Sherman's march to the sea

Cultural  

1. A movement of the Union army troops of General William Tecumseh Sherman from Atlanta, Georgia, to the Georgia seacoast, with the object of destroying Confederate supplies. The march began after Sherman captured, evacuated, and burned Atlanta in the fall of 1864. His men, numbering about sixty thousand, destroyed railroads, factories, cotton gins, houses, livestock, and anything else that might be useful to the South in the war.

---

Discover More

Northerners celebrated Sherman's march with the song “Marching through Georgia.” Southerners remembered it bitterly.

Example Sentences

To explain why Wilson refused at first to visit the ruined battlefields of northern France, she cites his boyhood memory of witnessing the devastation left by Sherman’s march to the sea during the Civil War.

From New York Times • Jun. 22, 2018

The land was in the path of Sherman's march to the sea.

From Time Magazine Archive

Here and there blackened and dismantled walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had stood, for Sherman's march to the sea had left its mark upon the town.

From The House Behind the Cedars by Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell)

An eye-witness describes Sherman's march to the sea and through the Carolinas as a "cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night."

From The Battle of Atlanta and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. by Dodge, Grenville Mellen

The sequel to this victory came ten months later in Sherman's march to the sea: not less thrilling in its conception and dramatic in its execution than any battle or siege.

From The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Ketcham, Henry