As the capture of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia neared and defeat knocked at the door, the Confederacy continued to fight on. The Union was determined to break their will to continue to fight. 

To break this will, under the orders of Ulysses S. Grant, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops would embark on a trail of destruction known as Sherman's March to the Sea. As Sherman explained, the Union was "not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people" and as a result, they needed to "make the old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war." They burned much of the city of Atlanta to the ground in November 1864 and  then began a month long march across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean burning cities and crops as they went. Union soldiers raided farms and plantations, tore up railroad lines, and stole and slaughtered livestock

General Sherman's march was part of a strategy called total war. Total war involves not only targeting the enemy's army, but also its land and people. Sherman hoped that by bringing the horrors of the war to the Southern population, he would break the South's will to fight and end the war.

Southerners were outraged by Sherman's march of destruction. Hundreds of enslaved African Americans, however, left their Georgia plantations to follow the protection of the Union army. For them, the March to the Sea was a march to freedom.