Total War: No One is Safe
The act of declaring total war, means that no one is safe whether you are a noncombatant civilian or a combatant. This meant that both sides incurred heavy casualties, and both sides lived in constant fear never knowing whether they would live to see the next day.
Total war dates back to our earliest times the wars between Carthage and Rome were considered total wars. Rome razed the city and salted the earth the city sat on, so that nothing could be grown there in the future. Citizens were not spared some killed most taken prisoner and turned into Roman servants.
During the Civil War the North practiced total war, from Atlanta Georgia to the coast Sherman marched burning and destroying anything that could be used to further the South's war effort.