Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  Forty-five miles northwest of Savannah, Union prisoners at Camp Lawton were watching over two carloads of sick comrades who had arrived during the night from Andersonville. A space had been set aside for those who were seriously ill, but it offered little in the way of treatment. According to one POW, “no shelter was provided, no blankets [were] given those who occupied it, and medicines were not issued there.” Foremost on everyone’s mind was the prospect of a prisoner exchange coupled with a fierce determination to survive. A reminder of what awaited those who lacked the stamina to endure could be seen each morning as some of the huddled lumps of humanity scattered about the compound no longer moved—men dead in the little holes they had dug with bare hands for meager shelter. A member of one burial party never forgot how tightly the corpses clenched clumps of earth and how they took the “torn fragments with them to the tombs.”

  Left Wing

  The general route for the Fourteenth Corps split outside Decatur, with two divisions following the track of the Twentieth Corps while the third, accompanied by Sherman, angled southwest toward Lithonia. The region through which they were passing had been on the receiving end of a number of military operations during the Atlanta Campaign and looked it. “Old worn-out cotton fields and forests of small pines alternate,” noted a Minnesota farmer. “Foragers were sent out but returned empty handed,” added a Wisconsin man. “We were to[o] near Atlanta yet.” The barrenness seemed somehow appropriate when the 75th Indiana halted for the night near Stone Mountain to discover a fatality in its midst, a member of Company E named John S. Shull. “No one knew he was sick until he was discovered dead,” reported a shocked member of the regiment. Early the next morning a few friends “tenderly laid our comrade’s body at the foot of Stone Mountain, whose monumental peaks, formed by the hand of nature, mark his grave.”

  As the Fourteenth Corps passed through Decatur, at least five soldiers recorded impressions of the village and none reported any recent arson, despite the recollections of Twentieth Corps men passing here yesterday. A jingoistic Minnesotan thought Decatur “a seedy Southern village,…[with] an air of sleepiness and senility that distinguishes all cities and villages south of the Ohio River from those north of it.” According to an Ohio boy, Decatur was “a small place of old wood colored wood buildings,” while a passing officer remarked on its “old, weather-beaten, unpainted appearance.” The opinion was shared by a Pennsylvanian who termed the place “dilapidated and almost deserted.” A more thoughtful Illinois soldier put his finger on the reality and tragedy of Decatur, “a desolate looking town, half in ruins with a few sad looking inhabitants, who showed the effects of having been robbed by friend and foe until nothing remained to them but mere existence.”

  As the leading elements of the Fourteenth Corps fanned out into encampments near Lithonia, a security perimeter was established and contact made with some of the 300 or so locals. “Saw good looking girl as I put out pickets,” wrote an officer in the 94th Ohio. The lady proved to be a pipe smoker and an eager talker. The officer related that he “had a rattling conversation for two hours.” Another Federal paid a house call to meet a family consisting of “the old man, the old woman, four marriageable but unmarried daughters, and one married daughter.” The ladies all denied using snuff. “I however, took out my paper of fine cut tobacco and it was but a few moments until each one of them had a quid of it in her mouth ‘just to see what it tasted like,’” recorded the bemused officer. “They pronounced it ‘fust rate,’ ‘most as good as snuff.’”

  The route followed today by the Twentieth Corps was easier in terms of distance but harder in degree of difficulty. The rough track leading east from Stone Mountain was rudimentary at best, so the units assigned to assist the wagons worked overtime. “Marched slow all day,” muttered one impatient foot soldier, “and the wagons stall every mile.” Added a New Jersey quartermaster: “Roads bad in places and detained from time to time by difficulties ahead; now creeping along and then getting on a trot, some bad mud holes and one or two rail bridges made.”

  The faster-moving head of the column reached the Yellow River shortly before midday. No enemy effort was made to interdict the passage. The crossing itself did not require engineering support, even though the pontoon train was standing by. A correspondent present recorded that the river was twenty or thirty feet wide at this point, and that the Federal columns utilized “a good bridge, which might have been easily destroyed.”

  There was good news and bad waiting for the soldiers who crossed. The bad news was that the terrain was worse on the far side of the river than it had been on the near. The senior officer first on the scene reported that “east of the Yellow River the road crosses a number of swampy streams and steep ridges.” The good news was that the troops had finally reached a region not picked clean by details operating out of Atlanta during the past two months.

  “Forage is very plentiful,” wrote a satisfied Pennsylvania diarist, “sweet potatoes (or yams as they are called down here), corn, plenty of hogs and poultry.” A nearby New Yorker scribbled in his diary that he “got plenty of sweet potatoes and fresh pork.” A New Jersey man recollected that “the crowing of a rooster[,] the squeal of a pig, or the quack of a duck was its own signal of death, and sweet potatoes which were afterwards found in great plenty disappeared at a greater rate than a bushel per minute.” Foreshadowing one problem to come, an officer complained, “I find [it] very hard work to keep my men within reasonable bounds in their foraging operations. In fact,…it is each man for himself, and the first fellow gets the fat turkey.”

  More elements that would become march routine were emerging. The bonanza enjoyed by the first units to reach the end of the day’s movement was not shared by those bringing up the tail. When the 31st Wisconsin finally dragged into camp at 1:00 A.M., a weary member of the regiment noted in his diary, “I ate some hard tack and then laid down to sleep.” Other facets of the march experience involved the foraging process. There was risk, for in addition to the two Indiana soldiers absent from morning roll call, diarists and letter writers took notice of at least nine other Union soldiers captured while out scrounging this day. There was also the game of wits between Yankees determined to uncover hidden loot and Southern civilians equally determined to thwart them. A quartermaster in the 13th New Jersey recorded that “some of the 3rd [Wisconsin], while hunting today for provisions or valuables dug up a new made grave under the supposition it was only made for the pretext to conceal something edible or valuable—but it proved to be the resting place of a hound buried only three days ago—and it was interred a second time.”

  All this foraging did not impede the primary mission of the march. A New York soldier noted that his regiment “burnt a cotton mill,” while an Indiana infantryman observed that “isolated houses would mysteriously take fire, lighting up the line of march almost with the brilliancy of day.” That sense of wonder expressed by the Hoosier was horror to the eyes of a Decatur resident named Martha Amada Quillin. Writing a year after the events took place, she vividly recalled how “the lurid flames of burning buildings, lit up the heavens and dissipated the darkness of night.” While her frightened imagination intermingled bivouac camp fires, smoldering railroad ties, and torched structures, Miss Quillin (whose own home was spared) would be haunted in her dreams by the imagined “screams of the frightened neighbors as the fire swallowed up the labors of a life time.” She remained long embittered about “this most christian order [of destruction] of his most christian majesty.”

  That man at the center of the storm rode silently for hours. “Absorbed in thought,” was Major Hitchcock’s assessment. Sherman allowed in his Memoirs that some of the time he was weighing possible end points for the grand movement, and at this stage was still considering a variety of options, “either Savannah or Port Royal, South Carolina, and [I] even kept in mind the alternate of Pensacola[, Florida].”

  The headquarters party stopped about six miles from Decatur to let Sherman rest. A passing
file of soldiers remembered him “sitting on the porch of a log cabin, the humble abode of a Georgia ‘cracker,’…a cigar in his mouth, while beside him sat one of the female ‘poor white trash,’ puffing away at her corn-cob pipe.” Major Hitchcock observed that the family greeted their unexpected and unwelcome guests with “no fear or cringing.” While the only man present remained silent (he was sick, Hitchcock was told), the women (three of them, with “sundry children”) spoke without rancor. Both the married ones had absent husbands—one gone to parts unknown, the other dead from battlefield wounds. Hitchcock listened without comment as one of the young ladies swore that “few of the people about here were in favor of the war.”

  After Sherman enjoyed a short nap, the command group moved on, passing along the Fourteenth Corps column. When necessary, Sherman led the party off the road onto bordering fields to allow the foot soldiers the right-of-way. Shortly before camping for the night near Lithonia, Sherman halted at a slave cabin. A nearby soldier never forgot the sight of the great General “sitting in the passageway between the two ends of a cabin, a dozen or two negroes standing around and staring at him in wonder and awe.” One of them—Major Hitchcock termed him an “intelligent fellow”—conversed with the General. He described conditions on the farm where he lived and related that he had been warned by white folks that the Yankees drove blacks ahead of them in a fight to serve as cannon fodder. “Our servants will help dispel these stories, and must,” declared Sherman.

  Knowing that the boss would be camping among them, the first units arriving near Lithonia went to work tearing up the railroad. “Line of fires on track for ½ mile or more visible,” recorded Major Hitchcock, “striking sight, men all in high spirits.” Sherman, after settling into night camp, was soon jawing with surgeon John Moore of his staff. Later he made a cryptic remark within earshot of Major Hitchcock that suggests he still fretted about a recall order reaching him, even at this late date. Said Sherman: “Three days more clear and don’t care!”

  Orders issued tonight for the Left Wing reflected growing concerns about the slow movement of the wagons, and the knowledge that the terrain ahead was more rugged. Sixteen regiments in the Twentieth Corps were detailed “to assist their respective trains up the hills…and at such other points as may be necessary on the march.” To avoid keeping the column strung out when halted, “the troops and trains will always double up, and when possible the trains will park in the fields,” leaving the road open. In the Fourteenth Corps it was necessary to remind the train guards that they also had an obligation to “assist the wagons over bad places, hills, &c.”

  Another problem not anticipated was that the prospect of forage was luring the wagon drivers away from their teams during halts, costing more time to round them up. All quartermaster officers were strictly enjoined not to let that happen. Also, all “unauthorized vehicles that retard in the least the march” were to be “put out of the trains.”

  Right Wing

  The Fifteenth and the Seventeenth corps marched in tandem today, at least until near Stockbridge, where the Fifteenth (save one division) peeled away to the southwest toward a place called Lee’s Mill, from which another track led back toward McDonough. The Second Division remained on the Stockbridge-McDonough road, followed by all of the Seventeenth Corps. Both the Fifteenth and the Seventeenth corps made some operational changes meant to improve the pace of the wagons. “Begin to-day marching alongside the road, leaving the road to wheels,” Brigadier General Manning F. Force scribbled in his journal. At least the Seventeenth Corps had a road to leave to the wheels. Matters were tougher for most of the Fifteenth Corps, which turned onto a parallel trail where a member of the rear guard recorded finding “it very hard marching as we had to march in two ranks on each side [of] the wagon train and the road was very narrow.”

  Officers in several regiments now formed permanent foraging details in anticipation of soon reaching areas not previously scavenged. Once they were past Stockbridge, the supply gathering began in earnest. “The boys went out and got plenty of sweet potatoes, beans and corn and the like,” reported an Ohio soldier; “we find plenty to eat thus far.” “I was detailed this day to forage,” added an Iowa boy, “brought in one fat porker.” Exclaimed an Iowan in another regiment, “foragers got lots of hogs[,] beef & potatoes & [we] are beginning to live again.”

  As the main body of the Fifteenth Corps angled in to approach the town of McDonough from the west, its leading elements encountered a line of Rebel videttes, likely from the Orphan Brigade. The Confederates had no orders to hold, so as the Yankee riders deployed and fired, the Rebels withdrew. “Some skirmishing,” was how a Missouri diarist summed up the encounter. A party of signal corps officers riding with the advance helped to see the Southerners off, enthusiastically reporting a charge that drove “a brigade of rebel cavalry from the town.”

  This cleared the way for the troops advancing down the main road from Stockbridge to pass through the village in style. “We entered the town of McDonough at noon,” recorded an Ohio volunteer, “our bands playing and colors flying. This was a small place and about deserted.” The 48th Indiana was assigned provost duties, and soon after General Howard arrived, “a lot of cotton was burned on his orders.” A few soldiers from the 93rd Illinois rummaged through the post office, finding a “large Confederate mail…, but there was nothing of consequence in it, mostly love letters.”

  The mood was more somber in the camp of the 1st Battery of Minnesota Light Artillery. A battery mate, Davis King (the boys called him Spence), had been ill when the march began and traveled in an ambulance. At some point today he died, almost exactly three years to the day of his enlistment. “We buried him that night, poor fellow;” reflected a comrade, and his passing “was very much regretted by the whole Company.”

  Overnight orders for the Right Wing, like those for the Left, reflected continuing worries about the slow clip of the wagon trains. Major General Osterhaus, commanding the Fifteenth Corps, was especially riled. “It is perfectly preposterous to think that the troops should be delayed successively for hours, and thus lose the necessary amount of rest, because a worthless wagon-master or teamster sees fit to disregard his duties,” the German-born officer sputtered.

  The route to be followed by the Fifteenth Corps would bring it closest to Rebel troop concentrations around Macon, a fact not lost on the officers responsible for watching over the wagons. The colonel commanding the train guard was specifically reminded of this and fully authorized to “take such steps as he may think necessary for their protection.”

  Some nine miles southwest of McDonough, Kilpatrick’s cavalry, covering the Right Wing’s western flank, encountered another line of Confederate defenses at Bear Creek Station.* The Rebel cavalry commander, Joseph Wheeler, was present when the first contingent of mounted Federals recoiled after a brief exchange with Southerners waiting in earthworks. This allowed Wheeler to claim a repulse, even as he ordered the units at Bear Creek Station to withdraw. His opposite number wasn’t in a mood to wait until it was completed.

  While a pair of dismounted squadrons from the 10th Ohio Cavalry feinted against the position’s left flank, a mounted battalion swept in around the right end, sabers flashing. One Buckeye trooper noted that the battalion “carried through [the charge] in good style and drove the Rebels back.” The commander of the 10th later reported twenty prisoners taken for a loss of four killed, seven wounded, and four lost as POWs. Kilpatrick’s column pushed on for a few additional miles before camping south of the station.

  As the troopers settled into their night camp, discipline went to hell. After being keyed up all day and engaging in two combat actions, the cavalrymen now found themselves in a land of abundance, filled with goods free for the taking. “Forage of all kinds plenty,” noted a member of the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry. Hogs were especially numerous, so the men wasted no time putting their carbines to use. Once he learned the reason for all the gunfire, Brigadier General Kilpatrick was furious
, branding it “most unmilitary, and a willful waste of ammunition.” He kept his headquarters clerks busy making a dozen or more copies of an angry order to be read at all morning assemblies. “Let the men catch and kill their hogs with their sabers, a weapon that can be used equally as well to kill hogs as rebels,” Kilpatrick huffed.

  Another problem confronting the cavalry chief today was poor march discipline. Everywhere Kilpatrick looked, he saw that units were moving at a trot, a more rapid pace than the prescribed walk, one sure to wear out horseflesh. “All company officers who allow the men of their companies to trot their horses, without orders having been properly received to that effect, and by the bugle from the head of the column, will be dismounted, placed under arrest, and sent to march with the division train till such point is reached where a court-martial can be convened for their trial and dismissal,” he warned. To make certain that the directive wasn’t lost on his men and officers, Kilpatrick also commanded that this instruction be read to the troops “twice each day until further orders.”

  From his position with Hood’s army at Tuscumbia, Alabama, General Beauregard struggled to choreograph a response to Sherman’s move. At 3:00 P.M. he telegraphically advised Richmond of breaking events. He surmised that the Federal movement would be aimed toward “Augusta or Macon” with an ultimate destination of “Charleston or Savannah.” Knowing full well that asking for troops from far-off departments would be a waste of time, Beauregard suggested that forces in nearby North and South Carolina be concentrated to support neighboring Augusta if the city were attacked. He also signaled his intention to send Richard Taylor to “assume command of all troops operating against Sherman.”