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This comes up from time to time on all boards and never, ever does it fail to stir up strong emotions.
By and large, Sherman's goal was to demonstrate to the southern people that the Confederacy was finished. Secondarily, he aimed to deprive the Confederate armies of any and all supplies filtering to them from the farms and villages of Georgia.
Many people (innocent if you want) in his path were rather severely inconvenienced, most especially the Roswell women. That particular incident always comes up when this subject is opened, and there simply is no excuse for that.
One must also recall that Sherman marched to the sea through an area of mostly subsistence farming and his men lived off the land.
Presumably each farm raised enough 'rations' for their own selves, whether 6 or 600, and sudddenly some 80,000 men came to dinner...
HankC