[Footnote: Great disappointment was felt at the North over the retreat to Nashville, and still more at Thomas's delay in that city. Grant ordered him to move, and had actually started to take charge of his troops in person, when he learned of the splendid victory his slow but sure general had achieved.]
When Thomas was fully ready, he suddenly sallied out on Hood, and in a terrible two-days battle drove the Confederate forces out of their intrenchments into headlong flight. The Union cavalry thundered upon their heels with remorseless energy. The infantry followed closely behind. The entire Confederate army, except the rear-guard, which fought bravely to the last, was dissolved into a rabble of demoralized fugitives, who at last escaped across the Tennessee.
The Effect.—For the first time in the war an army was destroyed. The object which Sherman hoped to obtain when he moved on Atlanta was accomplished by Thomas, three hundred miles away. Sherman could now go where he pleased with little danger of meeting a foe. The war at the West, so far as any great movements were concerned, was finished.
SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA.—Breaking loose from his communications with Nashville, and burning the city of Atlanta, Sherman started (Nov. 16), with sixty thousand men, for the Atlantic coast (map opp. p. 222). The army moved in four columns, with a cloud of cavalry under Kilpatrick, and skirmishers in front to disguise its route, stormed Fort McAlister, and captured Savannah.
[Footnote: The ubiquity of the cavalry movements of the war is remarkable. In February preceding, Kilpatrick, who now opened up the way for Sherman's march through Georgia, made a dash with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac to rescue the Union prisoners at Richmond. He got within the defences of the city, but not fully appreciating his success, withdrew, while Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, who headed a cooperating force, through the ignorance or treachery of his guide, lost his route, was surrounded by the enemy, and fell in an attempt to cut his way out. Great damage was done to railroads and canals near Richmond. These various raids had little effect, however, upon the issue of the contest, though they served to provoke the bitter enmity of both sides.]
[Footnote: A feint which Sherman made toward Augusta led to a concentration at that city of all the cavalry and militia called out to dispute his progress. The real direction of his march was not discovered until he had entered the peninsula between the Savannah and Ogeechee rivers.]
[Footnote: The first news received at the North from Sherman was brought by three scouts, who left the Union army just as it was closing in on Savannah. They hid in the rice swamps by day and paddled down the river by night. Creeping past Fort McAlister undiscovered, they were picked up by the Federal gunboats.]
[Footnote: Sherman sent the news of its capture with twenty-five thousand bales of cotton and one hundred and fifty cannon, to President Lincoln, as a Christmas present to the nation.]
The Effect of this march can hardly be over-estimated. A fertile region, sixty miles wide and three hundred long, was desolated; three hundred miles of railroad were destroyed; the eastern portion of the already-sundered Confederacy was cut in twain; immense supplies of provisions were captured, and the hardships of war brought home to those who had hitherto been exempt from its actual contact.