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17 - The Carolinas Campaign

from Part I - Major Battles and Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Lisa Tendrich Frank
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

The Union’s 1865 Carolinas campaign brought hard war to the Confederacy’s civilian population, emancipated thousands of slaves, and helped bring the Civil War to a close. The campaign began in January 1865 when Union major general William Tecumseh Sherman and 60,000 soldiers marched north from Savannah, and it ended on April 26, 1865 with Confederate general Joseph Johnston’s surrender at Durham Station in North Carolina. The campaign employed unconventional tactics earlier used along Sherman’s March to the Sea (see Chapter 16) in order to inflict physical and psychological damage upon the enemy. To do so, seasoned Union soldiers tore up railroads, burned fields and homes, confiscated food and various supplies, took or killed livestock, raided countless Southern homes, shredded personal treasures, liberated enslaved African Americans, and taunted elite white women. Throughout the month and a half of active campaigning through the Carolinas, Sherman’s troops averaged 10 miles of marching daily and faced little military resistance from the Confederate army.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 337 - 361
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Campbell, Jacqueline Glass. When Sherman Marched North from the Sea: Resistance on the Confederate Home Front (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Fellman, Michael. Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman (New York: Random House, 1995).Google Scholar
Foote, Lorien. The Yankee Plague: Escaped Union Prisoners and the Collapse of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Frank, Lisa Tendrich. The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers during Sherman’s March (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
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Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964).Google Scholar
Royster, Charles. The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).Google Scholar
Rubin, Anne Sarah. Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Schwalm, Leslie A. A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Silkenat, David. Driven from Home: North Carolinas Civil War Refugee Crisis (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Simpson, Brooks D. and Berlin, Jean V. (eds.). Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Whites, LeeAnn. The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860–1890 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Whites, LeeAnn and Long, Alecia P. (eds.). Occupied Women: Gender, Military Occupation, and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

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