Just one week after President Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864,

Union General William Tecumse Sherman set out to execute one of the most audacious plans of the U.S. Civil War.

His plan involved violating several central tenants of warfare

which had been established for thousands of years. Yet in the process he helped

bring the war to a swift conclusion. And in hindsight many people consider what he did to have been a war crime.

Learn more about Sherman's March to the Sea and how it affected the outcome of the U.S. Civil War on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. General William Tecumseherman was one of the most significant generals, not just in the U.S. Civil War, but in American history.

Not only was he one of the greatest generals in the Union Army, but he became the top military

officer in the United States after the war.

But that's a whole other episode. To understand Sherman's March to the Sea, it's important to understand where the Civil War was in 1864.

At the start of the year, the resolution of the war was still in doubt.

The ability of the Union to win the war was a big campaign issue in the presidential election of that year.

While most of the attention was given to the eastern theater of the war, which centered around Virginia,

much of the action was taking place in the Western Theater.

In May of 1864, General Sherman left Union occupied Tennessee and entered Northwest Georgia.

Sherman managed to defeat Confederate generals Joseph Johnson and John Bell Hood

in a series of battles over a period of three months.

The union pushed forward until it arrived and laid siege to the city of Atlanta on July 22nd.

Atlanta at the time had a population of about 10,000 people, which put it among the top 50 cities

in the country at that time.

Unlike most cities, Atlanta wasn't built on a river or coast for

transportation purposes. It was one of the first major cities built because of

...