er him any assistance. Yet, as has heretofore
been shown, if Thomas had carried out Sherman's instructions by
promptly concentrating his troops, there would have been no risk
of serious results in Tennessee.

In connection with Sherman's operations it is essential to bear in
mind the distinction between two radically different kinds of
strategy, one of which has for its object the conquest of territory
or the capture of places by defeating in battle or out-manoeuvering
the defending armies; while the other has for its object the
destruction or capture of those armies, resulting, of course, in
the conquest of all the enemy's territory. The first kind may be
all-sufficient, and hence best, in a foreign war having for its
object anything less than total conquest; but in the suppression
of a rebellion, as in a foreign conquest, the occupation of places
or territory ought to be entirely ignored except so far as this
contributes to the successful operation of armies against opposing
forces. This fundamental principle appears to have been duly
appreciated by the leading Union commanders near the close of the
Civil War, though not so fully in its earlier stages. Military
critics are apt to fall into error by not understanding the principle
itself, or by overlooking the change of policy above referred to.

SHERMAN'S PURPOSE IN MARCHING TO THE SEA

It is necessary not to confound the "march to the sea" as actually
conceived and executed by Sherman as a preliminary to the march
northward for the capture of Lee's army, with the previous far-
reaching strategic plans of Grant, of which Sherman and other chief
commanders were informed in the spring of 1864.

Grant's plans had in view, as their great object, again to cut in
two the Confederate territory, as had been done by the opening of
the Mississippi River to the gulf. This next line of section might
be Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Savannah, or Chattanooga, Atlanta,
Montgomery, and Mobile. But with the disappearance of Hood's army
from that theater of operations, all reason for that plan of
"territorial" strategy had disappeared, and the occasion was then
presented, for the first time, for the wholly different strategical
plan of Sherman, of which Lee's army was the sole military objective.
Grant was perfectly just to himself as well as to Sherman in giving
the latter full credit for this last plan; and he modestly refrained
from any more