Sherman, copying Grant’s 1863 [[Vicksburg Campaign]], decided to cut loose from his railroad. With but 60 locomotives and 600 freight cars, it was hard pressed to provide the 130 ten-ton carloads of freight needed every day. He sent a third of his force back to Thomas to hold Tennessee, and stripped the brigades down to the bare essentials; the men each carried a five day supply of hardtack. Better food would be acquired along the way. The famous "March from Atlanta to the Sea" represented a new kind of warfare. Apart from a few ineffective militia units, Sherman encountered no serious opposition. He lived off the country, which because of the transportation breakdowns was bursting with food that could not be moved. His army consumed what it needed, and destroyed the rest. Advancing in two fronts, each 10 to 30 miles wide, Sherman cut a swath through 200 miles of one of the South's richest agricultural districts.
Confederates had discussed using the “Fabian” tactic of scorched earth, last used by the Russians against Napoleon in 1812--destroy everything first, so Sherman would starve. That was impossible because Sherman, not tied to a supply line, could head in any direction he pleased. "Having alternatives, I can take so eccentric a course that no general can guess my objectives." He used statistical data provided by the census to select the fattest counties to despoil. In 26 days his soldiers wreaked $100 million worth of damage, proving conclusively that , as Sherman famously said, "War is Hell. "
The swath of destruction was a deliberate refutation of the rebel argument that the Confederacy could never be defeated because it was so large and agriculturally rich. Sherman's March exposed the basic Confederate quandary: their nation was too large to defend. The political goal of preserving slavery necessitated defense of all the territory, since once the Federals passed through the system of slavery was doomed. Many blacks fled the plantations to join the Union armies; a larger number were evacuated by their masters before the Federals arrived. Knowledge that freedom was imminent undercut the automatic obedience that the slave regime required.
Grant hoped that Sherman's threat would force [[Robert E. Lee]] to abandon Richmond and rush south to intercept Sherman. Grant indeed had set a trap: if Lee moved, Grant had his entire army ready to chase him down. If he did not move, Georgia would be ruined and the Confederacy would be proven to be but a shadow nation, its armies failures, its men impotent. Lee did not move. <ref>Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, ''How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War'' (1991) p. 642</ref>
Grant hoped this threat would force Lee to abandon Richmond and rush south to intercept Sherman. Grant indeed had set a trap: if Lee moved, Grant had his entire army ready to chase him down. If he did not move, Georgia would be ruined and the Confederacy would be proven to be but a shadow nation, its armies failures, its men impotent. Lee did not move. <ref<Hattaway & Jones 642</ref>
==March through South Carolina==
After delivering Savannah to the nation as a Christmas present, Sherman turned north into South Carolina--the very heartland of secession. There in early 1865, even more than Georgia, the destruction was systematic and symbolic. On February 17 downtown Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, burned to ashes. Sherman had intended to burn only the public buildings and munitions factories, but was not especially vigilant in controlling his men. As part of their economic warfare, Confederate policy was to destroy all cotton before the Yankees could use it. They had therefore piled the streets high with cotton, then soaked it with turpentine and set it ablaze. Tufts of burning cotton, sparks and embers wafted across the city. Routinely the local officials had publicly whipped uppity slaves, and maltreated Yankee prisoners. Revenge came when the last Confederate units pulled out. Hundreds of barrels of Scotch (slipped through the blockade at enormous cost) were liberated by the invaders; the mayor had neglected to destroy it because it was private property. Many elite civilian men, fearful of imprisonment, abandoned their families and servants in the doomed city, and yet later expressed astonishment when the invaders were dilatory at quenching the fires that gutted their aristocratic mansion district. Sherman then headed to North Carolina where (in accord with Grant's original plan), he would isolate Virginia and cut off Lee's army from its base of support.