"General Sherman allows all able-bodied negroes (others could not make the march) to join the column, and he takes especial pleasure when they join the procession, on some occasions telling them they are free; that Massa Lincoln has given them their liberty, and that they can go where they please; that if they earn their freedom they should have it—but that Massa Lincoln had given it to them anyhow. They all seem to understand that the proclamation of freedom had made them free, and I have met but few instances where they did not say they expected the Yankees were coming down sometime or other, and very generally they are possessed with the idea that we are fighting for them and that their freedom is the object of the war.
"'Stick in dar,' was the angry exclamation of one of a party of negroes to another, who was asking too many questions of the officer who had given them permission to join the column. 'Stick in dar, it's all right; we'se gwine along, we'se free.'
"Another replied to a question, 'Oh, yass, massa, de people hereabouts were heap frightened when dey heard you'se coming; dey dusted out yer sudden.'
"Pointing to the Atlanta & Augusta Railroad, which had been destroyed, the question was asked, 'It took a longer time to build this railroad than it does to destroy it?'
"'I would think it did, massa; in dat ar woods over dar is buried ever so many black men who were killed a working on dat road.'
"'Does the man live here who worked them?'
"'Oh no, sar; he's dun gone long time.'
"By the way, the destruction of railroads in this campaign has been most thorough. The ordinary method of destruction was to place the rails across a pile of burning sleepers, their own weight bending them.
"But this does not injure the rail so much but that it may be heated and straightened again. Instruments have been made; one is a clasp, which locks under the rail. It has a ring in the top into which is inserted a long lever, and the rail is thus ripped from the sleepers. When the rail has become heated a wrench is applied, which fits close over the ends of the rail; by turning them in opposite directions the rail is so twisted that even a rolling machine could not bring it back into shape. In this manner have been destroyed some thirty miles of rails which lay in the city of Atlanta, and also all the rails on the Augusta & Atlanta road from the last named place to Madison; and thus far the Georgia Central road, from a few miles east of Macon to Terryville Station, where I am now writing."
The army reached Johnson's, on the south side of the railroad, on November 29, when the writer continued: