“I’ll have to harden my heart”
The army’s columns snaked eastward from Atlanta in a pattern that was to become familiar during the epic march of five months. Their roads now converged and then diverged, the wings from twenty to forty miles apart, the outermost units frequently eighty miles apart.
Impromptu plans for Confederate defense of Georgia were already collapsing in Sherman’s path. Lieutenant General Joseph Wheeler’s decimated gray cavalry squadrons, attempting stands to the south and east of Atlanta, were swept aside by Kilpatrick’s troopers in brisk, noisy skirmishes at East Point, Rough and Ready, Jonesboro, Stockbridge, Lovejoy and Bear Creek. Howard’s wing pressed eastward toward the crossings of the Ocmulgee River. Lieutenant John S. Ash of the Georgia Hussars reported one of these Confederate disasters: “We were so completely run over that we were scattered in every direction, those of us who were not killed or captured.”
Wheeler could do no more than fall back before overwhelming force, with little prospect of making a stand until the invaders reached the sea, where Savannah’s extensive earthworks awaited.
Sherman himself planned to move between his columns as the march advanced. He began with Slocum’s northern wing as it wound through Decatur and past Stone Mountain.
Sherman stopped for half an hour in Decatur, “a dilapidated village” of old houses around a courthouse square where Manuel, the general’s cook, chased chickens in the yard of a large house until a woman emerged to scold him. She was quieted by Colonel Thomas Baylor, the ordnance chief, who bought the flock for the outrageously high price of a dollar a head and left the woman with a benign memory of the mercurial Sherman, who exhibited such callousness in hundreds of later incidents as to be remembered in the South as the devil incarnate.
In the countryside into which Sherman’s army now flowed, Georgia’s civilians had begun to meet the invaders. Their reactions ranged from terror and dismay among the whites to hysterical joy among the blacks.
At nightfall young Martha Amanda Quillen watched from her home in Decatur as a line of flaming buildings approached: “As far as the eye could reach, the lurid flames of burning buildings lit up the heavens … I could stand out on the verandah and for two or three miles watch them as they came on. I could mark when they reached the residence of each and every friend on the road.”
She heard “the eternal gab of the Yankee army” and saw outbuildings at each house burst into flames. “I heard the wild shout they raised as torch in hand they started for the next house.” She calculated the distance the burners traveled in an hour and “ascertained almost to the very minute when the torch would be set to our own house”—but she was saved by Federal officers who made headquarters in her parlor. Though several torches were brought to the Quillen house, they were stamped out by guards.
Martha dreaded the coming of dawn: “I prayed that I might never see the destruction, the deep distress, the morn would reveal to me. That too has all passed, and lives only in memory; but no one I hope will ever expect me to love Yankees.”
Men of the 129th Illinois Regiment who halted in the village that night taunted frightened women in the dark houses around them: “Why don’t ye come and see who’s here?” Campfires were built so close by that the frame buildings caught fire, and women and children dashed out, begging for mercy. Private William Grunert helped to put out the fires, but others were set so rapidly that several houses burned before guards drove the men away. When the regiment left the town at midnight, two of its men were shot from the darkness, but the column did not stop to defend itself. A chilly rain began to fall. It was a march Private Grunert did not forget: “We would have frozen, if the fence on both sides of our route had not been fired and burned by those ahead of us … the heat became so intense that our ambulance wagons had to take to the field. To fulfill Gen. Sherman’s order to the letter, several cotton presses and gins and mills were fired during the night, and along the whole route to Atlanta the sky was red.”
Sherman’s troops soon learned that some women in their path were of indomitable spirit. One farm wife who stood on the porch of her shack with two small boys was hailed by a soldier who carried two of her chickens over his shoulder: “Don’t you think we’ll end the war soon, now?” She looked beyond him to the moving blue columns, and said quietly, “Our men will fight you as long as they live, and these boys’ll fight you when they grow up.”
Jesse Macy, a Quaker soldier of the 10th Iowa, met a defiant young woman on the porch of a mansion. “My husband is a captain in the Confederate army and I’m proud of it,” she said. “You can rob us, you can take everything we have. I can live on pine straw the rest of my days. You can kill us, but you can’t conquer us.”
A few miles away a young woman who watched the army with her mother and sisters was hailed by a passing soldier: “Is your husband in the rebel army?”
“Of course.”
“Was he conscripted?”
She spat scornfully. “No, sir! I wouldn’t have a man if he had to be conscripted!”
Federal soldiers were often amazed at the extent of provincial prejudice and ignorance in the rural South.
An old woman by the roadside in Jonesboro stared at the soldiers in disbelief. “I swear,” she said, “I can make out every last word they utter—they told me so many of you was foreigners I’d never understand the Yankee tongue.”
In Conyers an old woman greeted soldiers with complete resignation: “I’ve run away from you six times, clear across the south, starting back in Kentucky. I don’t care where you go next, I’m done running. I’m going to let you go first, maybe I’ll follow.”
Sherman spent the first night of the march at the roadside near the village of Lithonia, from where he could see the granite hulk of Stone Mountain, clearly outlined by the glow of fires that stretched for miles, like “an old-time Republican torch light procession … with burning houses, outhouses and fences.” Several houses in the village were ablaze, the first such burning Sherman had observed on the march. There was no sign of the enemy, but on the flank nearby, beyond the general’s sight, rebel guerrillas captured six men of the 3rd Wisconsin who strayed from camp.
Sherman slept little and was up early on November 17 watching a regiment tear up railroad tracks, a long line of men stooping to raise an entire section of ties and rails at once, overturning it, burning ties, heating the rails until they were red hot, twisting them into spirals or wrapping them around trees until they were useless—Sherman’s neckties, the men called them. At every milepost artistic wrecking crews twisted the rails into the letters US, “to encourage the loyalty of those who might see.”
Sherman rode toward the little town of Covington during the morning and came upon troops prowling about a farm, filling cups and canteens with sorghum syrup. It was the general’s first glimpse of looting troops who were violating his orders on foraging. One soldier carried a ham impaled on a bayonet, dripping a chunk of honeycomb in one hand and drinking from a cup of sorghum. He grinned up at the general and shouted, “Forage liberally!” The staff and men on the roadside roared with laughter at this quotation from Sherman’s field order, but the general scolded the looter: “Regular parties will forage for the army. Don’t let me catch you at it again.”
For all his menacing manner, the troops realized that he tacitly approved and word spread through the ranks. Henceforth few soldiers would honor Sherman’s field orders despite their stern words:
The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled … whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days’ provisions for his command, and three days’ forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass; but, during a halt or camp, they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp. To regular foraging-parties must be intrusted [sic] the gathering of provisions and forage, at any distance from the road traveled.
There was a sputter of gunfire as the vanguard rode into Covington, an exchange quickly forgotten and rather vaguely recorded by both sides. A local woman remembered only that “a quiet old farmer named Jones” took his stand on a street corner, armed with a shotgun, the only man within sight; when four Federal horsemen rode past, he blasted one of them from his saddle and was instantly shot down by the other troopers. The old man’s body lay in the street for a long time. General Slocum’s headquarters reported that a Federal soldier was killed here, and that “all dwellings in the neighborhood” were burned in retaliation. There was no mention of the death of the elderly Jones.
It was in Covington that the troops saw the first effects of their emancipation of slaves, and that Sherman sought to deal with the problems that created for his army. For the first time, too, the army heard the cries of greeting as saviors of the blacks, a chorus that was to echo throughout the thousand miles of their march—but was often to fade all too quickly.
Slocum’s column closed ranks as it moved through Covington; flags were unfurled, bands played and Negroes rushed to the roadside, “simply frantic with joy,” as Sherman said. “Whenever they heard my name, they clustered about my horse, shouted and prayed in their peculiar style, which had a natural eloquence that would have moved a stone.” The general remembered a young black girl here who was caught up “in the very ecstasy of the Methodist ‘shout,’ hugging the banner of one of the regiments and ‘jumping up to the feet of Jesus.’” A white-haired old man who gazed at Sherman shouted, “I have seen the great Messiah and the army of the Lord!”
Sherman singled out an old Negro man among those who crowded about the headquarters tents.
“Do you understand about the war?” Sherman asked. “Do you know it’s almost over?”
“Yes, sir,” the old man said. “I’ve been looking for the Angel of the Lord since I was knee-high. I know you say you’s fightin’ for the Union, but I ’spect it’s all about slavery—and you’re gonna set us free.”
“Do all slaves understand that?”
“Sholy does.”
“You must stay where you are,” Sherman said, “and not load us up with useless mouths. You’d eat up all the soldiers’ food. If we win the war, you’re free. We can take along a few of the young, strong men—but if you swarm after us, old and young, feeble and helpless, you’ll just cripple us;”
Sherman was convinced that the old man spread his message and that it was carried ahead of the army by word of mouth. “It in part saved us from the great danger … of swelling our numbers so that famine would have attended our progress.” Though his passage through Georgia was the first effective implementation of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 for great numbers of blacks, Sherman sometimes seemed to be more anxious for the safety and mobility of his column than for the freedom of slaves. Now, as never before, thousands of Negroes were free to leave plantations on which they had been held captive for most of their lives. Not since the early days of Carolina and Georgia settlements—not since the 1620’s, in fact—had the status of blacks in the South changed materially until Sherman’s columns swept through the midst of the Confederacy. Since he had realized that black hordes would impede the columns and doom them to failure, Sherman had issued orders in Atlanta barring the elderly, the infirm and mothers with young children from joining the march. Only the able-bodied, capable of aiding the army’s progress, were to be taken along. This decision may have been rooted in Sherman’s own ideas of white supremacy—as some of his more enlightened officers were to charge.
In Sherman’s wake, the village of Covington was plundered by a succession of regiments, some of whom preyed upon the slaves themselves. One black girl, a young servant of the Travis family, watching the soldiers pass, recognized some of her clothing in the arms of a soldier and found that her hut had been plundered. Her wails rang out over the noise of passing bands. A German soldier who had forced his way into the house turned to Allie Travis: “What’s de matter wid dat Nigger?”
“Your soldiers,” Allie said, “are carrying off everything she owns, and yet you pretend to be fighting for the Negro.”
The servant was afraid to speak to the white soldiers, but when she saw a black infantryman wearing her newest hat, she dashed from the yard, shook her fists in his face and shouted, “Oh! If I had the power like I’ve got the will, I’d tear you to pieces.”
Soldiers of the 2nd Minnesota who dug for booty in Covington turned up an unexpected domestic tragedy. In midafternoon the thirsty troops of this regiment formed a queue at a roadside spring and sprawled on the lawn of a farmhouse amid the litter of those who had gone before. Three or four women looked on from the porch of the house, rocking nervously.
A soldier of the leading company rose to his knees and inspected the freshly dug sod on which he had lain, probed with his ramrod and whooped. “Treasure, boys! Who’s got a spade?” Others crawled about to help dig in the soft earth. Shovels thumped hollowly on a pine box.
The women on the porch were standing, anxious and excited. “Perhaps,” one officer thought, “their money or silver spoons were in peril.” But when the box was pried open a foul odor rose. A dead spaniel lay within. The lid was hurriedly replaced, the grave refilled and the sod pressed down. One of the women called, “It looks like poor Curly will get no peace. That’s the fourth time he’s been dug up today.”
Dolly Sumner Burge, a young widow who was a native of Maine and a relative of the Abolitionist leader Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, was among the first of thousands of women to plead for Federal guards to protect her property—and to mourn their ineffectiveness. Dolly awaited the enemy on her plantation a few miles east of Covington, alone but for her nine-year-old daughter and her slaves. She obtained a guard at once from a sympathetic Federal officer, but soon learned that nothing could halt the swarming looters: “But like demons they rushed in! My yards are full. To my smoke-house, Dairy, Pantry, Kitchen and Cellar, like famished wolves they came, breaking locks and whatever is in their way.”
Dolly appealed to her guard, but was told, “I cannot help you, Madam; it is the orders.”
Soldiers drove away all the horses, even Old Dutch, her husband’s buggy horse who had carried him for many years and had finally drawn him to his grave. Dolly especially mourned the loss of her young slaves, who were forced to follow the soldiers at bayonet point. One slave boy jumped into his bed and said he was sick, and another, a cripple, crawled under a cabin, but was dragged out and carried away.
The sleepless Mrs. Burge paced her bedroom floor all night while two guards slept before her fireplace. The rear guard trailed by the next morning, November 20, mild-mannered soldiers who asked only a bucket of water for boiling coffee. Dolly mourned, “Thus ended the passing of Sherman’s army by my place, leaving me poorer by $30,000 than I was yesterday morning. And a much stronger Rebel …”
Defenseless women in the widening tracks of the army now encountered pillagers wherever they turned, for looting bands roamed out of control, already outnumbering Sherman’s official foragers. The vandals halted at nothing.
A funeral was in progress far to Sherman’s rear, in the village of Chamblee’s Mill, where a blind mule drew a wagon over a rutted road toward Mount Carmel Cemetery, three miles away. Half a dozen women rode in the wagon with the coffin of a little boy, a son of the Owens family; the two Negro men who had made the coffin were now in the cemetery digging the grave.
The funeral party had halted to rest the old mule when a band of Federal horsemen clattered up, unhitched the blind animal and led it away.
The women began to wail, and Mrs. Owens threw herself across the coffin, sobbing, “Oh, God! What will we do?” Sixteen-year-old Rachel Chamblee stepped between the wagon shafts. “Come on,” she said firmly. “We’ll go ahead. You push and I’ll pull.”
For more than an hour, sweating in heavy homespun dresses, the women struggled toward the cemetery, where they arrived with begrimed faces and ruined clothing, and stood exhausted as the gravediggers buried the coffin. The thought of dragging the wagon back over the cruel road was too much for the women; they removed one of the wheels, concealed it in the woods and made their way homeward.
Far to the south of Sherman and the left wing, General Oliver Howard led his columns through the village of Hillsboro on November 19, and demonstrated to at least one distraught woman that his piety did not extend to the plight of civilians on the route of march. Mrs. Louise Cornwell had spent much of the day watching in helpless anger as Kilpatrick’s cavalrymen drove off her livestock, stole her grain and beehives, and burned the cotton gin, its screw, a blacksmith shop and piles of precious cotton bales. In short, her fate was that of hundreds of other farm women in the region.
In the afternoon, when there was hardly a scrap of food left on the Cornwell place, General Howard and his staff appeared, demanding tea. Mrs. Cornwell and her women relatives managed to serve them, though it took the last of their food. Louise watched somberly as Old Prayer Book sat at her dining table bowing his huge head to ask a blessing. Through a window she saw the work of his men: “The sky was red from flames of burning houses.”
The infantry passed her house for almost four days while Mrs. Cornwell huddled in the cold on her front porch by day, hoping to keep the men out of the house.
One band of soldiers ordered her to leave: “Get out and take all your younguns and niggers. We’re gonna burn it down.” She replied calmly, “If you burn our house you’ll burn us too. We will not leave. You’ve taken everything we owned. Now burn us up if you will, for we will not get out.”
They turned away, shamed by the woman’s unexpected bravery.
Mrs. Cornwell’s Hillsboro neighbors were victims of the first recorded senseless vandalism of the march. One family reported that soldiers bore antique silver trays and bowls from the house, nailed them to trees and used them for target practice.
On an adjoining farm Federal officers stopped and ordered dinner served to them, a meal so delicious that they kidnapped Aunt Dinah, the aged and enormously fat cook. A soldier hoisted Dinah aboard a mule’s back, where she sat with ludicrous dignity, followed by the laughter of her family until she disappeared down the eastward road. Three hours later an indignant Dinah limped back home after she had tumbled from the mule and been abandoned by the troops.
Sherman, who usually seemed to be oblivious to the sufferings of civilians, surprised Henry Hitchcock by his expressions of concern. On the third night of the march the general, sitting silently before his campfire with Hitchcock, spoke suddenly of a woman who had begged him for a guard during the day’s march, pleading for him to halt the theft of her livestock. Sherman had refused brusquely and ridden away. He now revealed to Hitchcock the depths of his feelings: “I’ll have to harden my heart to these things. That poor woman today—how could I help her? There’s no help for it. The soldiers will take all she has.” He placed the blame upon Confederate leaders for the ravages by his troops: “Jeff Davis is responsible for all this.” Sherman said that nothing could keep men from straggling and pillaging: “For the first two years of the war no man could have done more than I did to try and stop it. I personally beat and kicked men out of yards for merely going inside—it’s hopeless.”
Hitchcock concluded that Sherman had merely closed his eyes to the destruction. The major realized that strict discipline would not be easy to enforce, but he saw a way to control the troops: “I am sure that a Headquarters Provost Marshal, with a rigid system of roll-calls in every company required at every halt—severe punishment inflicted not only on men who straggle but also on officers who fail to prevent it … would go far to prevent these outrages.”
Hitchcock added in his journal: “I am bound to say I think Sherman lacking in enforcing discipline. Brilliant and daring, fertile, rapid and terrible, he does not seem to me to carry out things in this respect.” Still, Hitchcock was forced to agree with the general that the campaign must give Southern civilians a taste of the miseries of war and convince them of the hopelessness of the rebel cause: “I believe more and more that only by this means the war can be ended … It is a terrible thing to consume and destroy the sustenance of thousands of people, and most sad and distressing to see and hear the terror and grief and want of these women and children … But if that terror and grief and want shall help to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting us … it is mercy in the end.”
Sherman expressed to his wife something of the compassion he had felt toward the anonymous woman of this day’s march. He wrote Ellen of his realization that he would be reviled in the South for years to come, and added: “I doubt if history affords a parallel to the deep and bitter enmity of the women of the South. No one who sees them and hears them but must feel the intensity of their hate. Not a man is seen; nothing but women with houses plundered … desolation sown broadcast, servants all gone and women and children bred in luxury, beautiful and accomplished, begging with one breath for the soldiers’ rations and in another praying that the Almighty or Joe Johnston will come and kill us, the despoilers of their homes and all that is sacred.”
The general was oddly incensed by the lack of understanding on the part of his female victims—as if he felt that Southerners one and all must have known of his prewar warnings and had deliberately rejected their wisdom: “Why cannot they look back to the day and hour when I, a stranger in Louisiana, begged and implored them to pause in their career, that secession was death, was everything fatal …”
He had recently responded to a young woman he had known long before in Charleston, South Carolina:
Your welcome letter came to me amid the sound of battle, and as you say little did I dream when I knew you … that I should control a vast army pointing, like a swarm of Alaric, towards the plains of the South.
Why, oh why, is this? If I know my own heart, it beats as warmly as ever toward those kind and generous families that greeted us with such warm hospitality in days long past … today were … there children … to come to me as of old, the stern feeling of duty would melt as snow … and I believe I would strip my own children that they might be sheltered.
And yet they call me barbarian, vandal, and a monster …
My heart bleeds when I see … the desolation of homes, the bitter anguish of families, but the very moment the men of the South say that instead of appealing to war they should have appealed to reason, to our Congress, to our courts, to religion, and to the experience of history, then I will say peace, peace; go back to your point of error, and resume your places as American citizens, with all their proud heritages.…
I hope that when the clouds of anger and passion are dispersed, and truth emerges bright and clear, you and all who knew me in early years will not blush that we were once close friends …