Chapter Twenty-Three   

IT’S A BIG GAME, BUT I KNOW I CAN DO IT

When the mighty fortress at Vicksburg had fallen in 1863, and the United States once more controlled the great Mississippi, Sherman realized, as he then wrote Thomas Ewing, that his name would forever be associated with the nation’s history. In comparison with the Atlanta triumph, however, Vicksburg had served as a mere springboard. With the conquest of Atlanta, Sherman’s fame skyrocketed. The entire country had been following the Georgia campaign, and the victory news unleashed a wave of celebration and praise. “Sherman’s taken Atlanta!” cried the newboys, and a grateful republic rejoiced. Suddenly Sherman was truly famous.¹

General Grant wrote Sherman that “I feel you have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war, and with a skill and ability that will be acknowledged in history as unsurpassed, if not unequaled.” General Halleck said the campaign was “the most brilliant of the war.” The New York Herald, often critical of Sherman in the past, lauded the Atlanta achievement as “cyclopean.” President Lincoln ordered 100-gun salutes fired in a dozen major cities in honor of “the brilliant achievements of the army under command of Major General Sherman . . . and the capture of Atlanta.” As Charles Francis Adams Jr., the great-grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams, who was an officer in the Army of the Potomac, listened to the artillery salute fired in honor of Sherman’s triumph, he was moved to write his mother: “How superbly Sherman . . . has handled that army.” Speaking of “the boldness, the caution, the skill, the judgment, the profound military experience and knowledge of that movement,” Adams then asserted, “Unquestionably it is the campaign of this war.”2

While the Vicksburg campaign strategically climaxed a series of far-reaching Union victories in the western theater, and signaled the ultimate doom of the Confederacy by splitting it in half and reopening the Mississippi in its entirety to Union gunboats and transports, the South fought on. The Grayclads hoped somehow—perhaps war weariness in the North, foreign intervention, the genius of Lee, the hand of fate—to reverse the disastrous course of the Confederate war effort. But with the capture of Atlanta, Sherman had struck a blow equally as, if not more, devastating to the Rebels than Vicksburg. The Atlanta triumph, both in military substance and political and psychological timing, was a tremendous Union victory. Sherman had directed 100,000 men into the heart of the Confederacy, defeating one of the two major Southern armies, and capturing the most important rail center in the Deep South. The triumph provided an electrifying boost to Union morale, and just when Grant’s costly campaign in Virginia—which was initially expected to achieve a decisive result—seemed to have reached a bloody stalemate.

Furthermore, the fall of Atlanta struck a near crippling blow against the Confederate spirit, convincing many a Southerner that the war could not be won. Still worse for Southern morale, when coupled with the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential race, the capture of Atlanta seemed to assure that the Confederate cause was lost. The Rebels had looked hopefully to the United States election, thinking that the defeat of Lincoln would signify the collapse of Northern support for the war and lead to peace negotiations and a recognition of Southern independence. “Sherman had saved Lincoln,” asserted Basil Liddell Hart, “and by saving him sealed the fate of the South.” Other historians agree.³

But to proclaim that the Atlanta triumph “saved Lincoln” may be claiming too much for the impact of Sherman’s victory, great as it was; after all, the President did win 55 percent of the popular vote. On the other hand, Lincoln himself seemed quite doubtful, less than two weeks before the conquest of Atlanta, that he would be reelected—writing that it was “exceedingly probable” that he would not win. Some Republican leaders were still working to oust him as the party’s nominee, convinced he could not be reelected. John Sherman wrote Cump in late July, claiming that “the conviction is general that Lincoln has not the energy, dignity, or character to either conduct the war or to make peace.” John said “a popular ticket would be Grant and Sherman,” an idea that Sherman instantly dismissed: “Fortunately, we are not candidates.”4

It is a common saying that “timing is everything,” and sometimes human affairs do seem so disposed. The climax of Sherman’s Atlanta campaign occurred early enough that many of his soldiers could be furloughed to return home and vote in crucial states, like Illinois and Indiana, where absentee voting by soldiers was not allowed. This was important because an overwhelming number of Union troops—78 percent of all Federal soldiers, and fully 86 percent of Sherman’s forces—voted for Lincoln. Not only the soldiers’ votes, but their influence with the folks back home, while impossible to quantify, undoubtedly worked to the benefit of the President.

The capture of Atlanta also came in time to generate a surging sense of military triumph as the populace contemplated going to the polls. “To the vast majority of Northerners,” historian Albert Castel stressed, “the fall of Atlanta means that the war can be won—indeed that it is being won.” Major General Philip Sheridan’s devastation of the Shenandoah Valley that September and David Farragut’s recent triumph at Mobile Bay did not arouse Northerners like the capture of Atlanta had. No one can know how many voters, because of the Atlanta success, decided to vote for Lincoln rather than either staying at home or voting for Democratic nominee George McClellan. It is sensible to assume that some did, for Sherman’s victory changed the bleak atmosphere in the North. General Sherman had won a military victory whose political consequences—ironically, considering his hostility toward politics—were as great as, probably greater than, any other campaign of the war.⁵

In addition to what the Atlanta campaign did for the nation, it also showcased Sherman’s military talent. First and foremost was the logistical triumph. With a precarious single-track railroad, extending four hundred miles across Kentucky, Tennessee, part of Alabama and north Georgia, Sherman had supplied 100,000 fighting men with the necessities for making war. Those vulnerable rails had to be protected, obviously, from inevitable enemy attacks. When the Rebels did break the railroad, as was certain sometimes to occur, Sherman’s repair crews were qualified for any challenge, even building major new bridges and trestles. Also, while the rails were broken, his forces could still operate, because he had stored sufficient supplies at key depots.

The General was fully aware of the magnitude of the achievement, as evidenced by his letters to Thomas Ewing. On August 11, he had written Ellen’s father that “for 100 days not a man or horse has been without ample food, or a musket or gun without adequate ammunition. I esteem this a triumph greater than any success that has attended me in Battle or in Strategy.” The accomplishment “has not been the result of blind chance [for] at this moment I have abundant supplies for twenty days, and I keep a Construction Party in Chattanooga that can in ten days repair any break that can be made to my rear.” He also maintained “a large depot of supplies at Chattanooga & Allatoona . . . fortresses which no cavalry force of the enemy can reach, and in our wagons generally manage to have from ten to twenty days supply.” After Atlanta, Sherman felt he had both achieved his potential and measured up to the stature of his father-in-law. With obvious satisfaction, he wrote Ewing on September 15, declaring that his foster father had “lived to See the little redheaded urchin not only handle an hundred thousand men, smoothly and easily, but fight them . . . at a distance of hundreds of miles from his arsenals and sources of supply.” Sherman indeed had directed a sparkling achievement, and his bragging to Ewing is understandable.6

The Atlanta campaign had also proven that Sherman was a master of maneuver warfare. Time and again he successfully performed turning movements, enabling him to maintain the offensive initiative, avoid the enemy’s strongpoints, exploit the enemy’s vulnerability and largely determine the course of combat, thus presenting his opponent the undesirable choice of retreating or accepting battle at a disadvantage. “Successful maneuver requires,” as set forth by the United States Army, “flexibility in organization, administrative support, and command and control.” Maneuver may also be interrelated, as it was in Sherman’s Atlanta campaign, with other principles of generalship, particularly offensive action, economy of force and surprise.

Sherman was at his best when he flanked the Confederates at Snake Creek Gap, surprising Johnston and forcing the enemy commander to give up his formidable defenses, long in preparation, at Rocky Face Ridge. His maneuver at the Chattahoochee River was also masterly, deceiving Joe Johnston by feigning a downstream crossing and then executing a bloodless success on the enemy’s eastern flank, which turned Johnston out of another strong position. Yet again, Sherman deftly shifted the Army of the Tennessee from the northwestern side of Atlanta to the eastern side, striking south toward Decatur, and placing his forces astride a vital enemy railroad. These and other well-conceived flanking movements highlighted the campaign.7

Sherman’s logistical genius, and his cool prowess for successfully maneuvering his forces to avoid the big, costly battles and yet achieve his objective, are among the most significant reasons that he has long been more relevant than other generals of the American Civil War. Of course there have been criticisms. Sherman, some have alleged, failed to carry out Grant’s primary campaign order. From Washington, D.C., on April 4, Grant had instructed his chief lieutenant: “You I propose to move against Johnston’s army, to break it up, and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.” While Sherman had not destroyed the Southern army, it suffered severely in the fighting around Atlanta after Hood became the commander. The heavy Confederate losses could not be easily replaced. Although Sherman did not “break it up,” he had gained an impressive tactical victory in forcing the Rebel army out of Atlanta. More to the point, Grant’s orders essentially constituted a general guideline, rather than a demand for a one-two punch in a specific order. As Grant explained: “I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign, but simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done, and leave you free to execute it in your own way.” Grant surely realized that many factors would influence the development, direction and emphasis of the north Georgia campaign. He trusted Sherman to make adjustments for inevitable, unforeseeable events, as well as executing decisions which could be faced only once the campaign got under way.8

When Sherman responded to Grant on April 10, he projected a campaign of turning movements that would force the Confederate Army back to Atlanta, which he said “is about as far ahead as I feel disposed to look.” Sherman’s basic focus was strategic, expressed in the promise that “I will ever bear in mind that Johnston is at all times to be kept so busy that he can not in any event send any part of his command against you.” Grant certainly understood what Sherman planned, and he neither objected nor sought to make modifications. It is important to keep in mind that Grant and Sherman had already discussed their plans in person, and at length, when they conferred in Cincinnati only a short time prior to the early April correspondence.⁹

As the campaigning progressed, the city of Atlanta inevitably loomed more and more significant, serving as the base of supplies for the Confederate Army falling back upon it, and as an increasingly powerful symbol of Southern resistance to the Yankee invader. Sherman sometimes acquired Confederate newspapers, which proclaimed the absolute necessity of defending Atlanta for military, political and morale reasons. Doubtless Sherman sensed, as he advanced closer and closer to Atlanta, that capturing the city would inflict great damage, in Grant’s words, “against [the Confederate] war resources,” both material and psychological. Simultaneously Northern spirits were lifted. The Union perception of the Atlanta victory instantly confirmed the great importance of Sherman’s triumph. He had become a national hero.

THE QUESTION FACING Sherman was what to do next. He had witnessed appalling numbers of people killed and wounded, and he still could see no end to the war and its horrendous loss of life. While serving in Mississippi, he had led an army from Vicksburg across the state to Meridian and back, as a means of conducting psychological warfare against the South. Primarily he destroyed property of military value, but inevitably a significant amount of private property was razed as well. Sherman became convinced that inflicting casualties, however lurid the numbers might be, would never be as effective as attacks on the Southern psyche through the destruction of property—and obviously this kind of warfare would also spare the lives of his men. He had conducted the Mississippi campaign without a supply line, carrying provisions in his wagons, heavily supplemented by foodstuffs taken from the enemy. Now he was thinking about the same type of campaign, except that this time it would be on a much greater scale.

Mulling over the possibility of marching far deeper into Georgia, Sherman began to correspond with Grant about future operations. On September 10, Grant invited Sherman’s ideas, telling him that “as soon as your men are sufficiently rested and preparations can be made . . . another campaign should be commenced. We want to keep the enemy constantly pressed.” Sherman was “perfectly alive to the importance of pushing our advantage to the utmost”; however, he did not think further operations dependent upon the railroad were feasible. The number of soldiers required to protect it was already at a maximum. On the other hand, if the navy could control “the Savannah River as high as Augusta, or the Chattahoochee as far up as Columbus,” then Sherman declared, “I can sweep the whole State of Georgia.”10

Within a few days Sherman was thinking more daringly, and in larger focus. If the Union fleet could be sent to the mouth of the Savannah River, he assured Grant, “I would not hesitate to cross the State of Georgia with 60,000 men, hauling some stores and depending on the country for the balance.” Speculating about how the enemy might react to such a march, Sherman projected possible countermeasures that he likely would take. He closed by saying: “If you can whip Lee, and I can march to the Atlantic, I think Uncle Abe will give us twenty days leave of absence to see the young folks.” Sherman well realized that Grant, as general-in-chief of the United States armies, with oversight of the grand strategy for the war, was the only man whom he needed to persuade about the value of such a campaign in order to get the permission he sought. Sherman pursued the subject at every opportunity.11

But in the latter part of September, General Hood moved around Sherman’s right flank, leading the Confederate army west and north to strike the Western & Atlantic Railroad in Sherman’s rear. Leaving one corps to hold Atlanta and defend the Chattahoochee bridges, Sherman moved north on October 3 and 4, with about 45,000 troops, and gave chase to Hood, whose men were already ripping up the railroad from Big Shanty to Acworth. When the Southerners pushed on northward, Sherman guessed correctly that they were heading for his large supply depot at the Allatoona Pass. By signal flags from atop high gound, he ordered the division of Brigadier General John Corse, at Rome, to reinforce the Allatoona garrison at once. A fierce fight resulted, with each side suffering more than 700 killed, wounded or missing. Then proceeding north to Dalton, Hood took the surrender of an 800-man railroad garrison, about 600 of whom were blacks. The prisoners were forced to tear up railroad track, and evidence points to the blacks being badly treated. Several were executed.¹²

When General Hood then marched westward into north Alabama, Sherman decided to give up the chase. Characterizing Hood as an “eccentric” man, he remarked that “he can turn and twist like a fox and wear out my army in pursuit.” Sherman had no idea what Hood might do next. The Confederate commander’s movements worried General George Thomas, who was back in Nashville tending to affairs of the Department of the Cumberland. Thomas thought, correctly as matters developed, that Hood well might be planning to invade Tennessee and march on Nashville. The truth was that Sherman had no desire to follow Hood, wherever the Rebel commander might go. As he later said, he was “strongly convinced of the wisdom of my proposition to change the whole tactics of the campaign.” He wrote Grant: “Why will it not do to leave Tennessee to the forces which General Thomas has, and the reserves soon to come to Nashville, and for me to destroy Atlanta and . . . march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston, breaking roads and doing irreparable damage? We can not remain on the defensive.”13

Sherman and Grant exchanged telegrams throughout October and into November, discussing Sherman’s proposed campaign. Sherman advocated destroying the railroad from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and then “striking out with wagons for Milledgeville, Millen, and Savannah.” If he did continue to maintain the railroad, he said it would cost a thousand men monthly, “and will gain no result,” while the “utter destruction of [Georgia’s rail] roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources. . . . I can make the march,” he confidently declared, “and make Georgia howl.” Naturally Grant informed General Halleck and War Secretary Stanton (and through Stanton the President) of Sherman’s proposed march. Stanton told Grant that Lincoln “feels much solicitude” about Sherman’s plan, “and hopes that it will be maturely considered.”¹⁴

Grant himself raised several issues. Like Thomas, he worried that Hood would march into middle Tennessee and declared that “he ought to be met and prevented from getting north of the Tennessee River.” Thinking, as he typically did, of trying to destroy enemy military forces, Grant said, “If there is any way of getting at Hood’s army, I would prefer that.” Sherman replied strongly. If he were “to let go Atlanta and North Georgia and make for Hood,” he was convinced that “no single army can catch him,” and worse, “Jeff Davis’ cherished plan of making me leave Georgia by maneuvering” would have succeeded, and “the whole effect of my [Atlanta] campaign will be lost.” On the other hand, if Sherman were “to move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea,” he believed that Hood would follow him. “Instead of being on the defensive [Atlanta and the railroad], I would be on the offensive; instead of guessing at what [Hood] means to do, he would have to guess at my plans.” Again Sherman declared, “We cannot now remain on the defensive.” If Hood did move toward Nashville, Sherman thought Thomas had a force strong enough to stop him, as he assured both Grant and Halleck.¹⁵

Another concern on Grant’s mind was that Sherman might be “bushwhacked by all the old men, little boys, and such railroad guards as are still left at home.” Sherman was not worried. He intended to lead an army 60,000 strong, made up of “only the best fighting material.” He could take care of himself against any force the enemy might possibly bring against him. Grant had also raised the issue of preparing a coastal base to supply Sherman’s forces, but Sherman assured him that his men would need no supplies. Everything they required would be taken from the countryside. Exuding confidence, he wrote on October 22, “I will subsist . . . luxuriously.”16

He wrote General Halleck that the “movement is not purely military or strategic, but it will illustrate the vulnerability of the South.” Sherman believed that when the rich planters “see their fences and corn and hogs and sheep vanish before their eyes,” they will finally realize “what war means.” He also told Halleck that “it is overwhelming to my mind that there are thousands of people abroad and in the South who will reason thus: If the North can march an army through the South it is proof positive that the North can prevail in this contest.” The march would be “a demonstration to the world . . . that we have a power which Davis cannot resist.”¹⁷

Sherman had determined to bring the war home to the South in a devastating and unforgettable manner. To cavalry commander James Wilson he ominously said, “I . . . propose to leave a trail that will be recognized fifty years hence.” He was thinking beyond any general of his day. The most effective way to end the conflict was to destroy the support base, both material and psychological, of the Confederate war effort. He would strike hard at railroads and all war-production facilities; but additionally, in marching wherever he pleased, living off the countryside, and demonstrating that no one could stop him, he would be leveling a terrible blow against civilian morale, and through the civilians against Southern military morale.¹⁸

“Man has two supreme loyalties—to country and to family,” declared Basil Liddell Hart. Stating that with most men the family is the stronger loyalty, he contended that so long as their families are safe, men “will defend their country, believing that by their sacrifice they are safeguarding their families also.” However, when the family itself is in danger, then “the bonds of patriotism, discipline, and comradeship are loosened.” This was the devastating impact of Sherman’s march, that in taking the war home to the Southern populace, he simultaneously and inescapably struck at the will of the Confederate soldier to continue fighting. For years to come many Southerners, while never convinced that the United States had been right in prosecuting the war, would live with a sullen memory of Northern military might, and that largely because of Sherman’s awful, sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas.19

After weeks of considering Sherman’s arguments for the campaign, Grant’s concerns for his safety and success subsided. Sherman got the backing he wanted. “On mature reflection,” Grant wrote Stanton, “I believe Sherman’s proposition is the best that can be adopted.” Assuring the secretary of war that both Thomas and Sherman would be strong enough to meet whatever challenges developed, Grant declared: “Such an army as Sherman has (and with such a commander) is hard to corner or capture.” To his credit, Grant had concluded that Sherman was right in not pursuing Hood, because General Thomas, with the force Sherman had left with him, would be able to deal with Hood if it became necessary. Just as Sherman had contended, Grant echoed his thinking on November 2, writing that “I do not really see that you can withdraw from where you are to follow Hood, without giving up all we have gained in territory. I say, then, go as you propose.” Five days later Grant telegraphed: “I think everything here [the administration] favorable now. Great good fortune attend you. I believe you will be eminently successful.”²⁰

Sherman fully realized that the campaign would be a demanding one, and if he failed, the critics would swarm like vultures after a fresh kill. Probably, however, his confidence had seldom been greater. On the last day of October, he told a new staff officer, Henry Hitchcock, an observant young man who would keep a valuable diary throughout the march, “It’s a big game, but I can do it—I know I can do it.”²¹

SOON AFTER SHERMAN captured Atlanta he evacuated the civilian population from the city, allowing “no trade, manufactories, nor any citizens there at all,” and telling General Halleck that “if the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.” Sherman had no intention of allowing his forces to be burdened with caring for civilians, which “absorbs the attention of officers in listening to everlasting complaints and special grievances that are not military.” He noted too that poor residents of a war-torn city would compel the army “sooner or later to feed them or see them starve under our eyes.”22

The civilian removal policy at once generated an outcry, as Sherman had anticipated. Leading the protesters was General Hood, with whom Sherman engaged in an intense, fiery correspondence. The mayor of Atlanta, strongly supported by two councilmen, entered into the controversy as well. Sherman defended his decision astutely, being more knowledgeable about military practices, precedents and history than Hood or the others. In response to Mayor James M. Calhoun’s plea that the policy generated “consequences appalling and heart-rending,” Sherman declared that “war is cruelty and you can not refine it. . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war [which] . . . are inevitable.” The removal of the civilians was affirmed in Washington. Halleck wrote Sherman that his actions were “fully approved by the War Department. Not only are you justified by the laws and usages of war in removing these people, but I think it was your duty to your own army to do so.”

While corresponding with Grant, and contemplating his next move after the fall of Atlanta, Sherman conversed with three Confederates, former members of the U.S. Congress, who came into Atlanta under a flag of truce. He tried to convince them to persuade the governor of Georgia, Joseph E. Brown, that he should use his influence and power to take Georgia out of the war. The three men knew how much Georgia had already suffered, and Sherman promised that if the governor and other officials would cooperate, and pull Georgia out of the Confederacy, he would spare the state any more destruction. Nothing came of the proposal, and Sherman probably never expected anything from it, but it says something about the General’s desire for the war to be over. On November 10, he wrote his son Tom that while the people acclaimed him a great general, and he had achieved “what the People call fame & Glory,” he would rather, if somehow it were possible, “come home quietly and have you & Willy meet me at the cars than to hear the shouts of the people.”23

By mid-November, Sherman’s forces had destroyed the railroad and telegraph communications for most of the distance back to Chattanooga and were poised to strike out from Atlanta “to ruin Georgia,” as Sherman had earlier, vigorously summarized the objective. Before departing the city, however, he ordered the destruction of everything that might possibly benefit the enemy. Already Atlanta had suffered major punishment, some of the devastation inflicted by the Confederates, who in preparing to defend the city, had stripped suburban houses of wood for fortifications and had burned others to clear fields of fire for artillery and musketry. When later forced to evacuate Atlanta, the Rebels demolished the Atlanta Rolling Mill; torched buildings containing supplies they were unable to remove; and set fire to ordnance-filled freight cars, the explosions of which leveled several nearby structures and set fire to others.

But Sherman, of course, inflicted more damage than the Confederates. When he brought the war to Atlanta’s doorstep in midsummer—ominously telling Halleck that the city would be “a used-up community when we are done with it”—his long-range artillery bombardment, day and night for several weeks, had rained indiscriminate death and destruction. A woman was struck by a shell fragment and killed while ironing clothes in her house. A small girl was hit and killed by a shell at a street intersection. An African-American barber, standing outside his shop, died when struck by a ricocheting shell fragment. Others died in similar, random circumstances. Houses, factories and stores burned. Dust and smoke polluted the atmosphere. Young Carrie Berry, whose tenth birthday came in August, wrote in her diary: “How I wish the Federals would quit shelling us and we could get out of the cellar and get some fresh air.” Once the bombardment did cease, and the Yankees occupied the city, various structures were dismantled as the soldiers sought wood to build huts for shelter.

Then finally, two and a half months after Atlanta fell, and immediately before marching south and east across Georgia, General Sherman wreaked destruction upon the city yet again. This time, in terms of property damage, the devastation was the worst ever. All military resources were to be destroyed, and these were broadly defined. A large force under the direction of Captain Orlando M. Poe, Sherman’s chief engineer, did the work, They torched the railroad depots, the roundhouse, the machine shops, foundries, merchant mills and arsenals. Machinery that could not be destroyed by fire “was most ingeniously broken and made worthless.” One of the machine shops, which had been used by the Confederates as an arsenal, contained piles of live shells that detonated when flames reached them, and created a night, recalled Sherman, “made hideous by the bursting of shells, whose fragments came uncomfortably near” the house where the General was staying. The fires spread to a block of stores, and Sherman recorded that “the heart of the city was in flames all night,” but added that the fires “did not reach . . . the great mass of dwelling-houses.” In years to come, some Southerners claimed that Sherman brutally burned Atlanta to the ground, a charge that is often taken for granted.

Certainly Sherman did not intend that private dwellings, churches, hospitals and other nonmilitary facilities should be destroyed. Colonel William Cogswell, in command of the provost guard, was charged with enforcing the orders against indiscriminate arson, even if it meant “shooting on the spot all incendiaries.” Cogswell’s assignment proved virtually impossible. His guards could not be everywhere, and they were concentrated in the downtown areas. Some soldiers had their own ideas of how Atlanta should be treated, and “a careful and selective destruction” was not what they had in mind. They wanted to burn the whole city, and clearly the provost guard could not stop every one of them. Some men who wanted to torch all of Atlanta claimed to be retaliating for the Confederate burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

There were also men in the grip of alcohol, and excited beyond control by the prospect of themselves contributing to the great conflagration. In fact, some drunken soldiers, in defiance of orders, had been setting fires for several days before the burning authorized by Sherman actually took place. There is no doubt that many residences—perhaps a great many—and some business buildings that were of no military value whatsoever were destroyed in spite of Sherman’s intentions and instructions to save them. And regardless of the General’s earlier evacuation orders, some civilians still remained in the city.

REGION OF THE MARCH TO SAVANNAH AND COLUMBIA WITH RAIL NETWORK

On November 16, 1864, Sherman moved out of Atlanta with 60,000 men, heading southeastward on the march to the sea. Map by Jim Moon Jr.

Martha Quillen watched as a line of burning structures drew nearer to her home. She could “hear the wild shouts” raised by Union troops, who carried blazing torches as they approached closer and closer. Fully expecting her house to be set fire, she gained a last-minute reprieve, only because some Federal officers decided to establish a headquarters in her parlor, and thus posted guards to protect the place from the arsonists.

A sergeant in the First Michigan Engineers and Mechanics got caught up in setting fires to houses. When about to torch one home, a little girl came up and pleaded with him “not to burn our house.” Looking into his face and calling him “Mr. Soldier,” she inquired, if he did torch the house, “Where are we going to live?” The sergeant said he dispensed with the torch and left, for he no longer “had the heart” to burn the place.

Carrie Berry was still in the city, her father having remained there because he was doing some work for the Union Army. Carrie thought it looked like the whole of Atlanta was on fire when the Federals left. Marauding Yankee soldiers, wrote the ten-year-old, “behaved very badly.” She added that “nobody knows what we have suffered.” And Martha Quillen remarked that she hoped no one “will ever expect me to love Yankees.”

The truth is that when Sherman’s forces left Atlanta, the city had suffered severe damage, although determining the precise extent of the loss seems impossible. It is equally true, as Sherman himself indicated, that the whole of Atlanta was not destroyed. Nor was the General alone responsible for all of the devastation that did take place. Nevertheless, the name “Sherman” would come to symbolize that terrible time in Atlanta, when a deep and lasting scar, which rankles to this day, was created in the hearts of many Southerners.24

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WITH THE SMOKING RUINS of Atlanta at his back, Sherman set out through central Georgia on the morning of November 16, “to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South,” as he explained his objective to General Thomas. He would “make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.” Even those who were not victims, “who did not suffer from the march,” observed historian Joseph T. Glatthaar, “had to realize that they were just as vulnerable to such destructive marches.” Railroads, factories, farms, all manner of supplies and many private houses would be destroyed, with Sherman making a mockery of Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s recent assertion, while visiting the Rebel army, that the Yankees would have to retreat from Georgia or starve, and predicting that the retreat would be “more disastrous than was that of Napoleon from Moscow.”25

Far from retreating, Sherman was advancing with an army of more than 62,000 men, the great majority of whom were infantry, numbering 55,329. The cavalry command was 5,063 strong, while the artillery arm numbered 1,812 men, and sixty-five guns. The entire force comprised experienced and physically hardened troops, who were grouped into two wings of approximately equal numbers. The right wing was commanded by General Oliver Howard, and the left by General Henry Slocum, with Howard’s wing made up of the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Corps, while Slocum’s wing was composed of the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps. The two wings would follow separate routes, although roughly paralleling each other, as each advanced in two corps columns, a formation that enabled Sherman to present a wide front, sometimes as much as sixty miles. This was a good configuration for confusing the enemy about the army’s destination, as well as for foraging and wreaking destruction. It was in fact the same type of formation that he used back in the winter when marching across Mississippi.²⁶

Howard’s right wing led off to the southeast along the Macon & Western Railroad, as if heading for Macon, while Slocum’s wing marched directly east through Decatur, along the Georgia Railroad, initially following a path leading in the direction of Augusta. The immediate objective was Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia, which lay about one hundred miles distant from Atlanta, and more or less in the middle between the two diverging lines of march that led out from that destroyed town. The plan was for the left and right wings gradually to converge toward Milledgeville on a trek that was expected to take approximately a week, with the troops covering about fifteen miles a day, while destroying anything of value to the Confederate war effort. Sherman and his staff rode away from Atlanta with Slocum’s wing. “We turned our horses to the east,” remembered Sherman, and “Atlanta was soon lost behind the screen of trees, and became a thing of the past.” He recalled the day as “extremely beautiful, clear sunlight, with bracing air.” The good weather did not last however, as rain and drizzle soon made the roads slick and muddy. Sherman also noted “a ‘devil-may-care’ feeling pervading officers and men, that made me feel the full load of responsibility, for success would be accepted as a matter of course, whereas, should we fail, this ‘march’ would be adjudged the wild adventure of a crazy fool.”27

Sherman’s orders for the campaign are engaging, conveying a determination to preserve secrecy about the army’s destination, immediate and ultimate, and a confidence that both officers and men would follow his lead without question. They would be advancing “for a special purpose,” he told them, which was “well known to the War Department and General Grant.” He stated that it was sufficient for the army to know that the mission “involves a departure from our present base, and a long and difficult march to a new one.” Their objective was “to strike a blow at our enemy that will have a material effect in producing what we all so much desire—his complete overthrow.”²⁸

The army was instructed to “forage liberally on the country during the march,” but in a systematic manner. Authorized foraging parties were to be organized by each brigade commander, and led by “discreet officers,” who would gather “corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command.” Only during a halt or camp might individual soldiers seek “turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and . . . drive in stock [that was] within sight of their camp.” The regular foraging parties would gather the bulk of necessities, with a goal of keeping the wagons supplied with “at least ten days’ provisions.”29

As for horses, mules and wagons, which obviously would be required in large number, Sherman said “the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit” from Georgia’s inhabitants, “discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly.” He did not anticipate any difficulty in finding whatever his army needed, because he had studied the 1860 census data and planned to travel through some of the most bountiful agricultural counties in the state. Although everything of military value to the enemy was to be destroyed, only corps commanders were entrusted with the power to burn private houses, cotton gins, mills, etc.—and for them Sherman laid down a general principle. Wherever “the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted”; however, he said that if guerrillas, bushwhackers or any inhabitants offered resistance, then the corps commanders were ordered to respond with “a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.”³⁰

Major Henry Hitchcock enthused that “Sherman’s plans are splendid.” The army did carry them out in the main, although certainly not to perfection. Sherman later admitted: “No doubt many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence, were committed by these parties of foragers . . . for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary; but these acts were exceptional and incidental.” Sherman’s characterization of such plundering as “exceptional and incidental” goes too far in minimizing the facts. The excesses certainly were not limited to foragers. At Madison, some fifty miles out from Atlanta on the Georgia Railroad, the Twentieth Corps entered the town, and Union Captain David P. Conyngham declared that “pillaging went on with a vengeance.” He said “stores were ripped open,” and soldiers grabbed whatever appealed to them. “Cellars of rich wine were discovered and prostrate men gave evidence of its strength.” When a milliner’s store was sacked, the captain claimed that soldiers decorated their caps and horses with ribbons, “and the negro wenches, too, came in for a share of the decorative spoils.” Major Hitchcock observed that problems often developed because widespread straggling took place. Stopping soldiers from going into houses was a particularly futile task. Such an endeavor, declared Hitchcock, would “require a guard for every house.” The fictitious but unforgettable Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, blasting a Yankee bummer with “Pa’s pistol” on the staircase at Tara, seems appropriately realistic. Sherman himself remarked that stragglers “are harder to conquer than the enemy.”31

Relative to the legitimate foraging parties, there seemed to be, in Sherman’s remarkable words, “a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was [considered] to be a privilege to be detailed on such a party.” He said the men would return “mounted on all sorts of beasts, which were at once taken from them and appropriated to the general use; but the next day they would start out again on foot.” Without doubt, many wild and dangerous scenes erupted all across the wide swath cut by Sherman’s two wings, as the foragers scoured the countryside in search of provisions. “At and near every farm house we hear constant shooting,” reported Major Hitchcock—shooting indicative, particularly, of the men killing pigs and chickens. Not surprisingly, the exuberant and often careless soldiers sometimes shot themselves, or one another. “It is reported tonight,” wrote Hitchcock on November 19 “that two of our men were killed today, and three wounded, all accidentally,” while they were foraging.³²

Sergeant Casey McWayne offered some intriguing insights about the march. He said that the troops lacked for nothing, in spite of all the Georgians’ efforts at concealment. He described how the inhabitants “would tie their horses & mules in swamps, drive their cattle, sheep, and hogs onto islands in their swamps,” and bury all their “clothes, corn, salt, & pork, jewelry, money . . . —well, in fact, everything they had in the house except themselves. But they were found by the Damned Yankees after all.” McWayne explained that whenever the men discovered soft ground, they would take the ramrods from their rifled muskets, run them into the ground until they struck something solid and then begin digging. “I dug up a valise on a plantation,” he wrote, “and found $1,630 in Confederate money.”

Then he recorded an event that he thought his family would find amusing. While hunting around one plantation, and finding some fresh dirt, the soldiers pushed their ramrods down and struck what they thought was probably a board. As they began digging, suddenly a voice from beneath yelled: “Hold on, let me out, I will surrender.” When the men got a grip on the board and pulled it up, “there was a Johnny. He had dug a hole in the ground, placed a board over it, with a hole in it—so he could get air—then covered it over with dirt, but was careful to keep the hole open to get a supply of fresh air.” McWayne speculated that “this was done by the women folks, I suppose,” and concluded: “You may bet he was a scared Johnny.”33

The Second Minnesota’s Judson W. Bishop recorded another scene of soldiers probing a plot of recently dug-up ground near a farmhouse. Some ladies watched with considerable interest from the veranda as the men retrieved a box, removed the top and found the remains of a dog, which instantly rebuked them, said Bishop, “with an odoriferous protest that reached their consciences by the most direct route.” Immediately they replaced the lid and returned the animal to its burial ground. One of the women then remarked that “poor Fido was not resting in peace . . . that day,” for this was “the fourth time he had been resurrected since morning.”³⁴

Obviously Union troops seeking food and animals (and sometimes plunder) were not welcomed by Georgians who found themselves in the path of the Yankees. One woman, standing by the porch of a shack with two small boys, watched a soldier carrying off two of her chickens, while just beyond him a column of Union soldiers tramped by. “Our men will fight you as long as they live,” she bitterly declared, “and these boys will fight you when they grow up.” On another occasion, a well-dressed woman is said to have walked up to a Union column as it marched and spit on a soldier. The men retaliated by burning her house. Near Milledgeville, Rebel cavalry surprised Federal foragers and a gunfight erupted inside a home. When a Yankee seized a woman as a shield, she called for the Rebels to kill him, even if they shot her. One man got a clear shot at the forager’s head, and the woman, splattered with brains and blood, survived.

Sometimes, not surprisingly, vindictive and ridiculous charges were aimed at Sherman. A rumor spread that the General received one-fifth of everything the foragers took. One woman claimed that Sherman collected gold watches and had stolen over two hundred by the time he left the South. Another woman, whose farm had been overrun, addressed a nasty letter to Mrs. Sherman, inquiring if the General had told her about the mulatto girl accompanying him, who was “spoken of by the Negroes . . . as Sherman’s wife.” Historian Burke Davis wrote that he had never found any other claim that Sherman had a black mistress. Whether Ellen actually received the letter is unknown.

While many a Georgian condemned the Yankees for ravaging the countryside, it should be noted that the Confederates often treated Southerners just as badly, if not worse. Major General Joseph Wheeler’s Rebel troopers had a fearsome reputation. Retired merchant John W. Pitts told some of Sherman’s staff that “the Confederates were a great deal worse than our men, that they pillaged and plundered everybody, and the inhabitants dreaded their coming.”35

But Sherman’s destructiveness could be terrible. On a cold November 22, a day punctuated by, in Sherman’s words, “a high, raw wind,” the General came up on a plantation north of Milledgeville that soon got a full dose of Union vengeance. The property belonged to former Georgia governor Howell Cobb, a prominent politician who had served as Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives and secretary of the treasury before becoming a strong secessionist and a major general in the Confederate Army—“one of the head devils,” according to Major Hitchcock. “Of course we confiscated his property,” remembered Sherman, “and found it rich in corn, beans, peanuts and sorghum-molasses.”

Perhaps Sherman was particularly incensed by the story of an aged African-American. The General was sitting with his back to a fire, taking a drink of whiskey and smoking a cigar, when a black man approached, trembling with fear. Hitchcock said Sherman “talked kindly—reassured him, etc.” When Sherman asked why he trembled, he said “that he wanted to be sure that we were in fact ‘Yankees.’ . . .” The black man then told about a group of Rebels, disguised as Federals, who went among the African-Americans, coaxing them to abandon the plantation. When they got several committed to leave, the whites flogged those blacks until they were nearly dead. The elderly black initially was about as scared of Sherman as he was of the Rebels, for he had been assured that Sherman and his men were savages who would burn the slaves alive. He was greatly relieved when he realized Sherman would not harm him. Indeed, when the Federal troops passed through Conyers, a woman admitted to some of Sherman’s staff that she had told her slaves that the Yankees “shot, burned, and drowned negroes” in Atlanta, both young and old. Sherman told the African-Americans to help themselves to whatever supplies they wanted from Howell Cobb’s plantation, also instructing the soldiers to do likewise. That night huge bonfires consumed the fence rails, while both slaves and soldiers carried off an immense quantity of provisions. Sherman gave orders that as soon as he left, everything was to be burned, sparing only the slave quarters, which the blacks needed for shelter. Like their commander, many of the men in Sherman’s army realized that slavery was at the root of the rebellion. Thus a great host of them were ready to pillage and burn the mansions of the planter aristocracy, as well as destroying anything that symbolized slavery—auction blocks, slave pens, whipping posts, even dogs used to hunt escaped slaves.36

November 22 is also notable for the clash at Griswoldville, the only actual battle during Sherman’s trek to Savannah. Believing that Sherman would target the munitions factories at Augusta, the Confederates marshaled troops in the Macon area, and sent them marching for Augusta to strengthen its defenders. Unfortunately for the Southerners, the Rebel force was mainly composed of older men and young boys (some not even fifteen) and led by an incompetent commander. Their route to Augusta crossed the path of Sherman’s cavalry northeast of Macon. The Yankees quickly brought up infantry, deployed in a good defensive position, and the Rebel commander foolishly ordered a frontal assault.

The Union forces, armed with Spencer repeating weapons, cut down the attackers as they tried to come across an open field. The slaughter left 51 Confederates dead, and nearly 500 wounded, compared with 13 dead Federals, and fewer than 100 wounded. Some of the Yankees were very distressed upon realizing they had been shooting boys and old men. An Indiana private, walking over the field after the battle, wrote that the scene “was a terrible sight.” He told of a fourteen-year-old boy with a broken arm and leg and near him “cold in death, lay his Father, two Brothers, and an Uncle.” An Illinois soldier wrote “I hope we will never have to shoot such men again.” The Southern effort, tragically for those involved, was totally in vain, for Augusta was not on Sherman’s agenda anyhow—perhaps because he thought it would be heavily fortified, and its reduction would require too much time and bloodshed. Also, after securing Savannah, he hoped to march into South Carolina, and Augusta could again serve as a decoy.37

On November 23, Sherman and his escort rode into the capital of Georgia, preceded by the Twentieth Corps; later in the day, the entire left wing was united in and around the city. All of the right wing was near Gordon, only twelve miles away from Milledgeville. “First act of drama well played, General!” began Henry Hitchcock’s diary entry for that day. General Beauregard’s call, from many miles away at Corinth, Mississippi, for Georgians to “Rally around your patriotic Governor and gallant soldiers!” was to no avail. Georgia’s capital had been captured without the Northerners firing a single gun in its conquest. Governor Brown, having stripped the governor’s mansion of rugs, drapes, dishes and silver, had fled before Sherman arrived. Numerous citizens also left. The Georgia legislature did pass a levée en masse, making every able-bodied man between sixteen and fifty-five liable for military service, and then it too fled. Sherman rode to the governor’s mansion, placed two planks across two camp chairs to form a crude desk and set up his headquarters. Anna Maria Green, a twenty-one-year-old resident, was overwhelmed: “We were despondent,” she wrote, “our heads bowed and our hearts crushed—the Yankees in possession of Milledgeville. The Yankee flag waved from the capitol—Our degradation was bitter.”³⁸

Several Union regiments were detailed to destroy the arsenal, the depot, factories and storehouses in Milledgeville. Although it was not ordered, Hitchcock said 270 bales of cotton were torched. The wrecking of railroad track, perhaps needless to say, also continued. Sherman himself had given instructions about how to destroy rail lines. A large group of men, as many as an entire regiment, would line up along one side of a railroad track. Upon command, all would bend over in unison, grasp the wood ties at one end, raise them up and flip both ties and rails over, which broke the ties loose from the rails upon crashing to the ground. The ties were then gathered in piles, set on fire, and the rails heated over them until they were red-hot in the middle. At that point the rails were twisted into spirals, or twisted around trees. Sometimes the twisted rails were formed into the gigantic letters US and left in a conspicuous location. Sherman emphasized the importance of twisting the rails, because repairing them would entail reheating and rerolling at rolling mills, a very scarce facility in the Confederacy. He demanded that there be no exceptions to the twisting form of destruction.

The statehouse was spared. A number of men, some of them officers, “in the spirit of mischief” said Sherman, gathered in the legislative hall and amused themselves by electing a speaker, declaring themselves the duly constituted representatives of Georgia and repealing the state’s ordinance of secession. “I was not present at these frolics,” recalled Sherman, “but heard of them and enjoyed the joke.”39

One of Sherman’s staff officers, George Ward Nichols, noted that while many of Milledgeville’s citizens had made an exodus from the city, the African-Americans “welcomed our approach with ecstatic exclamations of joy: ‘Bress the Lord! tanks be to Almighty God, the Yanks is come!’” Many were sure that the Day of Jubilee had arrived, and eagerly shouted “Jubilee! Jubilee!” They had learned of the Old Testament practice, following forty-nine years of toil, that slaves were freed in the fiftieth year—the year of Jubilee. Some of the bolder blacks hugged soldiers, as they praised and thanked them for bringing the Jubilee.

A few days later, Union soldiers would read in a Savannah paper about a grand ball held in the Georgia capital while Sherman was there. The piece alleged that only black and mulatto women were present to dance with the Yankees. No one in the Union Army knew anything about such an event. Another tale making the rounds among Southerners had it that the Federals threw a ball in Macon, and that General Howard led the first dance with a black woman as his partner. Howard was not even in Macon, and the city was never occupied, even briefly, by Union troops; and obviously no Federal ball was held there. General Howard, who came to be known as “the Christian General,” because of his pious ways—which Sherman occasionally found rather irritating—was quite upset by the implications that were easily read into such a story. Major Hitchcock expressed his disgust numerous times about “the most atrocious lies” that were spread about the conduct of the Yankee forces—“our uniform cruelty, our killing all the women and children, burning all the houses, forcing the negroes into our army in the front rank of battle, etc., etc.” He said that everywhere such stories were systematically and persistently circulated—alleging that Sherman actually ordered such terrible acts and his whole army carried them out—and the lies were believed, “even by intelligent people.”40

Without question, numerous white Georgians were ready to believe the worst about Sherman’s Yankees, but it is equally clear that many African-Americans did not accept the awful tales. They frequently told Sherman and his staff of brutal treatment that had been inflicted upon them—and the evidence, such as terrible whelts on their skin, was sometimes plain to see. At a farm near Milledgeville Major Hitchcock recorded in his diary: “The negroes here . . . say they have been habitually punished by flogging, not only with strap, but with hand-saws and paddles with holes—and salt put in the wounds.” They also told about “a famous ‘track-hound’ (blood-hound) at the next house, nearby, used to hunt runaways.” George Nichols, with Sherman’s permission, went to the house and had a soldier shoot the hound. Hitchcock reported that Nichols “says the darkies there were in great glee over it. No wonder.”⁴¹

The Federals heard from various sources that bloodhounds were widely used for hunting escaped Union prisoners, blacks fleeing slavery and even Confederate deserters. One Union escapee from the infamous Andersonville prison, upon being recaptured, was reportedly first beaten with a musket, and then thrown to a pack of bloodhounds, which ripped him apart horribly, resulting in his death. Because of such reports of brutality, some Yankee soldiers shot any bloodhound they came upon.42

The harsh attitude that African-Americans at times exhibited toward their owners took some Federals by surprise. Major Hitchcock remarked about the bitterness of a black woman named Louisa, who was a household servant of a planter named Joseph B. Jones. She said that Jones, a planter-politician and prominent Methodist, “used to declare that he would wade in blood knee-deep before the Yankees come here,” but four days earlier he had fled to Savannah, leaving his sick wife and children. The possibility of burning the plantation house came up in their conversation. “‘It ought to be burned,’ she said bitterly.” When Hitchcock asked why, Louisa replied: “’Cause there has been so much devilment here, whipping niggers most to death to make ’em work to pay for it.’” Questioned if Jones had ever whipped her, Louisa indicated that she had gotten off lightly: “He never struck me but twenty cuts since he owned me these fifteen years.” She continued to speak, however, about Jones’s savage ways toward other blacks, saying that “he has whipped plenty of niggers with paddle and strap too.”⁴³

Sherman often took time to talk with the African-Americans. Sometimes he was seeking information. Unlike the earlier days, when he had little confidence in intelligence gleaned from slaves, he now sought them. “I don’t want a white man” he told some officers whom he sent out to find a black. “I need some reliable information about roads and bridges.” They brought in an elderly black man with whom Sherman talked a long time. Staff officer George Nichols wrote that “General Sherman has never lost an opportunity of talking with and advising the negroes who come to our camp.” Henry Hitchcock was impressed by the way the General handled these occasions. He described him as dealing with the blacks frankly, in a manner not overly familiar, and yet putting them at ease as they conversed. In fact, Hitchcock complimented Sherman’s manner in dealing with white Southerners as well as black, saying “the General talks ‘mighty well’—frank, almost blunt, but . . . always to the point and never over-bearing nor rude.” Sherman invariably advised African-Americans to stay where they were, rather than following the army. If they volunteered, he would permit able-bodied young men to serve as teamsters, or in the pioneer (engineer) corps, but never for combat troops. He explained that the army could not provide for families, women, children, older men and the aged. Neither food nor transportation was anywhere near adequate for such a following. Nevertheless, eventually there were thousands of contrabands trudging along in the wake of Sherman’s forces. “The Darkies come to us from every direction,” observed a Union private, despite the fact that “General Sherman has tried in every way to explain . . . that they had better stay on the plantations until the war is ended.” Bringing along bundles and bags of clothing and various necessities, such as cookware, many of the effervescent blacks seemed unmindful of the hardships and dangers, particularly the rivers and swamps they would have to confront in the days ahead.

On November 24, Sherman moved on from Milledgeville, his troops continuing to march in two parallel wings, foraging, destroying and skirmishing, often clashing with Rebel cavalry, sometimes with a small command of infantry. While men suffered and died on both sides, the casualties were relatively few. The Union forces mostly proceeded at will—“treason fled before us, resistance was in vain,” the famous song “Marching Through Georgia” later proclaimed—as the Grayclad strength was insufficient to do more than pester the Yankee advance. The general direction of the march was southeast, but the left wing under Slocum was still spread out far enough to the north that the Confederates could not discount Augusta as Sherman’s objective—tending to confirm, in the minds of some Southerners, what they had believed since the start of the campaign. Levying a swath of devastation across the Georgia landscape, the men passed through such towns as Sandersville, Sparta, Warrenton, Tennille Station, Wrightsville, Davisboro, Louisville, Swainsboro, Summertown, Sebastopol, Scarboro, Statesboro, Waynesboro, Birdsville and Lumpkin’s Station.

At Sandersville, a Union soldier wrote to his family: “We . . . completely ransacked the whole town, only left the citizens unmolested. It was done to retaliate for burning a bridge and resistance of the day before.” No doubt some citizens would not have considered themselves “unmolested.” A woman in Sandersville described how Yankee soldiers tramped into her home, stealing china, silver, linens and food, while others shot all the hogs, cows and chickens they did not take with them. Few indeed were the towns that did not experience some damage, and a number suffered severely. When the Federals moved into Louisville, where much of the business district was burned, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry, reinforced by a division of infantry, struck out northeast toward Waynesboro on November 29, making a feint toward Augusta. They tore up sections of the railroad between Augusta and Millen, and devastated a large area that afterward was called “the burnt district,” by Georgians in and near the region.

As the Union forces drew closer to Savannah, the enemy opposition became even weaker than it had been. The right wing under Howard was moving primarily in the direction of Millen, a town about sixty-five miles northwest of Savannah, where Sherman arrived on Saturday, December 3. Close to Millen lay Camp Lawton, a Confederate prison facility, the horrors of which were witnessed by a great many Union soldiers. The camp provided no shelter from the weather, and the prisoners had dug into the ground as they sought relief from the elements. Prisoners were confined within a very limited space, with deadlines beyond which the guards would shoot anyone who ventured past. According to some sources, there was no pure water available. Food, at best, was far from adequate. A lot of men had died, and hundreds of graves were evident. The fleeing Confederate guards had left a number of dead prisoners unburied. “Everyone who visited this place,” wrote a Federal officer, left with “a feeling of hardness toward the Southern Confederacy he had never felt before.”

Those troops who did not see Camp Lawton soon heard about it, and some men met up with former prisoners who told of the misery and mistreatment they had endured. More than ever, many soldiers in the Federal Army felt completely justified as they inflicted destruction and distress upon the Southerners. Sherman ordered Frank Blair, commanding the Seventeenth Corps, to make the destruction of Millen “‘tenfold more devilish’ than he had ever dreamed of, as this is one of the places they have been starving our prisoners.”44

AS THE GREAT RAID progressed, and despite Sherman’s wishes, the number of African-Americans who followed the army constantly increased. Many of the blacks would suffer and die. Racial conflict made the situation worse. While some Union soldiers sympathized with the plight of the contrabands, others resented their presence, even considered them responsible for the coming of the war and treated them badly. Among several distressing, deplorable incidents, the most merciless involved the refugees who were following the Fourteenth Corps, commanded by Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis of Indiana. The five-foot-eight-inch Davis was a contentious personality, perhaps best remembered for a deadly confrontation two years earlier with Major General William Nelson in the lobby of the Galt House Hotel in Louisville.

Nelson, who was a loud, profane bully of a man, standing six foot five and weighing over three hundred pounds, took “delight in hectoring the officers and men of his command,” according to an Indiana soldier. After more than one altercation, Davis challenged Nelson to a duel. The big man refused and reportedly slapped Davis with the back of his hand, whereupon the enraged Davis procured a pistol and shot and killed Nelson in the hotel. Few seemed to regret Nelson’s death, but it was alarming that a general could be murdered without his murderer’s ever being brought to trial. Davis himself, it should be noted, was not a favorite with the soldiers he commanded on the march across Georgia, mainly because he developed a reputation for coming down hard on foraging violations.⁴⁵

Early in December, Davis’s Fourteenth Corps came up to Ebenezer Creek, a deep rapid-flowing stream that was a tributary of the Savannah River. Ebenezer is a Biblical name, from the first book of Samuel, and literally means “stone of help”—ironic, in view of ensuing events. The army’s pioneers laid down a pontoon bridge more than one hundred feet long, on which the Yankee soldiers crossed over the dangerous waters, along with their animals, artillery and wagons. The contrabands were not allowed to follow, for Davis had issued orders that the bridge was to be taken up as soon as the troops were across the rushing current.

Hundreds of African-Americans looked on with dismay and anguish as the bridge was removed. When they heard that Confederate cavalry was coming up behind them, panic ensued. Many men, women and children rushed into the water. Some managed to swim across, while others, either unable to swim or weak swimmers, were overcome by the swift-flowing stream and drowned while desperately seeking places to ford. Rebel cavalry, according to Federal soldiers—some of whom tried to help the blacks get across—then slew a number of the refugees while rounding up others, presumably to return them to slavery. An Indiana chaplain acridly blamed Jefferson C. Davis, calling him a man “without one spark of humanity in his makeup,” while an Illinois colonel, who witnessed the horrible event, later said that “across the stretch of twenty years my soul burns with indignation . . . as I recall it.” That was not the only time that Davis, a man of proslavery sympathies, took action detrimental to contrabands. Accounts of the despicable affair appeared in Northern papers soon after Sherman’s forces reached Savannah. Although Sherman was several miles from the scene, his well-known opposition to enlisting blacks in the army brought criticism that Davis simply reflected Sherman’s own racism.46

On December 9, about the same time as the wretched Ebenezer Creek incident, Sherman and his staff were riding with the right wing of the army, drawing near Savannah, when they noticed that a column of the Seventeenth Corps had turned out of the main road and was marching through the fields. Close by, in a fence corner, stood a group of soldiers. Sherman rode up, sensing that something was amiss. He learned that mines had been buried in the road by the Rebels, one of which had exploded, killing a horse and wounding several men. A lieutenant of the First Alabama Cavalry (Union) whose time of service had just expired suffered the worst wound. His right foot had been torn off by the blast, and much of the flesh on the leg was blown away. He lay on the ground, very pale, waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg.47

Sherman wrote in his memoirs: “This was not war, but murder, and it made me very angry.” No doubt it did, as it did many others. General Blair, commanding the Seventeenth Corps, had ordered up a squad of Confederate prisoners to clear out the mines. These Rebels arrived shortly after Sherman did, and “begged hard,” according to Sherman, for the Union commander to override Blair. But Sherman reiterated Blair’s order and told the prisoners, said Hitchcock, that “their people had put these things there to assassinate our men . . . and they must remove them; and if they got blown up he didn’t care.” Hitchcock, who sometimes recorded reservations and occasionally criticism of Sherman decisions that he considered overly harsh, declared that “he did exactly right” in this case. Working “very carefully,” in the staff officer’s emphasized words, the prisoners managed to uncover the rest of the mines without incident.⁴⁸

During the next couple of days, Sherman’s entire force approached Savannah’s defensive works, the Fourteenth Corps coming up on the far left, with its flank brushing the Savannah River. The Twentieth Corps formed on the right of the Fourteenth, with the Seventeenth Corps advancing to the right of the Twentieth, while the Fifteenth came up on the army’s extreme right. “As soon as it was demonstrated that Savannah was well fortified,” Sherman decided not to attack, but to lay siege to the city. The first step “was to open communication with our fleet,” he said, “which was supposed to be waiting for us with supplies and clothing in Ossabaw Sound,” about twenty miles south of Savannah. Rations had become rather meager during the last quarter of the march. The soldiers were ready for something other than rice, which had been the only food found in abundance for several days.

Standing in the way of Federal contact with the navy was an earthen fortification known as Fort McAllister. Sherman ordered General Howard to attack and capture it. Howard gave the assignment to William Hazen’s division, and Sherman later said that he personally gave Hazen his orders. Fort McAllister had its heavy guns pointing out to sea, and fewer than 300 men to defend it from the rear. In less than thirty minutes Hazen’s command overwhelmed it. The route to the U.S. Navy, and the supplies that Sherman’s forces needed, was open. The march to the sea was triumphant.49

Major Hitchcock wrote his wife a long letter right after the fort fell, in which he lavished praise upon Sherman: “He is the man of the war as to military genius.” General Hazen observed that Sherman was still seething about the Rebels mining the road. Upon meeting George W. Anderson, the captured Confederate commander of the fort, Sherman criticized the use of mines as inhuman and barbarous, and mocked the vaunted idea of “Southern Chivalry.” Many of Sherman’s army were probably thinking along the lines of Casey McWayne. Writing the “dear folks at home” from a plantation that was owned by a Miss Mary Henderson south of Savannah, McWayne declared, “I tell you, Old Pap [Sherman] has done well for us on this march. After we had taken Fort McAllister it opened a place for hardtack to run in. . . . Some of the boys have been down and got some oysters already. I will write again [as] soon as we take Savannah. It will not be long.” Sherman himself, obviously amused, wrote Ellen about an army foraging party, moving toward Ossabaw Sound in a boat, that met a steamer coming up the Ogeechee River and hailed her. The foragers were told that the ship carried Major General John G. Foster, in response to which a soldier blurted: “Oh H——l, we’ve got 27 Major Generals up at Camp. What we want is hardtack.”⁵⁰

Sergeant McWayne was right about Savannah. The capture of the city was only a matter of time. In fact, Sherman wrote General Halleck on the day Fort McAllister fell, “I regard Savannah as already gained.” Just over a week after the fort was subdued, Confederate General William Hardee and his 10,000-man garrison pulled out of the city, crossing into South Carolina before Sherman closed off the escape route. If Hardee had been trapped in Savannah, Sherman most likely would have attempted to starve the city into submission. He did not want a costly assault, nor the employment of artillery, for he had fond memories of Savannah’s homes and gardens.

As it was, the gracefully appointed city was spared the agony of a siege, and Sherman rode into Savannah on December 21. The next day he sent the President a telegram which would be long remembered: “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.” Casey McWayne was also in a festive mood, writing his mother and sisters about the seafood repasts in which he was indulging: “We are having oysters & fish aplenty—oysters in the shell, of course, for we have to rake them out of their beds ourselves. . . . Just think of having an oyster supper any time you please, and just as many as you please.”51

Lincoln responded to Sherman’s gift on the day after Christmas: “Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift—the capture of Savannah.” Admitting that he “was anxious, if not fearful” of the result when Sherman set forth from Atlanta, the President acknowledged that because “none of us went further than to acquiesce,” the honor of the great success “is all yours.” Not only did Sherman’s triumph “afford the obvious and immediate military advantages,” but it also demonstrated “to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service,” while the lesser contingent still possessed sufficient power to vanquish Hood’s army at Nashville, all of which, declared Lincoln in his memorable style, “brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light.”⁵²

Even his critics had to appreciate what Sherman had accomplished. Waging war successfully, by its very nature, involves risk. Sherman, who had matured to see his military chessboard—recalling Napoleon’s famous remark at Borodino—more clearly than most generals ever do, had become a master at calculating risks. Depending upon General Thomas to deal with Hood was an acceptable risk, because Sherman knew that when Andrew Jackson Smith’s reinforcements arrived in Nashville, the Union would have a numerical advantage over the Confederates. Sherman considered his own risk relatively minimal, for although he would be operating deep in enemy territory, and without a supply line, he was leading a seasoned army through a region where food was plentiful for the taking, and he knew that the Rebels could not possibly match his strength of arms. The great damage that he expected to inflict, and indeed did inflict, upon the Confederate psyche made the risk imminently justifiable.

Sherman took up residence and established his personal headquarters in the elegant mansion of Charles Green, a wealthy British banker and cotton merchant. Initially Sherman had gone to the Pulaski Hotel, located at the corner of West Bryan and Bull Streets, about which he had known when serving in the region as a young lieutenant. He found the hotel keeper ready to welcome the General and his staff as boarders. When Sherman informed him “that we were not in the habit of paying board,” the keeper’s ardor for accommodating the General waned perceptively. While Sherman considered the situation, Green came up and offered his house.

“At first I felt strongly disinclined to make use of any private dwelling,” remembered Sherman, “lest complaints should arise of damage and loss of furniture, and so expressed myself to Mr. Green.” Green realized, naturally, that if Sherman stayed with him, no harm was likely to come to his home. Upon Green’s insistence, and observing that “a most excellent house it was in all respects,” Sherman accepted his offer. Henry Hitchcock observed that the structure was “the finest house in the city,” an appraisal not exaggerated. Sherman wrote Ellen on Christmas Day that “the house is elegant & splendidly furnished with pictures & Statuary—my bedroom has a bath & dressing room attached which look out of proportion to my poor baggage.” A few days later he spoke of “the magnificent mansion [in which he was] living like a Gentleman.”53

Fortunately Charles Green’s imposing residence still survives. Green had arrived in Savannah from England when he was in his midtwenties and by 1850 possessed “a fleet of several ships that were traveling back and forth from Savannah to Liverpool on a continuous basis.” In that year, he began construction of a regal, Gothic Revival home, which cost a total of $93,000, when completed four years later. The arresting exterior, constructed of brick, stucco and stone, is highlighted by an exceptional front entrance, and complemented by three bay and four oriel windows. Three pairs of doors mark the front entrance. The outer doors are massive, and fold back on each side to form two small closets. The second pair is louvered, and the third pair is adorned with glass panels. Both the second and third pairs may be slid into the wall, as one determines according to the weather. William Howard Russell, an English journalist who visited Savannah while covering the war in 1861, recorded of the 7,300-square-foot main part of the house: “Italian statuary graced the hall,” while “finely carved tables and furniture, stained glass, and pictures from Europe set forth the sitting rooms.”54

Located right beside Green’s residence was St. John’s Episcopal Church. Christmas Day fell on Sunday, and Sherman observed the occasion at St. John’s. A clergyman inquired if the General had any objections to prayers for special persons, as required by the diocese of Georgia. Sherman responded that they should “certainly pray for Jeff Davis” and added, “Certainly pray for the Devil too. I don’t know any two that require prayers more than they do.” The minister at St. John’s, noted Major Hitchcock, omitted the prayer for the President of the United States. Sherman, however, remained silent. During the afternoon, Sherman enjoyed seeing a number of children playing in the park nearby, and later he remarked “with great pleasure and feeling,” according to Hitchcock, about the presence of those children.⁵⁵

On Christmas evening Sherman presided at a military-style, “family dinner-party” in the Green mansion. All present were officers except Green, who made his china and silver available for the occasion. George Nichols had “secured three or four lovely turkeys and sundry other good things,” while Colonel Henry A. Barnum contributed “some very good wine,” which had been given to him by grateful wine merchants, at whose stores he had placed guards. The festivities began appropriately with a toast to Sherman, who responded with “a little speech, patriotic, modest, and pointed,” said Major Hitchcock. Later, when Green “made as happy a little after-dinner speech as I ever heard,” Hitchcock reported that Sherman proposed that they drink to Charles Green’s health—most fittingly, since Green, even if he had originally favored the Confederacy, had proven himself a hospitable and pleasant host. At that point Hitchcock said he withdrew for the night, “fearing a little, I confess, that [the toasts] might become too lively, but [he admitted] in that I was mistaken.” The major pronounced the evening “as quiet and pleasant a Christmas dinner as one could wish—away from home.”56

It had been a good Christmas, and actually Sherman himself had received something of a Christmas gift on December 24. It came in the form of a most welcome letter from General Grant. Long before Sherman reached Savannah he was planning, once his army was resupplied by sea, to sally forth into the Carolinas, particularly laying waste to South Carolina. Ultimately he intended to move into Virginia and join forces with Grant. Sherman believed he would thus strike a greater blow against the will of the Confederacy to continue the war than he had in Georgia. But upon reaching the Atlantic, a message from Grant awaited him, dated December 6, in which the general-in-chief contended that “the most important operation toward closing out the rebellion will be to close out Lee and his army.” Therefore Grant instructed Sherman to establish a seacoast base, leave his artillery and cavalry, along with enough infantry to secure the base, come with the bulk of his infantry by sea and join up with Grant “to close out Lee.”⁵⁷

Although disappointed, and convinced that Grant’s idea was not the best strategic move, Sherman loyally indicated at once that he would take steps to join Grant as soon as sufficient transport vessels became available. Marshaling enough ships would take time. Meanwhile, in several letters to Grant, he carefully and diplomatically set before the general-in-chief the Carolina campaign which he envisioned. On December 18, for example, he wrote Grant, “With Savannah in our possession, at some future time, if not now, we can punish South Carolina as she deserves, and as thousands of people in Georgia hoped we would do.”

Sherman then firmly declared, “I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina, to devastate that State in the manner we have done in Georgia.” In another letter, written right after Sherman gained possession of Savannah, he pointedly told Grant, “I have now completed my first step, and should like to go on to you via Columbia and Raleigh, but will prepare to embark as soon as vessels come. Colonel [Orville E.] Babcock will have told you all, and you know better than anybody else how much better troops arrive by a land march than when carried by transports.” He said that “the capture of Savannah . . . gives us a magnificent position in this quarter; and if you can hold Lee, and if Thomas can continue as he did [at Nashville] . . . I could go on and smash South Carolina all to pieces, and also break up [rail] roads as far as the Roanoke. But, as I before remarked, I will now look to coming to you as soon as transportation comes.”58

Once again Sherman succeeded in convincing Grant, as he did before the march to the sea, to approve a campaign that he himself strongly favored—and this time the approval necessitated changing Grant’s own concept of their best military move. It is to Grant’s credit that he realized, spurred in part by the victories of Schofield and Thomas at Franklin and Nashville, that Sherman’s plans for a major raid through the Carolinas promised the greatest military dividends. His message sanctioning Sherman’s Carolina foray, which reached Sherman’s headquarters on Christmas Eve, first congratulated the General “on the successful termination of your most brilliant campaign,” which Grant stated that he would not have entrusted “to any other living commander.” Discussing the war both east and west, and conveying his change of mind about Sherman joining him, Grant offered the interesting opinion that “Lee is averse to going out of Virginia, and if the cause of the South is lost he wants Richmond to be the last place surrendered. . . . It may be well to indulge him until we get everything else in our hands.” Again congratulating Sherman “upon the brilliant results of your campaign, the like of which is not read of in . . . history,” Grant said that he subscribed himself “more than ever, if possible, your friend.”⁵⁹

The message was surely a gratifying one for Sherman, and he responded the same day, thanking Grant for “the handsome commendation you pay my army,” and expressing his pleasure “that you have modified your former order.” He assured Grant that he felt “no doubt whatever as to our future plans,” and, presenting a number of specifics, he declared that “I left Augusta untouched on purpose: because now the enemy will be in doubt as to my objective point after crossing the Savannah River, whether it be Augusta or Charleston, and will naturally divide his forces.” Sherman planned to ignore both cities and march for the state capital at Columbia. Sherman critics sometimes claim his declaration about purposefully bypassing Augusta when heading for Savannah, is a mere after-the-fact explanation, devoid of any validity. However, since Sherman fully intended to take the war to South Carolina, it is reasonable to assume that he would have been thinking ahead to that campaign.60

Also on Christmas Eve, Sherman wrote Halleck that he was “very glad that General Grant has changed his mind about embarking my troops for the James River, leaving us free to make the broad swath . . . through South and North Carolina.” Significantly he declared, “I attach more importance to these deep incisions into the enemy’s country, because this war differs from European wars in this particular. We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.” Affirming that his march through Georgia “has had a wonderful effect in this respect,” Sherman addressed the far greater impact that he now foresaw in the Carolinas: “The truth is the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her.” Noting that “many and many a person in Georgia” wanted his army to strike at South Carolina, Sherman said he looked upon Columbia “as quite as bad as Charleston, and I doubt if we shall spare the public buildings there as we did at Milledgeville.” Years later, in his memoirs, Sherman strikingly emphasized his view of the Carolina campaign: “Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea, and of that from Savannah northward, I would place the former at one, and the latter at ten.” Yet, as so often with famous concepts, the march to the sea gained the lion’s share of dramatic publicity—and thus it has been ever since.

The march to the sea, “at least in popular imagination,” wrote historian Noah Andre Trudeau, “was seen as a defining moment in American history.” For the first time, a vast region had been scorched and despoiled, and war taken to women, children and the aged. Some have said the march was “total war”; others have disagreed, basically differing about how “total war” should be defined. Whatever the march may be called, Sherman’s intentions were clear: destroy anything of military value to the Confederacy, while subjecting Southern civilians to the inevitable depredations inflicted by a large army tramping through their country and living off the land. To Sherman, bringing the war to civilians would bring the war to an end sooner: “The simple fact that a man’s home has been visited by an enemy makes a soldier in Lee’s or Johnston’s army very, very anxious to get home to look after his family and property.” While Sherman had not ordered the destruction of civilian property, he did not seem particularly troubled when it happened. His attitude about the fate of houses abandoned by their owners is noteworthy: “I don’t want them destroyed,” he said about vacated houses, “but do not take much care to preserve them.” The very nature of Sherman’s march guaranteed that private property, to some degree, would be destroyed. This the General undoubtedly realized.

In the context of war—and especially “total war,” or anything akin to it—the issue of rape should not be ignored. The number of rapes committed by Sherman’s men during the march to the sea will never be known, but unquestionably some sexual assaults did occur. The evidence indicates, however, and probably surprisingly to some people, that the attacks were not many. In searching army court-marshal records, Joseph T. Glatthaar found only one instance of the army prosecuting soldiers for rape during the march to Savannah. Glatthaar also observed that “most officers and men alike abhorred this sort of conduct and . . . some officers even issued standing orders to shoot on the spot any soldier found abusing citizens.” Union officers Henry Hitchcock and Harvey Reid, concerned about such despicable acts, made numerous inquiries on the subject, and both men concluded that very few women were raped during the march. Noah Trudeau noted that only one victim of rape actually became known by name. Pertinent also is the fact that while Georgians accussed Sherman’s army of many things after the war—thievery, robbery, arson, wanton destruction, and all on a widespread scale—rape was seldom among their charges.61

WHILE SHERMAN ENGAGED in preparing his army to “smash South Carolina all to pieces,” as he wrote Grant, he was forced to deal with some other issues. He remarked to Ellen that “Savannah would be an agreeable place to me [if he were] less burdened with the cares of armies, women, cotton, negros and all the disturbing Elements of this war.” Actually, the army presented little problem. He kept the troops busy with drill, inspections and parades. Writing to General Grant on the last day of the year, he said, “The people here seem to be well content as they have reason to be for our troops have behaved magnificently. You would think it Sunday, so quiet is everything in the City day & night.” Five days into the new year, he assured Ellen that “it is wonderful how smoothly all things [military] move for they all seem to feel implicit faith in me, not because I am strong or bold, but because they think I know everything.” In another message Cump again told her, “the soldiers think I know everything,” and added that they think “they can do anything.” He also wrote his wife that “The soldiers manifest to me the most thorough affection, and a wonderful confidence.” Sherman was proud, but his assessment was accurate.⁶²

A large number of women called on Sherman, and he thought they came much as they had at Memphis, “disposed to usurp my time more from curiosity than business. They had been told of my burning & Killing till they expected the veriest monster.” Among Savannah’s prominent ladies who came to call were the wives of Confederate generals Hardee, Gustavus W. Smith and Lafayette McLaws. When the Southern forces evacuated the city, the generals left letters for Sherman, requesting that he see to the welfare of their families, letters that the ladies presented to him. Of course Sherman intended to see that no harm befell them, and he was pleased that “eyes were opened,” as leading citizens, male and female, came to realize that “the Vandal Chief,” as Sherman referenced himself, actually was not the murdering villain that many had supposed. But when he inquired about people he had known in his younger days, he observed that “it marks the Sad havoc of War,” for most were either “gone or in poverty.”63

Major Hitchcock wrote his wife that many of Savannah’s leading men who visited the General “say openly that the C. S. A. is ‘played out,’” but Sherman told Ellen that he found a number of women who were “as haughty and proud as ever.” Both Hitchcock and George Nichols were impressed by the way “the General’s new-found colored friends” came by the hundreds to see “Mr. Sherman.” Nichols said that since Sherman’s arrival in the city, “he has kept open house for all who choose to call upon him, white or black,” and declared of his relationship with the blacks, that Sherman’s “great heart has overflowed in kindly counsels to these poor people.” Hitchcock wrote in greater detail. The morning that Sherman entered Savannah, Hitchcock related that the General rode immediately to the riverbank and climbed up to inspect a signal station on the roof of a warehouse. By the time the General got back down to the street, a crowd of African-Americans had gathered “who pressed round him to welcome him and shake hands and tell him how long they had watched and prayed for his coming.”⁶⁴

Once Sherman moved into Green’s house, Hitchcock wrote that for several days “there was a constant stream of [blacks], old and young, men, women and children, black, yellow and cream-colored, uncouth and well-bred, bashful and talkative—but always respectful and well-behaved—all day long, anxious to pay their respects and to see the man they had heard so much of, and whom . . . God had sent to answer their prayers.” Frequently a dozen, or even twenty came at a time. Hitchcock testified that regardless of what the General was doing, he “always had them shown in at once,” and greeted them “in his off-hand—though not undignified way—‘Well, boys,—come to see Mr. Sherman, have you? Well, I’m Mr. Sherman—glad to see you’—and shaking hands with them all.” Hitchcock remarked, obviously pleased by Sherman’s interaction with the blacks, that the whole scene, “I dare say,” would have been “highly disgusting . . . to ‘a refined Southern gentleman.’” He said “the General gives them all good advice—briefly and to the point, telling them they are free now, have no master nor mistress to support, and must be industrious and well-behaved, etc.”65

Probably Sherman’s utter disgust with the pronounced sense of entitlement and the arrogant rebelliousness of the planter-politicians who rent the Union and brought on “this terrible war,” softened his attitude toward the former slaves of those despicable men, even though he did consider African-Americans his inferiors—just as he did Native Americans and Mexican-Americans. He likely was touched by the way the blacks seemed almost to worship him. Perhaps something akin to a sense of noblesse oblige motivated him. Whatever precisely his racial mind-set, General Sherman seemed to treat the blacks with respect and kindness.

This fact, however, did not remove the political problem he had created for himself in opposing the recruitment of blacks for the army. On December 30, General Halleck warned him “in this private and friendly way,” that ill winds were brewing against him in the nation’s capital. “While almost everyone is praising your great march through Georgia, and the capture of Savannah,” nevertheless, Halleck declared, “there is a certain class having now great influence with the President . . . who are decidedly disposed to make a point against you. I mean in regard to ‘inevitable Sambo.’” Their charge was, in Halleck’s words, “that you have manifested an almost criminal dislike to the negro, and that you are not willing to carry out the wishes of the Government in regard to him, but repulse him with contempt!” Worst of all, Halleck referenced the charge that Sherman had cut bridges in his rear, “causing the massacre of large numbers [of blacks] by Wheeler’s cavalry.” Would it not be possible, now that Sherman was in possession of Savannah and there was no fear of inadequate supplies for his army, to reopen “avenues of escape [into Savannah] for the negroes, without interfering with your military operations?”⁶⁶

Sherman may have wondered just where Halleck himself actually stood on the issue, for the General did express his warning message in strong, even aggressive terms. Clearly Sherman was aggravated by the accusations. The “cock-and-bull story of my turning back negroes that Wheeler might kill them is all humbug. I turned nobody back.” As for Union General Jefferson C. Davis at Ebenezer Creek, he had taken up the pontoon bridge, said Sherman, “because he wanted his bridge.” From a military view, Sherman considered Davis’s action justified. He also told Halleck that neither Davis nor General Slocum believed that Wheeler’s troops killed any blacks. Sherman then declared himself “the best kind of a friend to Sambo. . . . They gather around me in crowds, and I can’t find out whether I am Moses or Aaron, or which of the prophets; but surely I am rated as one of the congregation.” He added that it was difficult “to tell in what sense I am most appreciated by Sambo—in saving him from his master, or the new master that threatens him with a new species of slavery. I mean State recruiting agents.”67

In 1863 the United States had begun conscripting men for military duty, declaring every able-bodied male citizen aged twenty to forty-five eligible for service and assigning each congressional district a quota to be raised, based on its male population minus the number of men who had already served. If the quota was not filled by volunteers, the necessary number would be drafted. State officials strove to stimulate volunteering and thus avoid the stigma of conscription. Some ruthless and greedy men saw an opportunity, through “recruiting” blacks in the South, to meet assigned quotas in Northern states, enabling more white men to avoid military service and picking up the bounties being paid for new recruits.

Sherman was incensed by the unscrupulous actions of “avaricious recruiting agents” from the New England states. In answer to a letter from Salmon P. Chase, the recently appointed chief justice of the United States, who was concerned about Sherman’s treatment of blacks, the General wrote, “You can not know the acts and devices to which base white men resort to secure negro soldiers, not to aid us to fight, but to get bounties for their own pockets, and to diminish their quotas [of white soldiers] at home.” Describing them in his memoirs as “ravenous State agents,” Sherman told of Colonel Joseph C. Audenreid, his aide-de-camp, finding “at least a hundred poor negroes shut up in a house and pen” in Savannah—the state agents waiting for nightfall to stealthily convey them from the city, having told the African-Americans that they did not have any choice. They had to become soldiers!

George Nichols stated that “negro men have rushed frightened to General Sherman’s headquarters begging for protection from the ‘land-sharks,’ who, it appears, have seized all the able-bodied negroes they could lay their hands upon, and locked them up until they could be mustered into the service.” Nichols characterized Sherman as “exceedingly angry” when he learned what was happening, and said “the General at once gave orders to have the negroes released, threatened the recruiting agents with severe punishment if violence was again used, and assured the negroes that they were free to go where they liked for work, and . . . could become soldiers if they chose, but . . . would not be forced into the army.” Sherman declared in his letter to Chief Justice Chase, “Every negro who is fit for a soldier, and is willing, I invariably allow to join a Negro regiment, but I do oppose and rightfully too, the forcing of negros as soldiers.”68

On January 11, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and several other dignitaries arrived in Savannah. Officially, Stanton came to confirm United States control of the city and to deal with the cotton issue. As to cotton, Sherman assumed a firm stance. “I have taken all the Cotton as prize of war,” he wrote Ellen, “30,000 bales, equal to 13 millions of dollars, much of which is claimed by English merchants.” He disregarded their claims, “on the ground that this Cotton has been notoriously employed to buy cartridges & arms, and . . . Ships, [for Rebels] and was collected here for that very purpose.” He added that “our own merchants are equally Culpable,” an assessment undoubtedly true in some cases, for both trading with the enemy and general war profiteering had become rife during the conflict.⁶⁹

Sherman told Secretary Stanton that he had been approached “by all the consuls and half the people of Savannah on this cotton question, and my invariable answer has been that all the cotton in Savannah was prize of war, and belonged to the United States, and nobody should recover one bale of it with my consent.” Cotton had been “one of the chief causes of the war,” and Sherman thought that it should help pay the expenses of the war. He declared that “all cotton became tainted with treason from the hour the first act of hostility was committed against the United States, some time in December, 1860—and that no bill of sale subsequent to that date could convey title.” He ordered that every bale of cotton be thoroughly marked with identifying information. However, Secretary Stanton, according to Sherman’s account, changed this and “ordered the obliteration of all the marks; so that no man, friend or foe, could trace his identical cotton.” Sherman used the term “Strange” in describing Stanton’s action, writing that claims were later filed for “three times the quantity actually captured” and that “reclamations on the Treasury have [since] been allowed for more than the actual quantity captured.”70

Strange indeed, but the cotton issue was a relatively minor concern for Stanton. His basic interest actually was Sherman’s relations with the African-Americans. Wasting no time, the war secretary met with a delegation of blacks at Sherman’s personal headquarters on the evening of January 12. He had asked the General to arrange the interview, and Sherman invited the men he considered the most intelligent and knowledgeable, mainly Baptist and Methodist preachers. Twenty came, meeting in Sherman’s upstairs room at the Green mansion. Garrison Frazier, a sixty-seven-year-old Baptist minister and former slave who had saved enough gold and silver to buy freedom for himself and his wife, was selected as their primary spokesman. Among the questions put to the group, one of the most significant concerned how the men thought they could best take care of themselves and assist the United States Government in maintaining their freedom. The response was that they would need land “to till by the labor of the women, and children, and old men—and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare.” In regard to assisting the U.S. government, they said that their young men should enlist in the service of the government, and “serve in such manner as they may be wanted.”⁷¹

As the meeting progressed, George Nichols, who was present much of the time, said that Sherman often stood by the fireplace, occasionally entering into the discussion. When Stanton wanted to ask the group about Sherman, the General left the room. What the secretary of war then heard was, without exception, complimentary of Sherman. He was a man, they said, set apart “in the providence of God,” to accomplish the work that was in their interest—a man who “should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty.” They thought it “probable” that he had not met Stanton himself “with more courtesy than he met us.” He was “a friend and gentleman” in whom they had confidence. Their interests “could not be in better hands.” When Sherman reentered the room, there was discussion of several general subjects, upon which Adjutant General Edward D. Townsend did not take any notes. Nichols said the conversation lasted “until the small hours of the morning,” and added that he doubted whether twenty white ministers could have been found in any Northern city who could have represented “so much common sense and intelligence as these men.” If Stanton hoped to confirm Washington criticisms of Sherman’s alleged mistreatment of African-Americans, the black leaders surely disappointed him.72

Sherman soon drafted, with Stanton’s approval (and probably his initiative), Special Field Orders No. 15, which “reserved and set apart [land] for the settlement of the negroes now made free,” along the southeast coast, from Charleston south to the St. Johns River in Florida. The land was divided into forty-acre plots on which the black refugees were to be settled. Although not mentioned in the order, Sherman also allowed mules, which the army had confiscated during the march, to be used by the freedmen. Thus the phrase “forty acres and a mule” came into being. The order also “provided fully for the enlistment of colored troops” in the military service of the United States. On the land allocated for the African-Americans, which encompassed the sea islands and “abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea . . . no white person whatsoever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty,” would be allowed to reside. The “exclusive management of affairs” was assigned solely “to the freed people themselves, subject only to the U. S. Military authority, and the acts of Congress.”

Sherman had to be pleased, at least for the time being, because the policy promised to alleviate the problem of blacks following his army, as well as being a seemingly good solution for the refugees themselves. Perhaps Sherman also found a measure of satisfaction in turning over abandoned plantations to the former slaves. However, the order would be overturned after the war, and most of the land returned to white ownership. Sherman indicated no disapproval. In fact, he wrote in his memoirs, that the military “did not undertake to give a fee-simple title; and all that was designed . . . was to make temporary provisions for the freedmen and their families during the rest of the war, or until Congress should take action.” What some had seen as an opportunity for the former slaves to gain permanent control of a plot of land was not to be realized.73