Sherman

A Union general during the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman was notorious in southern lore and history for his 'total war'concept of destroying property in occupied Confederate territory to remove sources of food and equipment needed to sustain southern armies and to erode the morale of soldiers and civilians alike. He was perhaps most despised by many southerners, even generations after the war, for his 'march to the sea' through Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah in November-December 1864, in which his army cut a swath of destruction 50 miles wide. The unnamed frame narrator of the story refers to "the lost Civil War and Sherman’s march" as examples, like the Indian mound, of things that were "as much a part of our lives and background as the land itself" (66).