The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [122]
After a series of excellent moves to confound Hood and cut his supply lines, Sherman took Atlanta on September 2, 1864, thereby sealing a military victory and an electoral victory. Seizing Atlanta virtually guaranteed Lincoln’s re-election to a second term. For unclear reasons, the city of Atlanta burned to the ground. Perhaps the fire was started by Hood’s retreating army blowing up stores or by Sherman’s army deciding to torch it, no one really knows. The results were clear; Atlanta all but ceased to exist. Sherman took Atlanta’s population south by train and then made them debark for the countryside. In doing this, Sherman released thousands of starving, homeless southerners onto their neighbors who could ill afford to take care of them.
After the fall of Atlanta, Hood’s army mustered thirty thousand troops to oppose Sherman’s eighty thousand plus men, so Hood decided to march north toward Nashville and the Union’s railroad and supply centers at that location. Hood’s attack came to naught, except for the complete destruction of his army, thereby allowing Sherman a free hand for the rest of his campaign. For the rest of his operation, Sherman’s army faced little to no organized southern opposition. Sherman marched from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia, and burned and destroyed everything along the way.[143] By the time Sherman reached the Atlantic Coast at Savannah his reputation as a destroyer of life and property was well secured. Sherman’s aim was to completely demolish the economy of the South and thereby end the war as soon as possible. “War is hell,” he would famously say, and few in Georgia would argue the point. After Savannah was reached, Sherman turned north to ravage South Carolina and trap Lee between his army and Grant’s.
Even after the fall of Richmond, the burning of Atlanta, the devastation of Georgia, and the annihilation of their every army, the southern political leaders tried to fight on. They thought by reaching Texas the rebellion might survive under their continued encouragement. Lee saw no way out. As the Union army was pursuing his army from Richmond, he stopped at Appomattox Court House and requested an audience with General US Grant. It was there Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865. Other ragged, starving Confederate armies surrendered soon thereafter, and the political leaders of the South fell into captivity before they got very far (some dressed as women). Lee showed himself to be the consummate American when he ordered his army home. He could have told his army to fight on in guerrilla style in the hills and mountains of the land, but he did not, even though many counseled him to do so. Lee decided it should be totally over. An extended guerrilla war, deepening the burning hatred of each side, might destroy what was left of the nation. Certainly, the North’s response to such southern actions could have been repressive in the extreme.
Lincoln was prepared to admit the South back into the Union without punishment. During the war the Union’s war aims expanded as the number of dead alone demanded more than just saving the Union. The Union agenda soon included abolishing slavery as a key war aim. President Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth on April 15, 1865, just a few days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. His death removed the main obstacle to the Radical Republican agenda of punishing the South for its rebellion. At this point, a surprising split developed between the new president, Andrew Johnson, and Congress. President Andrew Johnson was a Democratic senator from Tennessee when that state seceded from the Union; however, Johnson stayed on in the Senate, as he was pro-Union. The other southern senators resigned as their states joined the rebellion. Lincoln chose Johnson as a running mate to widen the appeal of