’s subordinates in Tennessee, shows clearly enough what kind of modification of Sherman’s tactical methods was requisite to enable him to reach the same result in Georgia.