Sherman's March through Georgia

My Grandmother had a big influence on me as a young boy.

She was born May 11, 1890 which is more than 20 years after the civil war. Nonetheless she had grown up hearing such terrible things about Sherman's march through Georgia or as it is now called, Sherman's march to the sea, which took place in 1864 that it still seemed very real to her in the 1950's when I was a young boy.
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This event took place 26 years before she was born, but it was so horrible that it was still very much something that children were taught. And she grew up in Nebraska, not in the deep south.

This is a real picture of Sherman's men destroying a railroad in Georgia. I guess it was as real to her as the Vietnam war is to me (since I did not serve over there) or maybe as Hitler's brutality in WWII.
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Sherman employed the scorched earth policy. He ordered his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path.

My grandmother remembered the stories about the boys coming home with no shoes and virtually no teeth, due to the malnutrition. And she told me these stories when I was 4 or 5 years old. I remember them well.
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It still almost makes my hair stand up when I hear the phrase "Sherman's march through Georgia."

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/emc56
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