Sherman was determined to make all young and old wealthy and poor feel the horrors of war To do this he allowed his soldiers to destroy any and all property they encountered Although Sherman had forbidden his army from harming civilians the Union soldiers left a wake of destruction as they pressed on through Georgia In the course of 26 days Sherman estimated his men caused 100 million worth of damage to Georgia which would equal approximately 1 3 billion today General Sherman's March to the Sea GENERAL HOOD S COMMAND was not the only devastation endured in the course of the Civil War Three years of The mass destruction of Atlanta was not entirely the fault of General Sherman's troops With battles had left cities and towns destroyed supply lines to the city cut Confederate general homes and farms burned to the ground John Bell Hood was forced to give the command to his army to retreat and abandon Atlanta crops devastated tunnels and bridges Before leaving he ordered his men to destroy collapsed hundreds of thousands of lives factories and rail cars that held ammunition and other military supplies He would rather they lost and a nation fractured burn than fall into enemy hands and be used by the Union army The explosions resulting from DESTRUCTION AND DEVASTATION the fires could be heard for miles Journalist and By the end of the Civil War in 1865 historian Wallace Putnam Reed described the scene stating All the thunders of the universe nearly 50 major battles had been fought in seemed to be blazing and roaring over Atlanta 23 states Thousands of smaller battles skirmishes and engagements had occurred
General William T Sherman rides along the Union line near Atlanta in 1864 as well From the moment the war began in 1861 until it ended in 1865 there were few stretches of time when there was not fighting happening somewhere in the country The final major engagement of the war happened on April 9 1865 during the Battle of Appomattox Station in Virginia The Union army had taken control of a train loaded with supplies for the Confederate army and headed a mile
DIRECTION On April 9 1865 General Lee left surrendered to General Grant right at the town of Appomattox Court House Virginia north to the Confederate camp The Confederate general Robert E Lee realized he was outnumbered and without supplies Realizing he had no other option Lee ordered a truce flag to be waved Later that day Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S Grant It marked the end of the Civil War
After four long years the war had ended It left behind death and destruction MALICE TOWARD NONE on a massive scale President Abraham During President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Lincoln had formulated a plan to help Address on March 4 1865 he addressed the task of Reconstruction His plan was To finish reconstruct or rebuild the United States the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds to care for him who shall have borne the However on April 14 the president was battle and for the widow and his orphan He assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in continued explaining that he wished to achieve Ford's Theatre in Washington DC Vice these goals with malice toward none with charity for all President Andrew Johnson a Southerner and former slave owner who had no college education became the new president Without the sure leadership of President Lincoln many wondered how the North and South would reunify successfully after such a bitter and bloody battle Government officials sought a way for the rebellious states to peacefully rejoin the Union Southern plantation owners wondered what would become of their mighty farms now that slavery had been abolished Former slaves struggled to establish new free lives starting from nothing As the dust settled on the battlegrounds the mighty problem of putting the nation back together again loomed overhead It would take a major effort to repair the social political and physical effects of the Civil War How would the United States ever recover from the bloodiest war in American history
