Strategy
 

In his April 18, 1862, letter, Cheney expressed his opinion that the war would end sooner if the Union Army either confiscated or destroyed the property of Southern civilians. It would be two more years before such an idea would be formally used by leaders in Washington during the campaigns of 1864.

With the nation divided and war imminent in 1861, Union leaders sought a strategy, a plan, on how to restore the Union. Military thought of the day held to three main strategies:
(1) destroy the enemy army in a great battle,
(2) seize strategic sites, or
(3) capture the enemy capital.
The most famous plan developed in 1861 was General Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan" that called for a blockade of the South, followed by seizing control of the Mississippi River to split the Confederacy. Although Scott's two main points were enacted, Union leaders in the Eastern Theater focused on capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond while protecting Washington, D.C. The search for a great, decisive battle and attempts to seize key locations were also employed by Union generals in the field.

Gradually two other strategies were used in what General William T. Sherman called "hard war" and what later scholars would call "total warfare":
(1) destroying the enemy economy, and therefore their ability to make war, and
(2) breaking the will of the people to continue the war.
Sherman demonstrated these strategies most dramatically during his "March to the Sea" in 1864, but it was also employed by General Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley that same year and during Sherman's similar march through the Carolinas in 1865.

 
 

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MM Vol 70, pg 3457 - destroyed house near Fredericksburg VA MM Vol 30, pg 1455 - Confederate dead in trenches MM Vol 86, Pg 4332 - Image 3, horses and caissons on the road to Fredricksburg MM Vol 60 Pg 2989Ruins at Manassas Junction VA The hill on which the house stood was the site of some of the fiercest fighting during the battle. Mrs. Henry, an elderly invalid, could not be evacuated before the battle began. Trapped between the lines, her family moved her to a gully near their spring house, but at her insistence returned her to her bed. Reports that Confederate sharpshooters were using the house prompted U.S. Army Artillery Officer Captain James B. Ricketts to open fire on the house. A shell struck the bed where Mrs. Henry was lying, and she died later that day of her wounds. Her daughter, Ellen, took shelter in the chimney of the home's fireplace. The concussion of the shells striking the house damaged Ellen's eardrums causing permanent deafness. Mrs. Henry is believed to be the first civilian casualty of the war, and the only such of the First Battle of Bull Run.