Atlanta fell to Sherman’s Army in early September 1864. He took the next few weeks to chasing Confederate troops through northern Georgia in an useless attempt to attract them into a clear fight. The Confederate’s sneaky and unclear evasive strategies doomed Sherman’s plan to succeed victory on the battlefield so he developed a different strategy: destroy the South by destroying its money-based and transportation technology. Sherman’s “burned earth” plan began on November 15th when he cut the last telegraph wire that linked him to his superiors in the North. He left Atlanta in flames and pointed his army south. No word would be heard from him for the next five weeks. Plantations were burned, crops destroyed and stores of food destroyed. After his progress to the sea he left many chimneys of burnt out houses and train rails that had been heated and wrapped around trees.
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