"'What for you sit dar; you 'spose I wait sixty years for nutten? Don't yer see de door open. I'se follow my child; I not stay. Yes, nodder day I goes 'long wid dese people; yes, sar, I walks till I drop in my tracks.' A more terrible sight I never beheld. I can think of nothing to compare with it, except Charlotte Cushman's 'Meg Merrilies.' Rembrandt only could have painted the scene, with its dramatic surroundings.
"It was near this place that several factories were burned. It was odd enough to see the delight of the negroes at the destruction of places known only to them as task-houses."
Sherman did cross the Ogeechee River without having to fight. The 20th Corps moved down the railroad, destroying it to the bridge. The 17th Corps covered the river at this point, where a light bridge was only partially destroyed. It was easily repaired, so that the infantry and cavalry could pass over it, while the wagons and artillery used the pontoons. The Ogeechee is about sixty yards in width at this point. It is approached on the northern or western side through swamps, which would be impassable were it not for the sandy soil, which packs solid when the water covers the roads, although in places there are treacherous quicksands which the army had to span with corduroy roads.
Here they met a quaint old man who had been station agent before the railroad was destroyed. The correspondent had a long chat with him about the war, and about Sherman's march, and the old man said:
"'They say you are retreating, but it is the strangest sort of a retreat I ever saw. Why, dog bite them, the newspapers have been lying in this way all along. They allers are whipping the Federal armies, and they allers fall back after the battle is over. It was that ar' idee that first opened my eyes. Our army was allers whipping the Feds, and we allers fell back. I allers told 'em it was a humbug, and now I know it, for here you are, right on old John Wells's place; hogs, potatoes, corn, and fences all gone. I don't find any fault. I expected it all.'
"'Jeff. Davis and the rest,' he continued, 'talk about splitting the Union. Why, if South Carolina had gone out by herself, she would have been split in four pieces by this time. Splitting the Union! Why, the State of Georgia is being split right through from end to end. It is these rich fellows who are making this war, and keeping their precious bodies out of harm's way. There's John Franklin went through here the other day, running away from your army. I could have played dominoes on his coat-tails. There's my poor brother, sick with smallpox at Macon, working for $11 a month, and hasn't got a cent of the stuff for a year. 'Leven dollars a month and 11,000 bullets a minute. I don't believe in it, sir.'
"'My wife came from Canada, and I kind o' thought I would sometime go there to live, but was allers afraid of the ice and cold; but I can tell you this country is getting too cussed hot for me. Look at my fence-rails a-burning there. I think I can stand the cold better.'
"'I heard as how they cut down the trees across your road up country and burn the bridges; why (dog bite their hides), one of you Yankees can take up a tree and carry it off, tops and all; and there's that bridge you put across the river in less than two hours—they might as well try to stop the Ogeechee as you Yankees.
"'The blasted rascals who built this yere bridge thought they did a big thing.
"'To bring back the good old times,' he said, 'it'll take the help of Divine Providence, a heap of rain, and a deal of elbow grease, to fix things up again.'"