Vicksburg was a fort on the Mississippi River, which was (and is) a hugely important shipping route. It terminates at New Orleans, which was (and is) a hugely important port city.
The Union army had captured New Orleans in in May of 1862, but Vicksburg was still a position of power on the river. Capturing it essentially handed control of the river to the Union and crippled the Confederacy’s ability to move war materiel.
Ah. Now I understand it.
« The Father of Waters flows free to the sea. »
Thanks!
Total war is the result of industrialization and of effective transportation. (and communication, i.e. the telegraph during the civil war). Before the 1800’s, armies had been less reliant on behind-the-lines production. They lived off the land, they used the weapons they had or took from the enemy. Scorched earth was a tactic of both terrorizing the enemy and preventing invaders from finding supplies that they expected to live off.
Guns were the first change. Armies started to need gunpowder and shot in volume. Cannon were something made by industry back home. Supply lines became a lot more significant.
The huge shift happened essentially between the Napoleonic and Civil Wars (plus the Crimean War). Mechanization of transport and the population boom significantly increased the size of armies, and consequently their need for equipment and supplies - which also used transport. Material was made in factories using mass production, centralizing supply chains; cottage industry artisans were less able to keep up the volume needed.
This meant that the industrial infrastructure and supply chains were a meaningful target. Destroying railroads and factories and food supplies hundreds of miles behind the lines was not just a blow to enemy morale and a distraction, it also significantly impeded the enemy’s fighting capability.
Plus, for a major military capability, the industrial infrastructure in many aspects had to be purposed to support the war effort. For the Civil War, targeting steel works and copper production was as important as attacking telegraph lines and railroads or rolling stock. By WWI and especially WWII when horses were supplanted by trucks, when electricity was a significant part of industrial production, when the volume of firepower used escalated even further, industrial production was even more important - ball bearing factories, for example, became strategic targets; as did dams and petroleum production. The people who produce and pack rations for the troops are as much a part of the war effort as the ones making artillery shells or tanks.
(You can even claim that peripheral roles like the banks that paid those workers, the tax department that paid for war supplies, the newspapers that produced propaganda to motivate the population - were all valid parts of the war effort.)
They all became fair game as military targets. Georgia was just the start.
Shermans operations were like the 1814 campaign inside France or the early 1945 campaign in Germany.
The opposition was suffering major defeats deep inside its heartland. That is devastating for morale even before all the other things.
Yes. A brief incursion some dozens of miles into PA (ending with Gettysburg) was bad for Union morale - but Sherman was hundreds of miles inside the Confederacy for over a month, capturing vital targets and destroying vital infrastructure
As I once described it to undergraduates, “Sherman looked the South right in the eyes, kicked it square in the crotch, and dared them to do something about it. And they couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”