American Civil War · CHAPTER 10 ·
1864 election and March to the Sea
Chapter 10 of The American Civil War, 1840–1877: “The Ballot and the March”
By August 1864 Lincoln expected he might lose re-election, but Mobile Bay, the fall of Atlanta on 2 September and Union success in the Shenandoah changed the mood, and he won 55 percent of the vote. Sherman then marched from Atlanta to Savannah, and Hood’s army was destroyed at Franklin and Nashville.
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SHORT EXPLANATION
By August 1864 Lincoln feared defeat at the polls. Confederate leaders hoped Northern war-weariness would produce an armistice while their armies still held the field. Then Union victories at Mobile Bay, Atlanta, and in the Shenandoah gave voters evidence of progress. Lincoln won 55 percent of the popular vote, closing the Confederacy’s best remaining political opening.
After the election, Sherman led his army from Atlanta to Savannah, destroying railroads and property that supported the Confederate war effort. Thousands of freedpeople followed. Hood hoped to draw Sherman back by moving into Tennessee; instead, defeats at Franklin and Nashville left the Army of Tennessee unable to function effectively.
The full story
In the summer of 1864, the Confederacy had reason to watch the Northern election as closely as the battlefield. Heavy losses and apparent stalemate had tested the public’s willingness to continue. The Democratic platform declared the war a failure and demanded an armistice. McClellan, its candidate, rejected parts of that platform and wanted to restore the Union. Even so, stopping the fighting while Confederate armies remained intact would have changed the bargaining position sharply. If those armies could hold out until November, Northern politics might offer the South a way to survive.
The news from the fronts changed what voters could see. Farragut closed Mobile Bay in August; Sherman took Atlanta on 2 September; and Sheridan defeated Early in the Shenandoah. These victories did not end the war, but they gave Northern voters reason to believe that further sacrifice could produce progress. Soldiers voting in the field, who would have to do much of the remaining fighting, supported Lincoln by a wide margin. He won 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 electoral votes. What McClellan would have done in office remains uncertain, but Lincoln’s victory removed the immediate prospect of an armistice with Confederate armies intact.
After the election Sherman cut his supply line and led his army across Georgia in a broad corridor. His troops lived from the countryside and destroyed railroads, mills, cotton, and other property that sustained the Confederate war. The march tested whether the Confederacy could protect its interior and the resources on which its armies depended. Its effects reached civilians directly: they faced fear, dispossession, and coercion, and specific acts of violence are part of the record. For many enslaved people, the same columns brought freedom.
Hood tried to make Sherman turn back by moving into Tennessee. The attempt instead cost his army irreplaceable leaders at Franklin, and Thomas broke it at Nashville. Confederate territory still appeared on the map, but there were fewer effective forces to defend it. The election had sustained the Union’s will to fight; the campaigns that followed further weakened the Confederacy’s ability to resist.
FULL EXPLANATION
Why the election mattered to the war
After the defeats of 1863, Confederate leaders had an objective beyond the Union armies: the Northern electorate’s willingness to keep supporting the war. In the summer of 1864, the draft, inflation, heavy Overland casualties, and apparent stalemate made that hope plausible. Material superiority could keep Union armies supplied, but voters had a say in whether the government would continue to use it. Atlanta changed the evidence before those voters. They did not need to believe that the war was already over; the capture showed that continued sacrifice might lead to victory. McClellan favored restoring the Union, so we cannot know the course his administration would have taken. His party’s platform nevertheless called for an armistice, and a halt while the Confederacy still existed would have changed negotiations. Lincoln’s victory removed that immediate opening and strengthened the path to the Thirteenth Amendment.
Law, effect and experience on the march
The law, the military effect, and the experience of Sherman’s march are related questions, but each needs its own answer. Under Union policy and the Lieber Code, military necessity could justify destroying property that supported the enemy; violence against civilians was forbidden. The army damaged railroads and supplies and demonstrated the Confederacy’s inability to protect its interior. Hardship at home also added to the pressure on soldiers to desert. Those results do not tell us what happened at every encounter. White Georgians experienced foraging and destruction as fear, hunger, humiliation, and loss, and particular incidents remain disputed. For enslaved people, the advancing army could bring liberation alongside dangerous flight and uncertain protection. Calling the march simply an “atrocity” or a “humane shortening” risks ending the inquiry before its conduct and unequal consequences have been considered.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
The election as a strategic front. After Gettysburg, Confederate leaders could hope to win time until Northern voters lost patience with the war. By the summer of 1864 that hope was plausible: gold reached 285, draft riots were only a year past, and the Overland Campaign had cost about 55,000 Union casualties. Atlanta’s fall did not destroy a Confederate army, but it changed what those losses seemed likely to purchase. Voters could now see a prospect of victory in return for continued sacrifice.
A demonstration across Georgia. About 60,000 Union troops crossed Georgia against limited opposition, destroying property that sustained the war. Their passage demonstrated how little protection the Confederacy could offer its interior. Sherman called the operation “statesmanship” and intended to make “old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war”. He distinguished pressure on property from violence against people; the distinction helps explain his design, while the experiences of civilians show what the campaign meant on the ground.
Hood moves into Tennessee. Hood chose a different response to Sherman’s advance: move into Tennessee, take Nashville, threaten the Ohio, and force Sherman to return. The plan required him to defeat Thomas with a smaller, poorly supplied army in winter. After a missed opportunity the day before Franklin, Hood ordered a devastating attack there. Thomas then defeated him at Nashville. The effort to draw Sherman away left the Army of Tennessee shattered as a fighting organization.
THE TURNING POINT
The vote of 8 November 1864. On 8 November voters chose Lincoln. A McClellan victory might have led to armistice talks with Confederate armies still intact and slavery’s future in the political struggle, though his commitment to restoring the Union makes the outcome uncertain. Lincoln’s re-election closed that immediate opening and strengthened the drive for the Thirteenth Amendment. He sought votes for it, and the outgoing House passed it in January. Alongside the victories of 1863, the ballot was a major turning point; armies still had to fight to end the war.
What it changed
Pressure reaches soldiers’ homes. Sherman’s advance carried destruction into the Confederate interior, adding to the hardship of soldiers’ families. Letters from home could pull men away from the ranks, and desertion increased. By spring, reports suggested Lee was losing the equivalent of a regiment a night, although precise rates varied. An army’s ability to stay in the field depended partly on the condition of the homes its soldiers had left behind.
Savannah and the sea. Sherman reached the sea after roughly 300 miles through Confederate territory. Rather than be trapped, Hardee led about 10,000 defenders across the river, and Sherman entered Savannah intact on 21 December. His Christmas-gift telegram announced the result; the march had cost fewer than 2,200 casualties. Resupplied by the fleet, his army would go north through the Carolinas toward Grant. East of the Mississippi, Confederate holdings now appeared on the map as separated patches.
Forty acres and its reversal. Thousands of freedpeople followed Sherman, bringing an urgent question with them: how were they to support themselves in freedom? In January 1865 Field Order No. 15 set aside the sea islands and a coastal strip for Black settlement in forty-acre plots. Andrew Johnson later revoked the arrangement. The promise survived in memory as a measure of what access to land might have made possible; Chapter 12 returns to that question.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — How should we judge Sherman’s march: its conduct, its effect, and its human cost?
Start with what the army was authorized to do. Sherman knew the 1863 Lieber Code, under which military necessity could justify destroying property while violence against civilians was forbidden. The march damaged war-supporting property, but individual acts still need judgment. Columbia’s burning the following February remains disputed. The campaign demonstrated Confederate weakness, and its effect belongs alongside the costs of continued fighting; we cannot know exactly how much longer the war would otherwise have lasted. Experiences also differed sharply. Enslaved people could find liberation in the Union advance, while white Georgians faced loss, fear, and humiliation. A verdict must account for the military purpose, the conduct of the troops, and the unequal experiences of those in their path.
An interesting fact
Four days before Field Order No. 15, Sherman and Secretary of War Stanton met twenty Black ministers and lay leaders in Savannah and recorded their answers about what freedpeople needed. Their spokesman was Garrison Frazier, a 67-year-old Baptist minister who had bought freedom for himself and his wife for $1,000 in gold and silver. He said: “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.” The order for coastal settlement responded to the leaders’ request for land.
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