He contended that the United States and its representatives had the right to “remove and destroy every obstacle—if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper…[and] that all who do not aid are enemies, and we will not account to them for our acts.” This last line was reminiscent of his statement in August 1862, when he had warned that those who resided in the areas near partisan troop action were “accessories by their presence and inactivity to prevent murders and destruction of property.”

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He summed up his new attitude in one line when he wrote to his brother near the end of December 1863: “The Army of the Confederacy is the South.” This time, however, he meant all Southern residents, not just those living close to guerrilla activity. Sherman would continue to issue orders in an attempt to keep his troops from outright pillaging as they marched through the South, but the private property of Southern civilians was now in peril of Federal confiscation or destruction if deemed profitable for Confederate use—or useful to the Union.

As 1864 began, Sherman continued to grapple with the guerrillas who unrelentingly attacked locations along the Mississippi River. While in eastern Tennessee he sent Brig. Gen. Grenville Dodge on a mission to “hunt the pests that infest our country. Show them no mercy and if the people don’t suppress guerrillas, tell them your orders are to treat the community as enemies.”

In January, while on a trip down the Mississippi to investigate another river attack, he heatedly wrote: “For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand [cannons into every] hapless town on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo [Rivers], or wherever a boat can float or soldiers march.” Four days later he ordered Brig. Gen. A.J. Smith to western Tennessee from Columbus, Kentucky, in preparation for the approaching Meridian expedition with orders to “punish the country for permitting the guerrillas among them. Take freely the [supplies and animals] of the hostile and indifferent inhabitants,” and inform them that if “they permit their country to be used by the public enemy they must bear the expense of the troops sent to expel them.”

Sherman also worried that Richmond had designs on wrestling control of the Mississippi River away from the Union army and reuniting the severed pieces of the Confederacy, undoing all that the Union army had accomplished in the previous months. He had heard news about the reconcentration of Confederate forces in the Magnolia State and had become intent on ridding Mississippi of enemy forces before his expected spring campaign eastward into Georgia. A great number of the thirty thousand paroled troops from Vicksburg had entered into partisan and regular service throughout the state, enhancing the number of enemy troops already there.

“To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions,” he declared. “On that point I am not only insane, but mad.”

Sherman intended to cut Mississippi from the eastern section of the Confederacy, much like Grant had isolated the Trans-Mississippi with his own victory at Vicksburg and General Nathaniel Banks’ capture of Port Hudson. To free up thousands of garrisoning troops along the Mississippi, discourage guerrilla raids, and remove valuable military resources from Confederate grasp, Sherman would burn, confiscate, and destroy corn, hams, railroads, depots, warehouses, and any other items that might aid the enemy’s cause.

By these actions, Sherman also hoped to dishearten Mississippians, who had already shown signs that they were becoming unhappy with the war. In the latter part of 1863, Sherman had learned about a series of town meetings and petitions all across the state “to consider the question of abandoning the Confederacy.” Although he had initially dismissed the reports as nonsense, he still believed that some in the region were growing tired of the conflict. If not, he intended to persuade them into feeling that way.

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