With Fire and Sword

by S. H. M. Byers

For the moment I thought him heartless, but other remarks made to me, and to the staff, soon told us that whatever the cruelties imposed on him as a commander, they were executed with heart-pain and only as plain duty for the salvation of his own army. He even talked of how glad he would be to be out of the whole bloody business, once the Union were restored. But if the rebellion continued all his life, he would stay and fight it out.

When the dinner was over each looked about him to find some garment to give me. This one had an extra coat, that one a pair of trousers, and another one a hat. In short I was quickly attired in a rather respectable uniform.

This matter was just about ended when a beautiful woman was conducted to Sherman, to ask protection for her home, that was in his line of march. She was "true blue Union," despite her surroundings. In a moment the whole atmosphere about the tent was changed. The red-handed warrior, who a moment before was ready to kill even prisoners, suddenly became the most amiable, the most gallant and knightly looking man I ever saw. Beauty, that can draw a soldier with a single hair, had ensnared the great commander. He had become a gentle knight. The whole army if need be, would stand stock still to do her one little favor. I now recall how long after the war I noticed a hundred times this perfectly knightly gallantry of Sherman toward all women.

This one particular woman seemed a hundred times more beautiful, more fascinating, there in the green wood alone, with an army of a hundred thousand strangers about her, when, pointing her hand toward a great banner that swung in the wind between two tall pines, she smiled and cried: "General Sherman, THAT IS MY FLAG TOO." There was a clapping of hands from all of us, and any one of us would have been glad to be sent as the protector of her home.

The great army was now marching, or rather swimming and wading, in the direction of Fayetteville, N. C. There were heavy rains and the country, naturally swampy, was flooded everywhere. I soon learned from the staff where the army had already been. After the end of the march to the sea and the capture of Savannah, Sherman had started in with sixty thousand men, to treat South Carolina in the manner he had treated Georgia—march through it and desolate it. His proposed march northward from Savannah was regarded by the Southern generals as an impossibility. The obstacles were so great as to make it a hundred times as difficult as his march from Atlanta to the sea. But he led a great army of picked veterans, accustomed to everything, whose flags had almost never known defeat. Their confidence in their general and in themselves was simply absolute. So far, in their march from Savannah they had hesitated at nothing.

It was midwinter, and yet that army had often waded in swamps with the cold water waist deep, carrying their clothes and their muskets on their heads. Half the roads they followed had to be corduroyed, or their horses would all have been lost in the bottomless mire and swamps. Often their artillery was for miles pulled along by the men themselves, and that in the face of the enemy, hidden behind every stream, and ready to ambush them at every roadside. Over all these infamous wagon roads, across all these bridgeless rivers and endless swamps, our army now dragged with it a train of sixty-nine cannon, twenty-five hundred six-mule wagons, and six hundred ambulances. The tremendous obstacles they encountered before reaching Columbia they were again to encounter beyond. Not a bridge was left on any creek or river in the Carolinas. Roads were built of poles and logs through swamps ten miles wide. Sherman's army had few rations and no tents. The foragers brought in all the food they could pick up near the line of march. The little rubber blankets the soldiers carried were their sole protection from storm. They were almost shoeless. There were not a dozen full tents in the army. Officers used tent flies sometimes, but oftener simply rolled themselves up in their blankets, as their men did. At army headquarters we had but one large tent, used generally for dining under; so we usually slept in deserted cabins at the roadside.

I recall one fearfully stormy night when the General and his staff had all crept into a little church we found in the woods. The General would not accept the bit of carpet one of us had improvised into a bed for him on the pulpit platform. "No," he said, "keep that for some of you young fellows who are not well." He then stretched himself out on a wooden bench for the night. I think he never removed his uniform during the campaign. Day and night he was alert, and seemed never to be really asleep. We of the staff now had little to do save carrying orders occasionally to other commanders.

General Sherman did most of his own writing, and he wrote a rapid, beautiful hand. We had breakfast by the light of the campfire almost every morning, and were immediately in the saddle, floundering along through the mud, always near to, or quite at, the head of the army. At noon we always dismounted and ate a simple lunch at the roadside, sometimes washed down by a little whisky. Now and then some one of the army, recognizing the General riding past, would give a cheer that would be taken up by brigades and divisions a mile away. There seemed to be something peculiar about this Sherman cheer, for soldiers far off would cry out: "Listen to them cheering Billy Sherman."

On the 3d of March we took Cheraw, and twenty-four cannon, also nearly four thousand barrels of gunpowder. That day General Logan, General Howard, General Kilpatrick, General Hazen, and many other notables came to headquarters. There was a jolly time of rejoicing.

Here General Logan, who could play the violin, entertained them by singing my song of "Sherman's March to the Sea," accompanying his voice with the instrument. A dozen famous generals joined in the chorus. After the singing, Logan insisted that I should also recite the poem. I did so, meeting with great applause from the very men who had been the leaders in the great "March." Alas! save one or two, they are now all dead.