Grant congratulated Sherman on his brilliant campaign. "I never had a doubt," he said, "of the result. When apprehensions for your safety were expressed by the President, I assured him, with the army you had, and you in command of it, there was no danger but you would strike bottom on salt water some place; that I would not feel the same security, in fact, would not have intrusted the expedition to any other living commander."
Lincoln wrote, "The undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.... But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide."
Congress passed a vote of thanks to Sherman and his men for the great March to the Sea, of three hundred miles in twenty-four days. This march greatly interested Europe, though Sherman never considered it so important as the passage of the army afterwards through the Carolinas.
The London Times said: "Since the great Duke of Marlborough turned his back upon the Dutch, and plunged hurriedly into Germany to fight the famous battle of Blenheim, military history has recorded no stranger marvel than this mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown route, against an undiscovered enemy." Noted army men regard it as having "scarcely a parallel in the history of war."
In January the whole army left Savannah, Ga., for Columbia, S.C. Sometimes, in pouring rains, they waded up to their shoulders through swamps previously considered impassable, or made roads for miles through the mud by corduroying them with rails and split trees.
The Confederate General Johnston said later, in the hearing of General Cox, concerning this part of the march, "he had made up his mind that there had been no such army since the days of Julius Cæsar."
"Whoever will consider," says General Cox, "the effect of dragging the artillery and hundreds of loaded army wagons over mud roads, in such a country, and of the infinite labor required to pave these roads with logs, levelling the surface with smaller poles in the hollows between, adding to the structure as the mass sinks in the ooze, and continuing this till the miles of train have pulled through, will get a constantly increasing idea of the work, and a steadily increasing wonder that it was done at all."
On Feb. 16 Sherman camped near an old prison bivouac opposite Columbia, called Camp Sorghum, "where remained," he says, "the mud-hovels and holes in the ground which our prisoners had made to shelter themselves from the winter's cold and the summer's heat."
When the army entered Columbia, they found a long pile of burning cotton-bales, which Sherman was told had been fired by General Wade Hampton's men before their departure. At night a high wind fanned these flames; and though Sherman's men assisted in trying to put out the fire, the heart of the city was burned—several churches, the old State House, hotels, and dwellings. About half the city was in ashes. Sherman gave the mayor five hundred cattle to feed the people, and one hundred muskets to preserve order after the departure of his army.