Breaking the Confederacy

As the Civil War moved into 1864, people in the North expected newly appointed general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant to roll over the Confederate armies and bring victory and peace by the end of the summer. With his friend William Tecumseh Sherman, Grant devised a strategy to defeat the Confederate Army of Tennessee and lay waste to the Deep South so that the area could no longer provide support for the Confederate war effort.

Making extensive use of materials both contemporary and modern, including letters, diaries, memoirs and histories, the author presents a detailed narrative of the locales, conditions, personnel, strategies, tactics, battles and skirmishes as Sherman's forces fought their way from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then made their famous march to the sea, destroying all resources along the way. He also details Confederate general John Bell Hood's ill-fated attempt to capture Nashville while Sherman was occupied elsewhere. The fighting and devastation in Georgia and Tennessee that summer of 1864 were indeed major factors in the final Union victory.