re: On this date 155 years ago....

Sherman was maybe the first soldier anywhere to understand modern industrial warfare. It's not about defeating your enemy in the field. If you do, it's only in service of your main objective, destroying his ability and will to fight. You do that by taking the battle to his homeland, disrupting his ability to feed, clothe, and arm himself, forcing him to capitulate. As commander in chief of the Army a few years later, he used the same strategy to wipe out the Plains Indians by decimating the Buffalo population.

It is true the Confederacy never had a chance as long as the Union's will never wavered. The North was never close to even 50% mobilized. If the Union armies had been wiped out to the last man, they could have been reconstituted from the millions of men in factories, farms and mining camps and still outnumbered the Confederates.

Failing that, the Confederate hope was for a British or French intervention, or a stunning victory that resulted in a crisis of confidence in Lincoln's leadership and some sort of armistice leading to a political settlement. Neither of those happened.

The interesting point to ponder is if Gettysburg would have turned out differently with Jackson on the field, and would it have been enough.