Life and Military Career of Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman

by P. C. Headley

ENERAL HOWARD’S column moved down the east side of the Oconee River, reaching Sandersville November 26, burning the depot and tearing up the railroad near that place. General Slocum’s battalions of the right wing marched northward toward Sparta, the cavalry scouring the country, getting all the forage they needed, horses and mules, and making havoc with the railroads, mills, and gin-houses. These horsemen galloped about as if quite at home; more like troops at a “general muster” than warriors at work, excepting the signals of ruin they left behind.

At this very time, November 25, the secessionists lurking among us at the North, matured a plot for burning the city of New York, by firing the principal hotels. Combustibles were placed in rooms which had been mysteriously engaged, the match applied, and then the doors locked. But while a dozen hotels or more were thus set on fire, a watchful Providence led to timely discovery. Indeed, he confused the conspirators, so that the plot was poorly executed; the very effort to conceal and give time for the flames to spread, by leaving the apartments closed, excluding the currents of air, defeated the fiendish design.

December 1st, the Fourteenth Corps threatened Augusta: “The rebels became greatly frightened. Up to that time many of them were consoled with the idea that, after all, Sherman was only on a great raid into the heart of the State, or would yet turn and move westward upon Columbus, Montgomery, and Mobile. But such hopes were dispelled when his cavalry were discovered in Washington and Hancock counties. At Augusta preparations for defence went on vigorously. Bragg was summoned from Wilmington, and came, the Augusta papers said, with ten thousand men. Troops came from Charleston, Hampton’s cavalry came from Virginia, and the entire population of the city was put under arms, and all the slaves in the surrounding country were impressed to work upon the fortifications. Then began, also, a vigorous system of rebel brag. Wheeler was put to his trumps, and required to whip Kilpatrick three times a day, and to invariably close the report of his victory with the announcement, ‘after this glorious success we fell back!’ All this Wheeler most valiantly did; but on one occasion, in a fight near Gibson, the county seat of Glascock County, being required to bring in Kilpatrick’s head as a trophy, he humbly apologized with his hat, observing, that in his haste to fall back, he had left Kilpatrick’s head on its shoulders.

“Until it was fully ascertained that Sherman had reached Millen, the rebels believed that he was passing down between the Ogeechee and Oconee Rivers, aiming to reach the coast at Darien or Brunswick. Very adroit strategy was necessary at this juncture to conceal the real direction of the march, for had the rebels known in time that Augusta was certainly to be avoided, the entire force there could have been sent down to Millen, and thus thrown in Sherman’s front, and resisted or delayed his march upon Savannah, and in the end would have proved a formidable addition to the garrison of that place. Kilpatrick, therefore, pressed Wheeler more vigorously than ever, and the latter fell back toward Augusta, which put him out of Sherman’s way most effectually, again leaving him in the rear of the very army whose advance he was endeavoring to resist. It was during these cavalry operations that the fight took place at Waynesboro’, December 3d, where Wheeler attacked Kilpatrick, and reported that he had ‘doubled him up on the main body.’ But Kilpatrick wouldn’t stay ‘doubled up.’ On the next day Wheeler was compelled to make his usual report that he had ‘signally repulsed Kilpatrick’ but was ‘obliged to fall back,’ the result of which was that he was driven back through Waynesboro’ and beyond Brier Creek, the railway bridge over which was destroyed, within twenty miles of Augusta, which was the nearest approach of our forces to that city. Kilpatrick then took up a position to guard Sherman’s rear, and while doing so, his force loaded their wagons with the forage and provisions of Burke County, for use in the less fertile counties in the region of the coast.”

If you have consulted the map, you have noticed four principal rivers on the line of march; the Ocmulgee, the most westerly, on whose banks is Macon; the Oconee, on which is situated Milledgeville; the Ogeechee, that passes Millen, and the Savannah. Augusta is on the latter. Besides these there were several small streams, and great swamps across the war-path of General Sherman. He called the country between Sparta and Warrenton “one universal bog.”

The 4th of December found the great army “swinging slowly round from its eastern course,” taking Millen as the pivot, and striking in six columns, along roads running in the same direction, between the Ogeechee and Savannah Rivers, for the city of Savannah. General Sherman at his leisure had secured forage in the rich counties of Washington, Burke, Glascock, Warren, and Hancock, to prepare for a formidable resistance at Savannah, which might delay the communication with Port Royal for supplies. The rebels said he stopped to “grind corn;” but, while this was unnecessary, because the horses could manage the ears, and the troops had better fare, he was grinding their hopes of disaster to him and of escape, to powder. They had sent forces from Charleston and Wilmington to Augusta and vicinity, sure of meeting him there, when lo! he was hurrying, like an avalanche, upon the more important city by the sea. Their feelings, when the bitter truth came fairly home to their comprehension, were announced in an Augusta paper: “Sherman has not for a moment hesitated, in our humble judgment, as to the point to be attacked or the road to it. When his forage and provision trains are full he will mass his entire force; throwing his cavalry to the rear, with his wagon-train between the two wings of his army, he will move in compact columns, steadily but cautiously, upon the city of Savannah, with no fear of an attack on either flank. The Ogeechee and a few crossings and terrible swamps on his right, and the Savannah River and its equally swampy banks on his left, both flanks will be most securely covered—a grand desideratum in army movements. And thus situated, he has a march of something over eighty miles to the city of Savannah.” When the Augusta people heard that their city was no longer threatened, they drew a long breath and congratulated themselves. “The frowns and sadness with which the countenances of our citizens have been bedecked,” said the Sentinel, “have given way to smiles and mirth.” That is, “smiles and mirth” because their neighbors in Savannah were to be the recipients of Sherman’s favors, and not they.

Generals Davis and Kilpatrick had hitherto concealed and guarded the army movements. The Fifteenth Corps, on the right bank of the river, instead of the left wing, now menaced the enemy’s rear. These flank manœuvres of the dashing Kilpatrick, joined to General Howard as he had been to General Davis, were indispensable; for our battalions could not clear the State of rebel troops, and must, therefore, avoid the delays which would attend the opposition of a much smaller force at the river-crossings, or any other spot where the difficulties of advance favored the enemy.

The army found the once magnificent cotton fields some of them having a thousand acres covered with corn, according to the order of Jeff Davis, while the fleecy crops of former harvests had been sent to a safer distance from the suspected course of General Sherman’s columns. At Ogeechee Church, on the river bearing that name, and the narrowest part of the peninsula between the streams, the army concentrated on the 5th and 6th of December. Meanwhile General Kilpatrick, when dashing toward Alexandria to burn the bridge over Brier Creek, encountered General Wheeler at Waynesboro’. The sabres gleam in the sunlight, and the bullets fly on their fatal mission, resulting at each conflict in the flight of the rebel general. The seventy-nine miles from Millen to Savannah steadily diminished, the splendid and triumphant army getting by the 8th within less than a score of miles from the goal of their martial and patriotic ambition.

The heroic General Howard, at this crisis of affairs, executed a bold and brilliant movement. The rebels, to hold the Gulf Railroad, which they were using in earnest, had pushed across the Ogeechee. General Corse, of “Allatoona memory,” who, before they were aware of it, was between the Little and Great Ogeechee, thirteen miles in advance of the main army, reached and bridged the canal connecting the river with Savannah, then crossing it, intrenched himself securely, almost in sight of the city. And now the approach was hotly disputed, and brave men fell in the ranks of General Blair’s columns. But some were killed by the most cowardly and shameful conduct of the enemy. Shells and torpedoes had been buried in the way of the march, and the tread of the heroes exploding them, a number were prostrated in a sudden and horrible death. The precaution then taken was a just though severe one. Prisoners of war were ordered forward to remove the murderous and unseen means of destruction. The prisoners were sent in advance as ordered. Crawling, begging, praying, as their trembling fingers descended to dig away the earth about the death-traps which they had, perhaps, helped to set, they were a piteous spectacle. Soon the path was cleared for the onward steps of the Union boys. General Howard’s next daring deed was to communicate immediately with our fleet below Fort McAllister, held by a strong garrison of the enemy. Here, on the gunboat Dandelion, Admiral Dahlgren was anxiously waiting for tidings from the great army somewhere between Atlanta and the sea.