The goal was not to kill the soldiers in the valley but to eliminate the conditions that made military resistance viable.

The result, in the Shenandoah, was decisive.

The valley ceased to be usable as a base of operations for Confederate forces not because those forces were defeated in battle but because the resource base they depended on was destroyed.

Sheridan applied the same logic to the Southern Plains in 1874.

The Red River War campaign was designed not to defeat the off-reservation peoples in battle but to destroy the conditions that made off-reservation life viable: the food stores, the shelter, the horses, the mobility.

The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon was the most complete single application of this strategy.