Campfire and Battlefield / An Illustrated History of the Campaigns and Conflicts of the Great Civil War

by Rossiter Johnson; Selden Connor; John Brown Gordon; Henry W. B. Howard; O. O. Howard; John Tyler Morgan; John Clark Ridpath

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN M. CORSE.

On the 15th of November they set out on the march to the sea, nearly three hundred miles distant. The infantry consisted of four corps. The Fifteenth and Seventeenth formed the right wing, commanded by Gen. Oliver O. Howard; the Fourteenth and Twentieth the left, commanded by Gen. Henry W. Slocum. The cavalry was under the command of Gen. Judson Kilpatrick. The two wings marched by parallel routes, generally a few miles apart, each corps having its own proportion of the artillery and trains. General Sherman issued minute orders as to the conduct of the march, which were systematically carried out. Some of the instructions were these:

"The habitual order of march will be, wherever practicable, by four roads, as nearly parallel as possible. The separate columns will start habitually at seven A.M., and make about fifteen miles a day. Behind each regiment should follow one wagon and one ambulance. Army commanders should practise the habit of giving the artillery and wagons the road, marching the troops on one side. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, who will gather corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten days' provisions. Soldiers must not enter dwellings or commit any trespass; but, during a halt or camp, they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock in sight of their camp. To corps commanders alone is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, etc. Where the army is unmolested, no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless, according to the measure of such hostility. As for horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit; discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly. In all foraging, the parties engaged will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance."

Thus equipped and thus instructed, the great army moved steadily, day after day, cutting a mighty swath, from forty to sixty miles wide, through the very heart of the Confederacy. The columns passed through Rough and Ready, Jonesboro', Covington, McDonough, Macon, Milledgeville, Gibson, Louisville, Millen, Springfield, and many smaller places. The wealthier inhabitants fled at the approach of the troops. The negroes in great numbers swarmed after the army, believing the long-promised day of jubilee had come. Some of them seemed to have an intelligent idea that the success of the National forces meant destruction of slavery, while most of them had but the vaguest notions as to the whole movement. One woman, with a child in her arms, walking along among the cattle and horses, was accosted by an officer, who asked her, "Where are you going, aunty?" "I'se gwine whar you's gwine, massa." One party of black men, who had fallen into line, called out to another who seemed to be asking too many questions, "Stick in dar! It's all right. We'se gwine along; we'se free." Major George Ward Nichols describes an aged couple whom he saw in a hut near Milledgeville. The old negress, pointing her long finger at the old man, who was in the corner of the fireplace, hissed out, "What fer you sit dar? You s'pose I wait sixty years for nutten? Don't yer see de door open? I'se follow my child; I not stay; I walks till I drop in my tracks."

The army destroyed nearly the whole of the Georgia Central Railroad, burning the ties, and heating and twisting the rails. As they had learned that a rail merely bent could be straightened and used again, a special tool was invented with which a red-hot rail could be quickly twisted like an auger, and rendered forever useless. They also had special appliances for tearing up the track methodically and rapidly. All the depot buildings were in flames as soon as the column reached them. As the bloodhounds had been used to track escaped prisoners, the men killed all that they could find.

The foraging parties—or "bummers," as they were popularly called—went out for miles on each side, starting in advance of the organizations to which they belonged, gathered immense quantities of provisions, and brought them to the line of march, where each stood guard over his pile till his own brigade came along. The progress of the column was not allowed to be interrupted for the reception of the forage, everything being loaded upon the wagons as they moved. The "flankers" were thrown out on either side, passing in thin lines through the woods to prevent any surprise by the enemy, while the mounted officers went through the fields to give the road to the troops and trains.

The only serious opposition came from Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, which hung on the flanks of the army and burned some bridges, but was well taken care of by Kilpatrick's, who generally defeated it when brought to an encounter. There was great hope that Kilpatrick would be able to release the prisoners of war confined in Millen, but when he arrived there he found that they had been removed to some other part of the Confederacy. When the advance guard was within a few miles of Savannah there was some fighting with infantry, and a pause before the defences of the city.

Fort McAllister, which stood in the way of communication with the blockading fleet, was elaborately protected with ditches, palisades, and chevaux-de-frise; but Gen. William B. Hazen's division made short work with it, going straight over everything and capturing the fort on the 13th of December, losing ninety-two men in the assault, and killing or wounding about fifty of the garrison. That night General Sherman, with a few officers, pulled down the river in a yawl and visited a gunboat of the fleet in Ossabaw Sound. Four days later, having established full communication, Sherman demanded the surrender of the city of Savannah, which Gen. William J. Hardee, who was in command there with a considerable force, refused. Sherman then took measures to make its investment complete; but on the morning of the 21st it was found to be evacuated by Hardee's forces, and Gen. John W. Geary's division of the Twentieth Corps marched in. The next day Sherman wrote to the President: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." Sherman's entire loss in the march had been seven hundred and sixty-four men.

MAJOR-GENERAL PETER J. OSTERHAUS.	BRIGADIER-GENERAL BENJAMIN HARRISON. BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM T. WARD. COLONEL DANIEL DUSTIN. BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL WILLIAM COGGSWELL.