As he marched to the sea in the fall of 1864, General William T. Sherman brushed aside the slight Confederate opposition, cutting a swath through the heard of Georgia fifty miles wide. Far to his rear, with the hopes of the South riding on his every move, General John Bell Hood, commanding general of the Army of Tennessee, was marching his way northward in the hope of recapturing Tennessee and Kentucky. If Hood had been successful, Sherman's march...