While the editors and other leading minds at the Confederate capital were thus speculating and wondering, General Sherman was having a most auspicious start on the long march over rebel soil. “The right wing moved directly south from Atlanta, which is in Fulton County, to Rough and Ready and Jonesboro’ stations on the Macon and Western Railroad, in Fayette County. On November 16th one column of the right wing passed through Jonesboro’, twenty-six miles south of Atlanta, Wheeler’s cavalry and Cobb’s militia retiring upon Griffin. Another column of the right wing occupied McDonough, November 17th, the county seat of Henry County, some distance east of Jonesboro’, and about thirty-five miles southeast of Atlanta. Henry County is one of the largest and richest of Georgia, and here our forces found large supplies of provisions and forage. On the 16th Wheeler engaged our cavalry at Bear Creek station, ten miles north of Griffin, and telegraphed General Hardee that he had ‘checked the Yankee advance.’ The very same evening, at six o’clock, his ragged troopers fell back through Griffin, in the direction of Barnesville, where Cobb’s militia had already preceded him. Our cavalry occupied Griffin, which is the county seat of Spalding County, on the 17th, and on the 18th drove Wheeler out of Barnesville, in Pike County, and through Forsyth, the county seat of Monroe County, seventy-six miles south of Atlanta and twenty-five miles northwest of Macon.”
Turning to the map you will see the Ocumulgee River, on whose banks Macon is situated, northeast of which, on the Oconee, is Milledgeville, the State capital. November 20th General Sherman crossed the former stream with his face toward the seat of government; this was the first intelligence the rebels had of his purpose to pass by Macon. Meanwhile General Howard’s columns moved rapidly through Monticello, the shire town of Jasper County, burning the courthouse, thence to Hillsboro’, the county seat of Jones County, to reach the Georgia Central Railroad at Gordon, where the branch track to Milledgeville has its junction. Thus General Sherman left General Cobb behind, and sending to Griswoldville a rear-guard of infantry, pushed on the 21st to Milledgeville, with General Howard’s troops ready to join him.
The march, so far, had averaged thirteen and a half miles each day, making ninety-five miles from Atlanta. There was no need of great haste, and the strength of the men was spared for the vast enterprise before them. “General Sherman camped on the plantation of Howell Cobb. We found his granaries well filled with corn and wheat, part of which was distributed and eaten by our animals and men. A large supply of syrup made from sorghum, which we have found at nearly every plantation on our march, was stored in an out-house. This was also disposed of to the soldiers and the poor decrepit negroes, which this humane, liberty-loving major-general, abandoned to die in this place a few days ago.
“General Sherman distributed to the negroes with his own hands the provisions left here, and assured them that we were their friends, and they need not be afraid that we were foes. One old man answered him: ‘I spose dat you’se true; but, massa, you’se’ll go way tomorrow, and anudder white man will come.’ He had never known any thing but oppression, and had been kept in such ignorance that he did not dare put faith in any white man. The negroes were told that as soon as we got them into our power, they were put into the front of the battle, and we killed them if they did not fight; that we threw the women and children into the Chattahoochie, and when the buildings were burned in Atlanta, we filled them with negroes, to be devoured by the flames.
“General Sherman invited all able-bodied negroes (others could not make the march) to join the column, and he takes especial pleasure when they join the procession, on some occasions telling them they are free: that Massa Lincoln has given them their liberty, and that they can go where they please; that if they earn their freedom they should have it, but that Massa Lincoln had given it to them anyhow. Thousands of negro women join the column, some carrying household truck; others, and many of them there are, who bear the heavy burdens of children in their arms, while older boys and girls plod by their sides. All these women and children are ordered back, heartrending though it may be to refuse them liberty.
“But the majority accept the advent of the Yankees as the fulfilment of the millennial prophecies. The ‘day of jubilee,’ the hope and prayer of a lifetime, has come. They cannot be made to understand that they must remain behind, and they are satisfied only when General Sherman tells them, as he does every day, that we shall come back for them some time, and that they must be patient until the proper hour of deliverance comes.”
The enemy finding our army had deceived them and was gone, General Cobb sent a force from Macon to attack the rear-guard at Griswoldsville, a part of which had been employed to threaten Macon, where a sharp skirmish resulted in a loss to them of several hundred killed and wounded; the severest battle of all the march. General Slocum’s left wing had pressed on through De Kalb County to Covington, burning railroad buildings on the way. Near this town, while foraging in the fine fertile country, a force from one of the brigades of the Twentieth Corps was assailed by a party of “bushwhackers,” and one of our soldiers killed. Then followed the execution of General Sherman’s threat of devastation, involving in it the burning of the Methodist College at Oxford. The large libraries, the cabinets and apparatus, all were swept away by the fires of war, the charred ruins of an institution which cost nearly a million of dollars, only remaining in the wake of relentless Mars. General Slocum pushed forward his troops, living on the “fat of the land,” destroying railways, and flinging on his path the flames of burning warehouses, markets, and bridges. The same day that General Howard reached Gordon, General Slocum was at Eatonton, the northern terminus of the branch railroad. The troops came together at Milledgeville, General Howard entering it first with his troops; because the far-seeing commander-in-chief found that the best point for crossing the Oconee was there.
The legislature, which was in session on the 18th, hearing of the advance of General Sherman’s resistless columns, prepared to flee before them. Governor Brown departed in his private carriage for Macon, taking with him the public papers, funds, and whatever of personal effects he could convey. Never was such a stampede of the law-making chivalry of Georgia dreamed of by them. Members of this terrified body hurried away to Augusta, and others followed the Governor to Macon; some in carriages, some on horses, and others on foot, not having Confederate currency enough to pay for other means of escape. Two of the honorable fugitives paid one thousand dollars to be carried eight miles. Scarcely had Governor Brown reached Macon when he hastened to the City Hall and issued a flaming proclamation—chanticleer crowing after he is driven from the field by his rival in the fight.
Catching the contagious alarm, in the wake of the fugitive legislature, the citizens able to get away, carrying with them to the depot their household treasures, then also fled, until the infirm and the negroes only represented the just now proud and defiant population. The latter were wild with joy, embracing the soldiers, and exclaiming, “Bless de Lord! tanks be to Almighty God, the Yanks is come; the day of jubilee hab arrived!” Such was their simple recognition of God in the war, and of the friends of liberty. General Sherman’s headquarters were at the Executive Mansion, its former occupant having, with extremely bad grace, in fleeing from his distinguished visitor, taken with him the entire furniture of the building. As General Sherman travels with a roll of blankets, and haversack full of hard tack, which is as complete an outfit for a life out in the open air as in a palace, this discourtesy of Governor Brown was not a serious inconvenience.
The campaign toward the sea was now fairly opened, and successful in all its details: “At first, moving his army in three columns, with a column of cavalry on his extreme right, upon eccentric lines, he diverted the attention of the enemy, so that he concentrated his forces at extreme points, Macon and Augusta, leaving unimpeded the progress of the main body. In this campaign it was not the purpose of the General to spend his time before fortified cities, nor yet to encumber his wagons with wounded men. His instructions to Kilpatrick were to demonstrate against Macon, getting within five miles of the city.