In the state capital, Milledgeville, Governor Brown was trying to get ahead of fast-developing events. Delivering a special message to the General Assembly, he demanded “the passage of a law…authorizing the Governor to make a levy en masse, of the whole male population, including every man able to do Military duty, during the emergency.” Brown also sent off a telegraph to General Wheeler, promising to “do all I can to rally force to aid you,” while also reminding that officer of the importance of his daily situation reports. Another telegram went off to General Beauregard in Alabama, in which Brown had to confess that “we have not force to stop the movements of the enemy.”
Included among the litany of issues that Howell Cobb pressed on Richmond was the matter of Yankee POWs. “The prisoners should be removed from this State,” Cobb insisted, anxious about Yankee raids aiming at freeing the captives. At Camp Lawton, outside Millen, then the state’s largest prison compound, the inmates were taking advantage of the pleasant, even warm, days. A wood-chopping detail was organized, thirty strong. The men worked without guards, but with the knowledge that if any of them failed to return, no one in the thousand-man division to which they were assigned would be allowed to collect wood until the prodigal returned. Even though the weather was uncommonly temperate, everyone knew that colder days were coming. Right now the mortality rate was ten per day, estimated an Illinois POW. Once the weather turned bitter, however, that would change.
Right Wing
The Right Wing marched widely dispersed today, so the foraging only improved as the day wore on. A soldier in the 11th Iowa, serving as rear guard for the Fourth Division of the Seventeenth Corps, reported that despite being the very last in a long line, the men “found plenty of fresh pork and all the sweet potatoes we could carry.” A happy diarist in the 4th Minnesota (Fifteenth Corps) wrote: “A plenty of chickens & potatoes.” Soldier complaints were a matter of too much of a good thing. “Our men are clear discouraged with foraging,” chortled an Illinois man. “They can’t carry half the hogs and potatoes they find right along the road.”
Amazingly, large amounts of easily movable property remained to be confiscated as well. “The men detailed for [foraging]…are finding lots of horses and mules,” reported a Fifteenth Corps soldier. An Ohio boy was perhaps stating the obvious when he commented: “Along our route today we surprised the citizens very much[,] they were not expecting us so soon.” In the Seventeenth Corps, the requisition of animals was joined to a determination not to leave anything valuable to the Rebels. “We…obtained a number of good horses and mules,” wrote an Ohio diarist, “turned out our poorest, shot them and supplied their places with good ones.” Also slated for destruction were the usual suspects. “Fire is doing its work among the cotton,” related another Buckeye. “Black clouds of smoke mark well our way.”
Just a short distance away from the main columns, death or capture awaited the unwary or unlucky. “[Rebel] cutthroats are following us & watching our movements,” warned an Iowa diary keeper. A party from the 55th Illinois that took a wrong turn found itself several miles from the main column when the sun set. The men camped for the night, taking care to post a picket detail that reported another group bivouacked nearby. A cautious investigation revealed the neighbors as “a troop of Confederate cavalry.” The wary Federals laid low, watched the enemy ride off in the morning, and eventually rejoined their column without further incident. Sometimes the danger was close at hand. Recorded a diarist in the 11th Iowa: “A couple of orderlies got drunk [this evening]…and one shot and killed the other.”
As the Fifteenth Corps drew close to Jackson, its mounted advance encountered a hodgepodge of convalescent Rebel soldiers and local boys out to make a noise. The Confederates first fired at the Yankees some three and a half miles out of town on the McDonough Road. Then, according to a resident, “They retreated beyond the creek and made a stand this side (the Jackson side) and fired on the enemy as they came into sight on the opposite hill, and again retreated. They halted across the next creek and again exchanged shots with them and ran into Jackson.” At this point, the Rebels scattered.
The first Federals to enter the town found the courthouse already smoldering, courtesy of Wheeler’s departing cavalry. However, most of the county records were preserved through the quick thinking of a town official named Wiley Goodman, who packed them on a wagon and carted them into Jasper County, where he hid them in the woods until the danger had passed.
Just ahead of the Right Wing corps was the first major water barrier to be encountered, the Ocmulgee River. There were no bridges to utilize (passage here was via ferry), so the engineers would have an opportunity to display their skills. The two corps would cross the Ocmulgee near a cloth-manufacturing center called Planter’s Factory.* Major General Oliver Otis Howard decided to seize the crossing point before the Rebels realized he wasn’t moving directly against Macon. Orders went to Major General Osterhaus, Fifteenth Corps, to handle the matter. Osterhaus selected a small regiment of mounted infantry, the 29th Missouri Mounted Infantry, for the job.
The unit, numbering about 115 men, trotted forward as the main column closed on Jackson. The mounted riflemen galloped through the town, scared its residents into hiding, then hurried on to the river without further incident. An advance party floated across by ferry to scout the area, while the rest of the regiment foraged a bit, and waited for the heavy columns to reach them sometime next morning.
Major General Howard also sought to misdirect his opponents as to his real objectives. General Kilpatrick was told to do all that he could to make the enemy “think we are making for Macon, via Forsyth.” At the same time, Confederate defenders at Griffin, realizing that the enemy had bypassed them and now threatened to cut them off from Macon, cleared out. “Great excite[ment],” said a Georgia cavalryman in the town. “Brig[ade,] corps & squads of cavalry hurrying to & fro from the front. We have a large wagon train, retreat on several roads.”
The carriage carrying Mary Buttrill, her aunt, two maids, and a convalescent soldier handling the reins had reached a place about a mile east of the Ocmulgee River. Already on their odyssey they had overtaken Mary’s father, laboring with a pair of heavily laden wagons; they next encountered Mary’s brother, Taylor, and a comrade on another scout. Buttrill’s party had crossed the river on a small flatboat ferry and was stopped for lunch with the family of Stephen Johnson when someone pointed behind. Already, the bank where they had crossed the Ocmulgee was dotted with Yankee soldiers.
There was no time to be lost, and the women knew they would only slow the procession down. In a flash the carriage, accompanied by the pair of scouts, was jouncing off toward Macon. “If this war ever ends, you’ll see me drive up to Sylvan Grove in this rig,” the convalescent called out as he whipped the team to disappear in a cloud of dust. When the ladies made a move to enter the plain house, they were turned back, Mrs. Johnson saying she feared the Yankees would burn her out if she took in refugees. A few minutes more, and a crowd of bluecoat riders filled the yard.
“Where are those damn rebels that were here with you?” demanded a trooper.
“Gone,” Mary answered.
A Buttrill maid acted as if the departing scouts had taken the left fork of the road, so a few of the Federals rode off on a wild goose chase. Looking around her at a gallery of unfriendly faces, Mary at last called out: “Is there a gentleman in this vast crowd who would take us to an officer, where I could ask for protection for my Aunt, two maids, and myself?”
One of the Yankees dismounted and pushed through the others to her side. “I have a mother and sister,” he said, “and I will protect you at the risk of my life.” Their self-appointed guardian led them a short distance to a two-room cabin. Nearby Mary saw the two wagons her father had used in his effort to remove valuables to Macon, now captured, their contents strewn about. The obliging enemy broke open a trunk and invited the ladies to take what they wanted, adding that whatever was left would be given to the workers at a nearby fa
ctory that was being burned.
A little later the ladies came under the protection of Colonel George Spencer, commanding the 1st Alabama Cavalry (U.S.) attached to the Seventeenth Corps. This officer took a liking to them, seeing that they had a roof over their head after dark. (It took a day for the Union columns to pass by their frail sanctuary. Then they returned to Sylvan Grove to find the family house “standing alone, palings, fences, gin houses, cotton, cows, chickens, horses, mules, everything in the house, except [Mrs. Buttrill’s]…room, destroyed.”)
Overnight orders written for the Right Wing tonight displayed a serious concern regarding straggling. Surgeons were instructed to take position in the rear of their respective regiments and allow “no one to fall behind except such as are unable to march.” “The practice of marching regiments stretched out to two or three times their natural length is so unsoldierlike and unnecessary that all commanding officers who take any pride in their regiments will…take measures to prevent it,” read another directive. Finally, officers and men were reminded “that we are not warring upon women and children.”
Left Wing
Today’s plan had been for the Twentieth Corps to cover most if not all the distance to Social Circle, but the roads and wagons did not cooperate. “It has been a very hard days march,” complained an Ohio soldier. “The country being very hilly.” “Moving very slow,” added an Indiana comrade, “bad roads.” The officer commanding the 33rd Indiana griped that “there was but little system in the management of the immense wagon train and troops.” Things went from bad to worse when the head of the First Division (last in today’s rotation) bumped into the stalled rear of the Third (number two in order). From that point on, grumbled a quartermaster, “we had slow and tedious work.” “Some wagon was continually breaking down or would get stuck in mud holes, thereby blocking everything behind them and causing the mule-drivers to unload their vocabulary of cuss words,” recalled a New Yorker. Many units, up since dawn, did not bed down until midnight or later.
Almost from the start of the march, escaping slaves had been attracted by the passing Union columns. Today marked the first day that their presence in large numbers was becoming apparent. “The niggers flock around us and want to go with us,” a New York soldier observed. Sometimes the first encounter was a one-on-one. After getting directions from a slave, a Wisconsin regiment marched only a short distance when the black caught up with it. “Massa,” he said, “I’se gwine ’long with uns.” His expression made it clear that the topic was not open for discussion. A Connecticut man came face-to-face with one of the dirty little secrets of the slave system. While his regiment was halted near a plantation, the soldier “got into conversation with a very pretty girl, thinking she was the daughter of a planter, from the fact she seemed so well educated. I made some inquiries about her parents when to my great surprise she told me that she was a ‘nigger,’ and both the slave and the daughter of the planter who was a minister.”
At Conyers, some of Sherman’s staff, including Major Hitchcock, spent time with a local Mrs. Scott, a widow. She readily admitted to telling her slaves that the Yankees in Atlanta had “shot, burned and drowned negroes, old and young, drove men into houses and burned them, etc.,” reported Hitchcock.
An officer prowled around outside, finding several reasons to worry. He observed that the railroad track here had been recently refurbished, disputing Hitchcock’s smug image of a hapless Confederacy. Also, he noticed that they were entering a region with more sand in the soil and patches of white clay, “which makes the worst mud.” All would be fine as long as the rains held off. On the plus side, found copies of Augusta newspapers (dated November 13) were encouragingly silent regarding the prospect of an enemy invasion.
When Sherman’s headquarters were set up for the night, about a mile from the Yellow River, the General sent for a local man to advise him on the roads and river crossings. “Don’t want white man,” he snapped. One of his aides, Major James McCoy, finally fetched a slave. Major Hitchcock, who thought the black man was a “very intelligent old fellow,” recorded Sherman’s attitude as “polite.” Once the General had learned all he could about local conditions, the conversation turned to other matters. He told the patriarch that he was “free if you choose and deserve it. Go when you like,—we don’t force any to be soldiers—pay wages, and will pay if you choose to come: but as you have family, better stay now and have general concert and leave hereafter.” According to Major Hitchcock, Sherman was especially adamant on one point. “But don’t hurt your masters or their families,” he said with emphasis, “we don’t want that.”
Sherman’s command style during the first phase of the great march remained very much hands-off. Courier contact between the wing commanders and his headquarters was minimal, nor were signal officers tasked with maintaining more than intermittent communication between the separated columns. Sherman was counting on an initial period of confusion on the Confederate side regarding his route and objectives. He was also banking on the unimaginative steadiness of Howard and Slocum to stick to the plan.
During the “selling” of the march to Grant, Lincoln, and even Thomas, Sherman had suggested that Hood might well abandon his Tennessee schemes to chase after him. Such a possibility was never part of the daily force assignments. Everything in the disposition of Sherman’s forces on the march was forward looking; there were no backward glances. This evening, Sherman’s Left Wing commander took advantage of the short distance between the Twentieth and Fourteenth corps to send his boss a brief progress report. After explaining the moves he intended to make in the next few days, Major General Slocum concluded with words that must have brought a smile to Sherman’s weathered face: “I have seen no enemy and everything is working well.”
For many of those in the Fourteenth Corps, today was the first day of serious railroad wrecking. “We pry some of the rails loose then all get on one side of the track & turn the track entirely over,” related an Ohio diarist. “When the end first started goes over the men run behind and past those who are lifting so it is kept moving like a furrow unless it breaks apart. If it does then we have to look out or we get hurt.” “The ties were all burned and the rails bent,” added an Illinois man. A Minnesota soldier recalled tearing and burning the line until “we arrived at the smoking embers of the work of troops in advance of us.”
Along the destroyed tracks at Conyers, a squad from the 34th Illinois prowled the village, having been told that the provost guards had pulled out and that there still was plenty of food for the taking. After helping themselves, the men hauled their load to camp. “I shut my eyes not with a clear conscience,” admitted one of them, “but with the clear satisfaction that an excellent breakfast would be mine in the morning.”
Even as the two prongs of the Left Wing were settling into night camps, other actions were unfolding to ensure the next day’s progress. The 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry, under its commander Lieutenant Colonel Samuel T. Hughes, normally employed screening the advance of the Twentieth Corps, “dashed into Social Circle before dark,” reported a newsman present, “and nearly succeeded in capturing a train of cars. Failing in this, [Hughes]…contented himself with burning the depot and coming back to camp with a rebel surgeon and $2,700 in rebel money.”
Back in the camps, the soldiers in the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourteenth Corps were trying to sort out a strange incident. It began about midday, when the brigade stopped for dinner about four miles beyond Lithonia. Some members of the 101st Indiana caught a man in Union uniform skulking around the bivouac. According to a Minnesota soldier, the suspect (whom just about everyone thought was a spy) “attempted to sham insanity, but did not succeed in deceiving anyone but was marched under guard to brigade headquarters.” Added an Ohioan: “He is dressed in our uniform and pretends to be insane.” The prisoner traveled with the division to Conyers, where the Second Brigade bivouacked for the night. Another Ohio boy related that the suspect “tried to get away after dark, t
he guard shot at him & run his bayonet through him, but after it all he was so fast he would have gotten away had not Cap. [William Wallace] overhauled him & knocked him down with his saber reversed.” The man’s wounds were serious, but he appears to have survived the incident. With fine understatement, another Ohio man noted: “He still tells a confused story.”*
More routine matters were under way at the point where the Fourteenth Corps expected to cross the Yellow River, just below a railroad bridge that had been destroyed in an earlier raid. While nearby infantry prepared dinner or flopped down for the night, members of the 58th Indiana toiled on their first pontoon assignment of the campaign. Illumination was provided by torches and bonfires. The river here was some 100–120 feet wide, and the plan was for the army to cross in the morning on two bridges. While pioneer troops struggled against steep banks to construct an approach to the river, the Indiana engineers brought up their wagons to unload the flat-ended pontoon boats. The craft (sturdy wood frames with reattachable canvas sides) were pushed out onto the river, then anchored stepwise from bank to bank, some six feet apart. Each of the two crossings required six boats, each end being firmly lashed to the river bank. Next a series of long beams or balks were laid across the boats, reaching from shore to shore. Perpendicular atop these came the planks or chesses, held in place with guard planks. Having trained long and hard for just such a circumstance, the Indiana engineers had the bridge ready for traffic well before dawn.
Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea Page 14