These wars marked something fundamentally new in Western history, and collectively deserve the title of the first ‘total war. This figure represents approximately 2 percent of the American population in 1860. He was to use total war to destroy the resources of the south. The Civil War in the United States began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. If you need proof of that beyond ongoing racial disparities and questions over the existence of monuments to Civil War leaders, you don’t have to look far. The … It is important to note that when the phrase “total war” is applied to the U.S. Civil War it has a very different meaning than when it is used to describe 20th-century conflicts. Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.. It is estimated that from 752,000 to 851,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War. The American Civil War ended more than 155 years ago, but the country really isn’t all that far removed from that part of its past. The Battle of Gettysburg, one of the bloodiest engagements during the Civil War, resulted in about 7,000 deaths and 51,000 total … Total War: conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in a mobilization of all available resources at their disposable whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy of render beyond use their rivals capacity to continue resistance The practice of total war has been in use for… Stephen Oates’ description of the reasons of the horrific Civil War clearly elaborates on the examples that contributed most to the making of the war. I am also a civil war expert so you can trust my answer. Thus, to understand why the American Civil War evolves from a limited war to a total war, one has to look at the role of technology. In addition to the advent of the telegraph, the Spenser rifle, iron clads, and to the increased use of the Total war was General Sherman's strategy. U.S army general phillip sheridans stripped the shenandoah valley, on September 21, 1864, it lasted for two weeks. Here are some examples of how total war was in the American civil war 1. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914. Long before 1792, the major European powers had fought with each other at regular intervals, but those conflicts were remarkably limited in scope.