"If we can march a well-appointed army right through his territory, it is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power that (Confederate President Jefferson) Davis cannot resist," Sherman wrote to General Grant when he proposed the march. "I can make this march and make Georgia howl."
Lincoln worried that if Sherman made a misstep, it might destroy his army. President Davis promised that Sherman's army by itself in the middle of Confederate territory would be crushed.
Of course, it would take another Confederate Army to do that, and there simply wasn't one with General Hood's Army of the Tennessee in the process of being destroyed outside of Nashville. There simply wasn't much the South could do to stop Sherman's march.
But Grant trusted Sherman whose decisions, even at the cost of many of his men, previously showed he was one to attack. And now, he wanted to accomplish victory in a different way.
No One Around to Stop Him. --Old Secesh
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