Well, it was because that they did it to scare Georgia to abandon the confederate cause so basically they were scared of Sherman and his troops but Sherman wanted them to abandon the confederate. Your answer is that he frighten them.
Sherman's "March to the Sea", all the more formally known as the Savannah Campaign, was a military crusade of the American Civil War led through Georgia from November 15 to 21 of December year 1864 by General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. Because General Grant wanted to wage total war on the Confederate States. General Sherman destroyed everything in his path on his march. Sherman's "March to the Sea" followed his successful Atlanta Campaign of May to September 1864. He and the Union Army's commander, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, believed that the Civil War would come to an end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken.
C. It decreased morale and increased the number of deserters in the Confederate Army.
