He held various commands in the American Civil War from its outset in 1861, and in March 1864 succeeded Ulysses S. Grant as chief Union commander in the west. He set out with 60,000 men on a march through Georgia, during which he crushed Confederate forces and broke civilian morale with his policy of deliberate destruction of the South’s sources of supply. In 1869 he was appointed commander of the US army, a post he held until his retirement in 1884.