Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman

by P. C. Headley

The foraging parties were to bring in from the country along the war-path, supplies for the long cavalcade, sweeping over a belt of land twenty to seventy miles wide, right across the proud State of Georgia.

The regulations respecting retaliation for outrages were wise and humane, because they prevented the very ruin which the rebels, unrestrained by fear, would have drawn upon themselves. It was not an idle threat, but proved to be a most timely, useful one.

November 12th, you might have seen the magnificent spectacle a great war alone affords. Mounted on his steed, his cork hand on the rein, General Howard led the right wing in bristling ranks, to the sound of martial airs, from Atlanta. And here I must tell you about that cork hand. You may recollect that the heroic chief lost his arm at Fair Oaks, fighting under General McClellan. He returned soon after to his home in Lewiston, Maine. It happened that I was there upon a beautiful summer day, when the Sabbath-school children had a meeting in Rev. Mr. Adams’s church, at Auburn, across the river. General Howard was present, the first time he had attended a public gathering since the wound was received. And many hearts were touched to hear him talk earnestly of truth and duty, while the yet unhealed stump would try to gesticulate, as the arm did of old. He is a complete man, and appreciated by his general-in-chief.

The imposing pageant of the advancing host was repeated on the 14th, when General Slocum marched at the head of the left wing from the doomed city. Then General Sherman, with his staff and body-guard, gave a last look, and took his road to Macon. “Let Hood go North; our business is down South,” was his brief comment upon the rebel general’s movements.

The torch was applied to the public buildings and railroad depots, flinging at night a lurid light over the dismantled ruined fortifications, and upon the surrounding hills. The scene was grand and awful, memorable to all who witnessed this burning of the “Gate City.” No private residences were designedly given to the flames. “The evidence of the rebels themselves has since appeared to show, that though Atlanta had been besieged, captured, and depopulated, there was no heartless or unavoidable destruction of private property, such as the enemy have delighted to charge upon General Sherman. Thus abandoned, it was left in the rear of our army, whose face was now seaward, and the hand of time, with a higher degree of civilization, can only efface the marks inflicted by a warlike occupation. Before the war Atlanta was one of the most thriving inland cities of the South, and contained 12,000 inhabitants.

“The rebels at Richmond received their first news of Sherman’s departure from Atlanta, from the North, but refused to place confidence in it. ‘It is a big Yankee lie,’ said the Richmond Examiner, ‘and if Sherman really has burnt Atlanta, it is to cover a retreat northward, to look after Hood.’ ‘But if Sherman is really attempting this prodigious design,’ it continued, ‘his march will only lead him to the “Paradise of Fools.” ’ The more Southern papers, those of Augusta, Savannah, etc., were alike incredulous with those of Richmond, upon the receipt of the first news of Sherman’s movement. ‘It is rumored that Atlanta is evacuated,’ said the Augusta Chronicle, of November 15, ‘and we trust the rumor will prove correct.’ The same paper of November 18, implores the citizens of Augusta to ‘look at the situation without nervousness or fear—pray to God, but keep your powder dry—meet the storm like men—it’s always darkest just before day.’

“It is only necessary to follow Sherman’s course, to note the precision with which he moved, the width of country which he covered, and the directness of his march upon his objective point, to realize the impotency of all the shrieks, invocations, and proclamations that only spoiled so much valuable paper in the Confederacy.”

While the heavens hung like curtains of glowing crimson above and around the circular theatre of ruin, whose cinders shot through the hot atmosphere continually, the fine band of the Thirty-third Massachusetts were playing, “John Brown’s soul goes marching on!” The effect was awfully grand; the strange stirring anthem rising over the advance of that mighty host whose way was flashing with the torchlights of burning buildings.

Let us suppose we were upon an eminence near Atlanta, with power of vision to look away over the “heart of Georgia,” the goal of General Sherman’s moving columns. Running through it are two railroads, the only lines traversing the State of Georgia, and forming the chief link of railway connection between Virginia and the States of Alabama and Mississippi, now the southwestern limit of the so-called Confederacy. One of these railroads is the Georgia Central, running from Savannah to Macon, 190 miles, thence to Atlanta, by the Macon and Western Railroad, 101 miles, making the total distance from Savannah to Atlanta by railroad, 291 miles. The other is the Georgia Railroad, running from Augusta to Atlanta, at from 40 to 60 miles north of the Georgia Central Railroad, and making the distance to Atlanta, from Augusta, 171 miles. At Millen, on the Georgia Central road, 79 miles north of Savannah, is the junction of a branch road, called the Waynesboro’ Railroad, which connects with Augusta, 53 miles distant, and makes the distance by rail from Savannah to Augusta 132 miles. Along these lines of travel the country is thickly settled, and richly productive. Cotton, wheat, and corn fields, with forests and streams, mansions and slave huts, make a southern landscape inviting to a great army, whose thousands of men must have food to eat, and plenty of it. To cover the railroads and destroy them as the troops advanced, making Milledgeville, the capital, a point of rendezvous, was the first object of the commander. General Kilpatrick’s splendid cavalry protected flank and front—“the eyes of the army.” On, on, the extended wings move; while a cavalry force sweeps off toward Macon, where General Cobb commands the rebel militia, to make him believe an attack upon him is designed. The “fire-eater” is awake to his perilous position, and ready to defend “Southern rights;” when, lo! the horsemen suddenly disappear. Their enterprise seems a serious joke, provoking a laugh; for it was to keep at Macon the only force that could dispute the way, excepting some cavalry brigades at Macon, till left fairly in the rear. This being done, General Sherman cared little where the Confederate hero went. The enemy was amazed and bewildered—the bold invader’s plans baffled his attempts to decipher them. An extract from a Richmond paper will be both a curious and interesting illustration.

The Sentinel with assurance declared: “It is not Sherman’s object to make his way to the Atlantic to assist Meade, leaving Thomas heir to his far higher honors and responsibilities in the West. If he shall succeed in penetrating the circle that now surrounds him, and escaping to Port Royal, his first anxiety, like Kilpatrick’s, will be for ships to take him away. Steam to Annapolis, and steam to Nashville, if Nashville be not already fallen, will be all too slow to quiet his impatience and to mollify his chagrin. While his own course through Georgia will have been that of an arrow through the air, or a ship over the sea, leaving no track behind; while his exploits and his honors will have been those of the baffled fox hounded from the barn-yard, or the disappointed wolf, chased and pelted by the shepherds; he will return to Tennessee to find Hood, we trust, in possession of the State. He will return to find that his campaign into Georgia, so boastfully entered upon, has but lost the territories won by his predecessors.”