But Grant and Sherman, knowing the factors so very much better,
were sure the problem could easily be solved. Sherman left
Atlanta on the fifteenth of November and laid siege to Savannah
on the tenth of December. He utterly destroyed the military value
of Atlanta and everything else on the way that could be used by
the armies in the field. Of course, to do this he had to reduce
civilian supplies to the point at which no surplus remained for
transport to the front; and civilians naturally suffered. But his
object was to destroy the Georgian base of supplies without
inflicting more than incidental hardship on civilians. And this
object he attained. He cut a swath of devastation sixty miles
wide all the way to Savannah. Every rail was rooted up, made
red-hot, and twisted into scrap. Every road and bridge was
destroyed. Every kind of surplus supplies an army could possibly
need was burnt or consumed. Civilians were left with enough to
keep body and soul together, but nothing to send away, even if
the means of transportation had been left.

Sherman's sixty thousand men were all as fit as his own tall
sinewy form, which was the very embodiment of expert energy.
Every weakling had been left behind. Consequently the whole
veteran force simply romped through this Georgian raid. The main
body mostly followed the rails, which gangs of soldiers would
pile on bonfires of sleepers. The mounted men swept up everything
about the flanks. But nothing escaped the "bummers," who foraged
for their units every day, starting out empty-handed on foot and
returning heavily laden on horses or mules or in some kind of
vehicle. If Atlanta had been a volcano in eruption, and the
molten lava had flowed to Savannah in a stream sixty miles wide
and five times as long, the destruction could hardly have been