NARRATOR: I think Sherman is one of these fellows who, you look at his photograph and you kind of know what he's about from the moment you see him. He's got this sketchy look about him and he understands modern war.

This is the first modern war. It's not a chess board game anymore. It's not Napoleon with 25,000 troops in brightly colored uniforms in straight rows firing at each other in an open field. This is massive armies of over 100,000 soldiers backed by heavy industry, moved by rail and firepower.

The firepower and the Civil War is unprecedented. And, in the first couple of years of the war, many of the commanders are fighting with, essentially, an early 19th century playbook and getting slaughtered as a result.

So, Sherman, and Grant along with him, figure out that modern war is about total destruction of the enemy's army. And along the way, one way to destroy the army is to directly confront it. But along the way, is also to destroy its supply base. Ruin the morale of the people and the industry that will support, and the agriculture that will support that army.

And that's what Sherman understands. So, he's a brutal figure in a lot of ways, but he understands how to bring the war to a close-- pursue the southern armies and destroy the southern infrastructure.

And that's what his march to the sea is all about-- destroying crops, destroying railroad infrastructure, destroying factories, and along the way disheartening an already disheartened Confederate population that just sees this northern war machine as something they're never going to ever, no matter what. No matter what the righteousness of their cause or their purity of their purpose, it's not going to happen.