With Fire and Sword

by S. H. M. Byers

Before daybreak the door of our cell opened again and the gruff jailer called, "Which of you is Adjutant Byers." Then he pushed a basket and blanket in to me, and a little note. The basket was full of good warm food and the little note, in a woman's hand, said: "With the compliments of the captain's wife."

I think tears came to the eyes of both of us there in that cell that night. It was among the few kindnesses I ever experienced in the Confederacy. Of course it was a woman's act. The captain had gone to his home near by and told his wife about his prisoners, and here was the remembrance. The world is not so bad after all, we said to each other, Fritchie and I.

The next day the jailer paraded us out in the corridor, and I think all the people in the county came to see us, to remark on us, and touch us with their hands. Most of these men, women, and children had absolutely never seen a Northern man before, and a Yankee soldier was a greater curiosity than a whole menagerie of polar bears. I saw the ignorance of the "poor white trash" of the South that day. Not one in twenty of them knew what the war was about. The negroes had a more intelligent notion of affairs than did the people of the Carolinas.

In a few days Fritchie and I were conducted back to our prison pen near Columbia, South Carolina.

Shortly they moved us once more. This time to the high-walled yard of the lunatic asylum, inside the city. As they marched us through the streets we could see how beautiful the little capital of South Carolina was. It had handsome shops and residences, and beautiful shade trees everywhere gave it a most attractive appearance. It was almost the best known city of the South and here the fatal heresy of secession had been born. As we went along the streets a mob of people gathered around us, hooting and hissing their hatred at us, just as they had done that first time we were taken through the town. A few wanted the guards to give them a chance to hang us. It was a sorry sight—this band of ragged, helpless, hungry loyalists being led like slaves and animals through the hooting, threatening crowd. That mob, thirsting for our blood, did not dream what was about to happen.

Here now in Columbia we were walled in just as we had been at Macon, and our lives continued in much the same hardship as before. Only here I do not recall that any prisoner was murdered. It is right to say, too, that the outrages so often committed on prisoners here and elsewhere in the South were not by the regular Confederate soldiers, but by home guards usually set over us. It seems now, when I recall it, that life was not quite so bad here. We soon had some boards given us; so we built sheds to live in. As for myself, I, with three or four comrades, lived in a little wedge tent. It was very cold and midwinter now. I scarcely slept at night, but walked about to keep warm. It was on one of these midnight tramps that it occurred to me to write the song, "Sherman's March to the Sea." I recur to it here because it gave its name to the great campaign it celebrates.

The story of how it came to be written cannot perhaps be wholly without interest. During the days that Sherman's army was tramping from Atlanta toward Savannah we prisoners were not permitted to have any news from the outside of any kind whatever. There was a fear that if we knew what was going on a mutiny might follow. We were constantly being told by our guards that Sherman's invading army was being headed off or destroyed. In the beginning we feared these stories to be true, but the uneasy actions and sullen looks of our captors soon began to belie their statements. As said, three or four of us prisoners occupied a little wedge tent. A negro had recently been allowed to come into the prison pen mornings to sell bread to those who had any money with which to buy. Our little mess got a small loaf now every morning; not more for the bread, though we needed that badly enough, than for a certain little roll of paper carefully hidden away in the middle of the loaf. It was a Columbia morning newspaper printed on soft thin paper and of extremely small size. Our loyal negro had easily enough been persuaded to hide a copy of this paper in the bread for us as often as he could have the chance unobserved. A knowing wink from him told us when to eat our loaf of bread inside the tent and with one of us watching at the door while another read in a low voice the news from the invading army. The paper rolled up was not larger than a walnut.

It was full of misrepresentations and reports of disasters to Sherman, to mislead the Georgians and lessen their alarm. Yet between the lines we easily enough read that Sherman was surely marching on, and victorious. His columns were coming nearer to us; and how we longed night and day that he might capture the prison! At last we saw that there was no hope. He was passing us,—though, but many miles away.

Then one morning, when we unrolled the little paper in the bread and read it, we knew that he had reached the sea. Savannah had fallen. The consternation of the Southerners was tremendous. But, next, they pretended that they could box Sherman up in Savannah and capture his whole army.

One December night when I was tramping up and down the prison pen in the dark, trying to keep warm, I reflected on the tremendous importance of what Sherman had done. And I wondered what so curious a campaign would be called. It was not a series of battles—it was a great march. And then the title, and almost the words, of the song came to me.