One hundred fifty years ago this month, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union “Army of the West” marched from Atlanta, Ga., to the seaport of Savannah. En route, Sherman’s forces intentionally devastated a 60-mile wide swath of countryside.

According to contemporaneous Confederate accounts, Sherman’s March to the Sea was a hideous form of “total war.” Yankee savages — particularly Sherman’s engineers and foraging “bummers” — were scorched-earth devils, burning Atlanta and then plundering the countryside.