Sherman's March: An Eyewitness History of the Cruel Campaign that Helped End a Crueler War

General William Tecumseh Sherman has gone down in history as the man who said, "War is hell" and who waged it so fiercely as to leave a permanent scar on the Southern psyche. But the history books aren't always right.

In Sherman's March, Civil War historian Richard Wheeler offers a new view of Sherman, as a man of compassion as well as conviction and as a military leader who was ahead of his time in understanding that the destruction of supplies and property—the means to wage war—was as important as meeting and destroying enemy armies.

Wheeler has created a seamless, highly readable yet historically accurate narrative by carefully selecting extracts from letters, diaries, memoirs, and first-person reports from the period and then linking them together with his own words. The result is a dramatically fresh and detailed account of this important campaign as one which, though highly destructive, doubtlessly shortened the Civil War appreciably, saving thousands of lives, Rebel as well as Yank.