The Man Who Would Shape the Future of War
General Sherman's Destructive Path Blazed a New Strategy
Psychological. But as both McPherson and Marszalek emphasize, a lot depends on how you define total war. To Marszalek, Sherman's way of war fell short of total because it had limits and never targeted civilians directly. Both historians also agree that Sherman's greatest innovation was in psychological warfare. "Sherman came to the conclusion," says Marszalek, "that the best way to end the war was not to continue the bloody head-to-head fighting but to convince Southerners through destructive and psychological warfare that their government could not defend them...and that the Confederacy itself was, in Sherman's words, 'a hollow shell.'"
Even though he helped make war a greater hell, Sherman never doubted its necessity. Three years after delivering his famous remarks, he spoke just as directly from the heart: "Wars are not all evil; they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed, thunderstorms which purify the political atmosphere, test the manhood of a people, and prove whether they are worthy to take rank with others engaged in the same task by different methods."
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