Sherman's March to the Sea at once acquired a popular renown which it has never lost. This, however, was chiefly because it happened to catch the public eye while nothing else was on the stage. For its many admirable features were those about which most people know little and care less: well-combined grand strategy, perfection in headquarter orders and the incidental staff work, excellent march discipline, wonderful coördination between the different arms of the Service and with all auxiliary branches--especially the commissariat and transport, and, to clinch everything, a thoroughness of execution which distinguished each unit concerned. As a feat of arms this famous march is hardly worth mentioning. There were no battles and no such masterly maneuvers as those of the much harder march to Atlanta. Nor was the operational problem to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the subsequent march through the Carolinas. Sherman himself says: "Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea, and of that from Savannah northward, I would place the former at one, and the latter at ten--or the maximum." The Government was very doubtful and counseled reconsideration. 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.