He had telegraphed to the Secretary of War that his army needed rest at Atlanta. It was true, but General Sherman did not intend to have it then. The rebels and the country were bewildered by his mysterious movements. Early in November he was between the Tennessee and Chattahoochie, his headquarters at Kingston, with Rome on the line to Atlanta. The deeply-laid game was played by the master hand in the dark to others. Preparations were at once made for a grander campaign than that which had just closed.
On the 10th, when the evening darkened around the beautiful Rome of Georgia, the heavens glowed with its conflagration. A fearful storm had ceased, the advance was at hand, and it was necessary, in the stern demands of war, to make a torch and desolation of that place, in the wake of the march. The fire was kindled by General Corse, according to the orders of the commander. A spectator wrote of the scenes of that terrific conflagration:
MARCHING TO SAVANNAH.
“All the barracks were laid in ashes, and a black veil of dense smoke hung over the war-desolated city nearly all day, arising from the smouldering ruins.
“Owing to the great lack of railroad transportation, General Corse was obliged to destroy nearly a million of dollars’ worth of property, among which was a few thousand dollars’ worth of condemned and unserviceable government stores. Nine rebel guns, captured at Rome by our troops, were burst, it being deemed unsafe to use them. One thousand bales of fine cotton, two flour mills, two rolling mills, two tanneries, one salt mill, an extensive foundry, several machine shops, together with the railroad depots and storehouses, four pontoon bridges, built by General Corse’s pioneer corps for use on the Coosa and Etowah rivers, and a substantial trestle bridge, nearly completed for use, were destroyed. This trestle, constructed by the Engineer corps, I am told, would have cost fifty thousand dollars North. Recollecting the outrages perpetrated upon Colonel Streight by the ‘Romans,’ our troops, as soon as they learned that the town was to be abandoned and a portion of it burned, resolved to lay Rome in ashes in revenge. The roaring of the flames, as they leaped from window to window, their savage tongues of fire darting high up into the heavens, and then licking the sides of the buildings, presented an awful but grand spectacle, while the mounted patrol and the infantrymen glided along through the brilliant light like the ghostly spectres of horrid war.”
Concentrating at Atlanta, the last use made of the stronghold and cherished hope of the Confederacy was the finishing work of getting a vast army in motion—a grand start into hostile country, away from the base of supplies.
After the men had bivouacked for the night, the following orders, issued by General Sherman, were read to the troops, and were greeted with many manifestations of approbation by the veterans, who, in so many bloody battles, have followed the lead of Sherman:
“Headquarters, Military Division of the Mississippi, }
In the Field, Kingston, Ga., Nov. 8, 1864. }