Around noon on September 2, 1864, Major General Henry W. Slocum, designated by Sherman to be military governor of Atlanta, entered the city in triumph. The general pulled out all the stops; he put on a full-fledged parade, with the band playing “Yankee Doodle.”¹

Four days later Sherman entered Atlanta in an entirely different style: dressed inconspicuously, wearing a plain suit, even though he was accompanied by a bodyguard of a hundred men. Granted, his few staff officers were resplendent in their full dress uniforms, but Sherman showed no interest in any fanfare.

Sherman was far from a cruel man; his nature ran to the sentimental, which included the people of the South. He did, however, possess a remarkable ability to reconcile his humanitarian feelings with his hardheaded assessment of what was necessary from a military viewpoint.

His treatment of Atlanta was possibly the most famous case in point. Upon taking the city, he ordered its population of ten thousand people to be evacuated and turned out in the surrounding countryside, thus converting a civilian metropolis into an army post. This was the first time he had taken such action, and in his mind it was necessary from a military viewpoint. His previous experience in occupying much friendlier areas had shown him that maintaining order in places like Chattanooga forced him to assign a tactical unit, as much as a division, to keep the populace subdued. He could no longer afford that luxury. He did not regard sending civilians out into the wilderness as excessively cruel. It was, after all, late summer in Georgia, and Sherman was not worried about the abilities of the population to find relatives in nearby communities. Atlanta thus became a wholly military installation, with no combat troops to maintain security.

Neither Sherman nor Grant regarded Atlanta as the final destination of his current campaign. Once settled down in the city, therefore, Sherman lost no time beginning plans to move deeper into the South. His eventual destination was a matter to be settled later, but he was going somewhere. So the two generals, as in times past, began exchanging views as to what further actions he might take. They did not always agree as to what his mission should be, and though Grant was disposed to give Sherman almost complete latitude, it took them a while to formulate plans.

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Despite Sherman’s itch to move on, it appeared for a while that his occupying Atlanta might in itself bring about an end to the Civil War. About a week after Sherman had entered Atlanta, two citizens of Georgia approached one of his outposts at Decatur and asked for an audience, which Sherman readily granted. Mr. Hill and Mr. Foster had good credentials. Both had been congressmen in the United States House of Representatives, and both claimed plausibly to be friends with Sherman’s brother Senator John Sherman.

The two men were on a humanitarian mission. Mr. Hill’s son, a soldier in Johnston’s Army of the Tennessee, had been killed at Cassville, a place nearby. A witness had provided the bereaved father with the location of the boy’s grave, and they had come to retrieve the body. Sherman immediately arranged for the men to be escorted and aided in their grim mission. He also invited them for dinner.

Sherman was encouraged by the attitudes of his visitors. Mr. Hill had come from his home in Madison, located on the road between Atlanta and Augusta, and on their way the two men had witnessed the devastation from the fighting around the countryside. They had no desire to see similar devastation spread throughout the Confederacy. Sherman was much encouraged by their outlook.

Sherman decided to make whatever use he could of his new friends’ attitude. It so happened that the governor of Georgia, Joseph E. Brown, had taken the term “confederacy” literally, defining it as an alliance between independent states, not a single nation. He had made moves in that direction. On September 10, 1864, for example, Brown had temporarily withdrawn all of Georgia’s militiamen who were serving in Hood’s army so they could go home for the harvest of corn and sorghum, which was ripe at that time.

Sherman saw an opportunity. He advised Mr. Hill that one of the possible objectives in his Georgia campaign might be Augusta, in which case Madison would be in his path. He therefore asked his guest to use his influence with Governor Brown. If Brown would withdraw all Georgia troops from Hood’s command, then, as a reward, Sherman would spare the entire state from the depredations that Hill had witnessed on the way from Madison. Further, he would order all Union troops to stay on the main roads and pay for any food and forage.*

The effort, while a worthy try, did not work out. Sherman later learned that Governor Brown had seriously considered his proposal and had even attempted to call a meeting of Confederate governors at Milledgeville. But he went no further. The governor was afraid to act against Jefferson Davis on his own; he needed much support, if not unanimity, to take such a drastic action as removing state troops from Confederate command.

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Sherman’s capture of Atlanta had a shocking effect throughout the South, and most of all on Jefferson Davis. On September 20 the Confederate president turned up at Palmetto, Georgia, where he gave a scathing speech denouncing not only Johnston but Brown as well, coming close to calling them traitors. He then predicted disaster for Sherman, claiming that the invader could never supply himself so deep into the South. Sherman could not move forward, Davis asserted, and if he attempted to retreat from Atlanta to Chattanooga the result would be as disastrous as the fate that had befallen Napoleon at Moscow in 1812. Davis finished by promising the citizens of Tennessee and Kentucky that their soil would soon be cleared of the invaders. Two days later Davis gave the same message at Macon.²

Davis’s bombast sounded desperate, but his threats were serious. Shortly after he uttered them Hood broke contact at Atlanta and was soon heading northwestward through Rome, presumably headed for Chattanooga and Nashville. Along the way he tore up Sherman’s railroads, aided by Forrest’s cavalry.

When Sherman received the text of Davis’s remarks, his reaction was not one of fright. On September 26 he telegraphed a full account to Halleck, describing Davis’s speech at Palmetto and other places. He was not impressed:

Davis seemed to be perfectly upset by the fall of Atlanta, and to have lost all sense and reason. He denounced General Jos. Johnston and Governor Brown as little better than traitors; attributed to them personally the many misfortunes which had befallen their cause, and informed the soldiers that now the tables were to be turned; that General Forrest was already on our roads in Middle Tennessee; and that Hood’s army would soon be there. He asserted that the Yankee army would have to retreat or starve, and that the retreat would prove more disastrous than was that of Napoleon from Moscow. . . . To be forewarned was to be forearmed, and I think we took full advantage of the occasion.³

—

While Davis was making his foray into Georgia, Sherman soon came to realize that things were already happening. He detected a thinning out of Hood’s position at Palmetto, and on follow-up confirmed that Hood had already slipped off to the west, leaving no significant troops on Sherman’s front. From that he concluded that the Confederate was bent on cutting the Union supply line, especially the Western & Atlantic Railroad. That would be a significant development. Hood had left garrisons at all the important points along the line, but the long stretches of railroad between them were vulnerable.

Actually Sherman saw the evacuation of the enemy before him as an opportunity, and he began to think in terms of marching his force to the seacoast. But in what direction? He could go eastward through Augusta or southeast through Milledgeville. When he broached the idea to Grant, however, his chief was at first dubious. Grant did not deny the possibility, but he specified that no move south should be made until ordered by him. Sherman was willing to wait. The fact is that he had by this time given up the idea of destroying Hood’s army; that being the case, he was now thinking of the political value of destroying the Confederate will to fight by devastating her cities.

Hood, meanwhile, was beginning efforts to destroy Sherman’s supply lines. Forrest’s cavalrymen hit the railroad in his rear and tore up a full ten miles of track, damage that would take weeks to repair. He then headed for a town named Allatoona, on the way to retaking Chattanooga and Nashville. To stop Hood, Sherman sent two divisions toward Kennesaw Mountain, which was only fifteen miles from Allatoona, and followed in person. He arrived at his former headquarters at Kennesaw Mountain on October 5.

The resulting Battle of Allatoona Pass was small in the number of men involved—one Confederate division against a couple of Union brigades—but it was important for protecting Sherman’s flank. It is remembered largely for the heroism of the Union brigade commander, Brigadier General John Corse, a volunteer officer with unusual military ability. Painfully wounded, Corse remained at his post in command despite the loss of a cheekbone and an ear.

Though Hood had been turned back, he had not been destroyed, and Sherman was now even more convinced that chasing him would be futile. He therefore abandoned his policy of defending his supply line. With Grant’s approval, he sent Thomas with his Army of the Cumberland to “watch” Hood while he, with the rest of his army, prepared to march deep into Georgia. Slocum’s XX Corps was designated to hold Atlanta temporarily, and Schofield was to join Thomas as an individual, where he would build a new corps from the reinforcements that Grant was sending to Nashville from the west and from Ohio. Sherman’s remaining force would now be down to an estimated sixty thousand men, but they were tough, as tough as any soldiers in the world.

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Sherman’s concept of a march to the sea was revolutionary in military thinking. It did not erase the time-honored concept that the object of a campaign was the enemy’s armed forces, but it added a secondary target: the entire population of the Confederacy. It was not an easy notion to sell to the Union leaders—Lincoln, Grant, and Halleck—who still thought in terms of reconciliation between the Union and Confederate sides. Sherman’s new idea of punishing the Confederate population virtually invented total war. On October 1, 1864, Sherman expressed his views clearly in a message to Grant:

Why will it not do to leave Tennessee to the forces 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? . . . The possession of the Savannah River is more fatal to the possibility of Southern independence. They may stand the fall of Richmond but not all of Georgia.⁴

Sherman had made his point, but being Sherman, he could not resist a bit of irreverence. “If you can whip Lee and I can march to the Atlantic, I think that Uncle Abe will give us twenty days’ leave of absence to visit the young folks.”

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It took a full month for Grant to give his approval to this radical approach. When he finally agreed, he described it in routine terms:

On the 2d of November . . . I approved definitely [Sherman’s] making his proposed campaign through Georgia, leaving Hood behind to the tender mercy of Thomas and the troops in his command. Sherman fixed the 10th of November as the day of starting.⁵

In later evaluations, when the success of Sherman’s march came to be almost universally recognized as a stroke of genius, Grant was typically generous; he took no credit for the concept. The whole idea, he insisted, was Sherman’s own.

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Though Sherman had initially set November 10 as the date for his departure from Atlanta, he experienced some delay. Nevertheless, he had his plans all worked out, but only so far as Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia. Beyond Milledgeville he was not certain which city on the coast he would make his destination. Options were Charleston, Savannah, or even someplace as far south as Mobile. The important purpose of marching across Georgia was to demonstrate to the Confederates—indeed, to the whole world—that the Confederacy was a shell.

To reach Milledgeville, Sherman decided to go in two columns. The right wing he put under the command of O. O. Howard, who was to pass through Jonesboro and Macon. The left wing he assigned to Henry Slocum, who was to proceed by way of Decatur and Madison, threatening but actually bypassing Augusta. Sherman planned to accompany the left wing. He had confidence in both commanders, but he seemed to consider Howard the more capable of independent command.

Before his departure, Sherman ordered that the city of Atlanta be destroyed—at least all parts that could contribute to the Confederate war effort. That task he placed under the immediate supervision of his army engineer, Colonel Orlando M. Poe, who did a thorough job. During Sherman’s last night in the city, a minor disaster occurred. As Poe was burning the railroad depot, it turned out that one of the buildings had been used by the Confederates as an ammunition storage depot. When the fire reached the hidden artillery shells, they exploded, sending shell fragments through the air. Some of them came close to the house where Sherman was spending the night. He professed to be uncomfortable, but mentions no casualties.

The next morning, accompanied by a detachment of infantry, Sherman left Atlanta by way of the Decatur road at about seven a.m., never to return. At the top of the ridge where the so-called Battle of Atlanta had taken place the previous June, Sherman took a moment to note the copse of trees where McPherson had fallen. After a short pause he then went on.

—

Sherman was struck by the spirit of all the men as they started out on this last long adventure. “Uncle Billy,” he quoted them as shouting, “I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!”⁶ Sherman was amused by the fact that his troops gave little thought to the thousand miles of marching they would have to cover before meeting Grant. All they knew was that they were under way.

With his rear to Atlanta and Chattanooga cut off, Sherman now recognized that his army would have to live off the land in his coming march. The collection of forage for men and animals was to be no haphazard affair, however; it was to be done strictly to Sherman’s specifications. The commander of each brigade (about a thousand men) was to detail a company of foragers, usually about fifty men, commanded by a commissioned officer, with a lieutenant, to be sent out before daylight, thoroughly briefed on the route of the day’s march and camp. At a specified point along the route, the foraging company would leave the main route and proceed on foot five or six miles from the main route. They would then visit every plantation and farm on that piece of road and commandeer “a wagon or family carriage, load it with bacon, corn-meal, turkeys, chickens, ducks, and everything that could be used as food or forage, and would then regain the main road, usually in advance of their train. When this [train] came up, they [the foragers] would deliver to the brigade commissary the supplies thus gathered by the way.”⁷ The same procedure was followed day after day.

Sherman found some amusement at the sight of foraging parties on the route waiting for their main bodies of troops to join them. He noted their “strange collections—mules, horses, even cattle, packed with old saddles and loaded with hams, bacon, bags of cornmeal, and poultry of every character and description.” He also remarked that despite the hard labor and even danger in this sort of business, the men found a certain excitement in it, and it was considered a “privilege” to be detailed as a forager.

Forage had a double purpose. The first and most important was to feed his troops, necessary since his rear was cut off by Confederate cavalry. The other was to confiscate items essential to the enemy’s cause. But robbery of personal property was forbidden. Sherman realized that his orders were not always followed. “No doubt,” he wrote later, “many acts of pillage, robbery, and violence were committed by these parties of foragers, usually called ‘bummers’; for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary.” He claimed, however, that such acts were “exceptional and incidental.”

By and large, Sherman was well satisfied. The system ensured that his men were well supplied, with enough reserve in his wagons to cope with any unexpected delay. “Indeed,” he wrote with a touch of smugness, “when we reached Savannah, the trains were pronounced by experts to be the finest in flesh and appearance ever seen with any army.”

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On November 20, Sherman, still with Slocum’s left wing, reached a point near Eatonton Factory, where he received word of Howard and the right wing. Satisfied, he moved his camp forward the next day to a wooded ridge about ten miles short of Milledgeville. It was a raw day, and Sherman went ahead of the spot selected by his staff and rode on some distance to the border of a plantation. He there instructed the staff to pick out the place for the camp.

Soon his orderly arrived with his saddlebags, which contained a change of underclothing, maps, a flask of whiskey, and a bunch of cigars. Taking a drink and lighting a cigar, Sherman walked over to a slave hut, where he joined a couple of soldiers warming themselves by a wood fire. His plans changed, however, when someone reported that better quarters were down the road. He left on foot and soon found a fine double-hewn log house. He immediately sent orders to move the headquarters up to that place. Once inside he looked around the room and noticed a candle box marked “Howell Cobb.” He soon confirmed that this was the plantation of General Howell Cobb, whom Sherman regarded as one of the leading rebels of the South, currently serving as a general in the Confederate army. Sherman also recalled that Cobb had once been secretary of the treasury in the administration of President James Buchanan. In Sherman’s words, “Of course, we confiscated his property, and found it rich in corn, beans, pea-nuts, and sorghum-molasses. Extensive fields were all round the house; I sent word back . . . to spare nothing. That night huge bonfires consumed the fence-rails, kept our soldiers warm, and the teamsters and men, as well as the slaves, carried off an immense quantity of corn and provisions of all sorts.”

Shortly after Sherman had changed location, the headquarters wagons came up, and Sherman and his staff had supper. Then a memorable incident occurred:

After supper I sat on a chair astride, with my back to a good fire, musing, and became conscious that an old negro, with a tallow-candle in his hand, was scanning my face closely. I inquired, “What do you want, old man?” He answered, “Dey say you is Massa Sherman.” I answered that such was the case, and inquired what he wanted. He only wanted to look at me, and kept muttering, “Dis nigger can’t sleep dis night.” I asked him why he trembled so, and he said that he wanted to be sure that we were in fact “Yankees,” for on a former occasion some rebel cavalry had put on light-blue overcoats, personating Yankee troops, and many of the negroes were deceived thereby, himself among the number—had shown them sympathy, and had in consequence been unmercifully beaten therefor. This time he wanted to be certain before committing himself; so I told him to go out on the porch, from which he could see the whole horizon lit up with camp-fires, and he could then judge whether he had ever seen any thing like it before. The old man became convinced that the “Yankees” had come at last, about whom he had been dreaming all his life; and some of the staff officers gave him a strong drink of whiskey, which set his tongue going.⁸

The odd story did not end there. Lieutenant George Spelling, the commander of Sherman’s escort, was a native of that area, and he recognized this old man, who happened to be a favorite slave of his uncle, who resided about six miles away. The old man did not at first recognize the lieutenant, because the young officer was wearing a Union uniform. On inquiry, he said that he had lost track of young George, except that he had gone off to the war. He supposed him killed. Finally the old slave recognized young George, and he fell on his knees and thanked God that he had found him alive and fighting along with the Yankees. Learning that his uncle was nearby, Spelling secured Sherman’s permission to go and pay him a visit. On the next morning Spelling described his uncle as “not cordial, by any means, to find his nephew in the ranks of the host that was desolating the land.” Spelling soon left, having exchanged his tired horse for a fresher one out of his uncle’s stables. Surely some of the “bummers,” he explained, would have gotten the horse had he not.

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The next day, Sherman rode into Milledgeville. Most of the inhabitants had stayed in their homes, the principal exceptions being Governor Brown, the state officers, and the legislature. A remarkable aspect of their flight was the amount of material the governor had removed from the governor’s mansion. It included carpets, curtains, and furniture, all transported on freight cars. Still, Sherman decided to use the mansion as his headquarters. The ignominious retreat of the governor and others stood in stark contrast to the Confederate newspapers that Sherman’s men found in the town. One of the messages was from General Beauregard:

Corinth, Mississippi, November 18, 1884.

To the People of Georgia:

Arise for the defense of your native soil! Rally around your patriotic Governor and gallant soldiers! Obstruct and destroy all the roads in Sherman’s front, flank, and rear, and his army will soon starve in your midst. Be confident. Be resolute. Trust in an overruling Providence, and success will soon crown your efforts. I hasten to join you in the defense of your homes and firesides.

G. T. BEAUREGARD.⁹

There were others, equally desperate in tone. Sherman found these messages amusing rather than alarming. From the perspective of later years, it is difficult to visualize what else Beauregard could do.

—

Sherman stayed only a short time in Georgia’s capital; his next chore was to make contact with Howard’s right wing, which he did, and found it in good condition.

By the time Sherman reached the town of Millen, he estimated that he had completed about two-thirds of his march. He had sustained almost no casualties, and his wagons were full of ammunition, food, and forage. He knew, however, that from then on the land would be sandy and less productive than the territory he had crossed. Nevertheless, he determined to continue with the supplies he had on hand.

At this point an incident occurred that prompted Sherman to issue a threat, something he did not often do. Having spotted Confederate cavalry in the distance burning forage, he sent for some citizens of Millen who he knew would spread the word. He reminded them of the “conditions” he had laid down before leaving Atlanta. Since the railroad leading to his rear had been torn up by Hood and his cavalry, he reminded those citizens that he would now be forced to live off the land. Granted, he had promised not to molest the populace nor destroy personal property unnecessarily. If the Confederates assumed a “scorched earth” policy, however, he declared that he would destroy all the villages in his path, leaving the people homeless. The rebel destruction of food and forage ceased immediately.

That was not the only incident in which Sherman found it necessary to exercise an iron fist. On December 8 one of his lieutenants was wounded so severely that his leg had to be amputated. The wound was caused by his stepping on a buried artillery shell, known as a “torpedo” at that time. As Sherman describes it, “I immediately ordered a lot of rebel prisoners to be brought from the provost guard, armed with picks and spades, and made them march in close order along the road, so as to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up. They begged hard, but I reiterated the order, and could hardly help laughing at their stepping so gingerly along the road, where it was supposed sunken torpedoes might explode at each step, but they found no other torpedoes.”

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When Sherman arrived at the defenses of Savannah on December 10, 1864, he could see at once that the Confederate position was strong. It consisted of an estimated ten thousand men, well entrenched. Furthermore, he respected the Confederate commander, William Hardee, as a competent officer.¹⁰ He therefore decided that a direct assault on the city would be too costly; instead he would lay a siege.

That decision brought the old bugaboo of supply once more to the forefront. In the last few miles of the march from Atlanta, forage from the surrounding land had become sparse—so sparse that Sherman realized that he could not, without help, continue a siege indefinitely.

Sherman was too good a planner to be surprised. He had always counted on the navy to sustain him once he had reached the coast. To that end, he had previously made arrangements with Admiral John A. Dahlgren, one of whose squadrons was blockading the Confederate coast some miles to the south. One of Dahlgren’s ships had made contact with Sherman’s headquarters, and together they had planned to transfer supplies at the Ogeechee River, fifteen miles south of Savannah. One problem had to be dealt with, however: The mouth of the river was guarded by Fort McAllister, a Confederate position on the right (south) bank. The reduction of that fort therefore became Sherman’s main effort. He sent word to General Howard to prepare an attack, delegated the siege of Savannah to Slocum, and joined Howard on December 12.

Fort McAllister was not expected to present much difficulty, because its heavy guns were all pointed seaward, leaving it vulnerable to attack from the land. The fort could drive off any Union naval vessels, but the garrison consisted of only about a hundred and twenty men. The division that Howard selected for the assault, that of General William B. Hazen, consisted of about four thousand men.¹¹

Sherman and Howard witnessed the attack from the top of a rice mill on the south bank of the Ogeechee, where they could see both Fort McAllister and the river mouth. After some time they eventually spotted wisps of smoke, indicating the approach of a naval vessel. Because of the heavy foliage, neither Dahlgren’s ship nor Hazen’s troops knew of the existence of the other. At Sherman’s prodding, therefore, Hazen’s men went into position and attacked the fort. The fighting was over in a few minutes. Hazen’s men swarmed over the parapets and killed or captured all of the garrison. A delighted Sherman dined with General Hazen that evening, and one of their guests was the former commander of Fort McAllister, Confederate major George W. Anderson.

The next day Sherman took a small boat out to meet his naval counterparts. With the supply by sea open, Sherman sent a message back to Washington saying that he considered Savannah already taken.

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When Grant received Sherman’s optimistic message at City Point, Virginia, he took it too seriously, at least from Sherman’s viewpoint. With his mind always focused on Lee—and with Savannah no longer of interest—Grant came up with a plan that could not help but cause concern. By Grant’s new scheme, Sherman should leave a force at Savannah sufficient only to keep the city contained. He would move his army—still sixty thousand men—by ship to join Grant at Petersburg, which Grant had under siege. This arrangement would deprive Sherman of his independent command and would leave unfinished the much-touted march from Atlanta to Savannah. But these were merely personal considerations. Sherman offered no complaint and began making preparations to carry out Grant’s idea.

Fortunately for Sherman, Confederate general William Hardee solved his problem. On the morning of December 21, 1864, Sherman’s pickets discovered that the Confederate positions in Savannah were empty. Hardee had used the only causeway still in his hands and evacuated during the night, moving across the Savannah River to the north. Hardee had lost Savannah, but he had saved his troops from certain capture.

An elated William T. Sherman sent a message back to President Lincoln:

SAVANNAH GEORGIA, December 22, 1884.

His Excellency President Lincoln, Washington, D.C.:

I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty five thousand bales of cotton.

W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.¹²