Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  The vacuum at the top of the Confederate leadership ended on November 24. In Savannah, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee stepped off the train arriving from the south to once more take personal charge of affairs along the coast. As soon as he learned that President Davis was sending another brass heavyweight, General Braxton Bragg, to Augusta, Hardee opted to remain in Savannah to concentrate on its defense. Told of the fighting taking place at the Oconee River Bridge and Ball’s Ferry, he determined to visit there at once.

  Back to the west, the city of Macon was further heartened this morning by the arrival of General P. G. T. Beauregard. After descending from the train, he went into what he later termed “a long and important conference with Generals [Howell] Cobb and [Richard] Taylor.” Based on the information in hand, Beauregard reasoned that Sherman was probably following “the most direct route to Port Royal[, South Carolina].” Like all his colleagues, Beauregard saw little profit in harrying the rear of Sherman’s columns and so concentrated on putting all his available force in front. He approved Hardee’s plan to transfer the Georgia militia then in Macon to the Atlantic coast, although this time they would move south and east, alternately marching and riding. Beauregard, also deciding that Lieutenant General Taylor could be more helpful to Hardee in Savannah, ordered him there.

  Finally, the overall commander once more nudged the distant General Hood to do something: “Sherman’s movement is progressing rapidly toward [the] Atlantic coast, doubtless to re-enforce Grant. It is essential you should take [the] offensive and crush the enemy’s force in Middle Tennessee soon as practicable.”

  Another opportunity to seriously upset Sherman’s timetable was playing out not forty miles to the east, at the Oconee River, but there is no evidence that anyone in authority recognized it as such. The influx of “pinch-hitting” generals necessitated by Beauregard’s absence meant that there was no continuity of command, a problem exacerbated by first Hardee’s and then Richard Taylor’s self-limiting definition of their responsibilities. With each concentrating on Macon’s defensive zone, neither felt compelled to act in the wider arena.

  Hardee’s abrupt departure created a void that put Wheeler on his own hook. The cavalry officer acted according to character by marching toward the guns; in this case, moving to place his force in front of Sherman’s columns. This led his command off on a march twenty miles south of the Oconee River Bridge to a ford near Dublin. What might have been accomplished by assailing the rear of the Right Wing while its front was pressed against the river was not even a theoretical possibility, since the critical tool for such a plan—Wheeler’s cavalry—was no longer on the scene.

  This lack of focus on the part of the Confederate commanders in central Georgia was a boon to Sherman’s operation; a factor he never considered in his planning, but which in many ways was key to his continuing success.

  It was late afternoon before Major General Oliver O. Howard learned that there was no fordable crossing at Jackson’s Ferry, or at any other spot within two days’ march north of the Oconee River Bridge. That left Ball’s Ferry to the south as the Right Wing’s only option; it was to Howard’s credit that he acted swiftly to reroute Blair’s Seventeenth Corps there to join Osterhaus and the Fifteenth Corps. As Howard reported to Sherman, “I will be obliged to cross everything in the vicinity of Ball’s Ferry.” One problem though—the enemy held the east bank, and had been improving his defenses for twenty-four hours. The fate of the Right Wing of Sherman’s grand movement now depended on finding a way across the Oconee River.

  Tracking Sherman’s movements was a constant challenge for Confederate authorities, but there were two organizations outside the military that were equipped and motivated to monitor the enemy’s progress—the Georgia Railroad (running between Atlanta and Augusta) and the Central of Georgia Railroad (connecting Macon with Savannah). It was in their interests to know where the enemy was and his likely course, in order to assess damage and protect rolling stock by getting it out of harm’s way. With an audacity that would be unthinkable in a later age, trains were kept running, as much to move passengers and cargo as to pinpoint the changing boundaries of the enemy’s penetration. Information gleaned by the railroad agents and from passengers formed much of the intelligence that crackled along the telegraph network to distant centers like Richmond.

  The November 24 issue of the Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel carried a wealth of information from both railroads. According to “an intelligent gentleman who arrived last night by the passenger train up the Georgia [Rail]road,” the paper’s editors learned that the Federal Left Wing had turned south off the rail line at the Oconee River, that rumors of many Union troops in Greensboro were wildly exaggerated, and that the track remained open to Greensboro and Athens. “A gentleman who arrived last night from Savannah” supplied details from the Central of Georgia. He not only reported the fight at the Oconee River Bridge but confirmed the capture of Milledgeville.

  The two Georgia railroads continued to observe and report on Sherman’s progress, even as those actions were inexorably grinding up the tracks and infrastructure that represented the very lifeblood of those companies.

  In his later years, Major General Oliver O. Howard would shake his head at the emerging story of Sherman’s campaign as one unbroken lark. The Left Wing, under Slocum, he explained, “had enjoyed a fine march, having had but little resistance. The stories of the mock Legislature at the State capital, of the luxurious supplies enjoyed all along, and of the constant fun and pranks of ‘Sherman’s bummers,’ rather belonged to that route than ours.” Howard’s case had merit this day as the Left Wing crossed the Oconee at Milledgeville to begin marching south and east, with only some bad stretches of road and poor traffic control to delay the movement.

  The Yankee boys of the Twentieth Corps awoke to a “dense, penetrating fog” that was slow to burn off. “The roads are frozen and the air frosty,” complained a New York soldier. The Third Division, which had been camped along the Oconee River’s west bank, had to use a covered bridge, which provided much amusement. One soldier said that “a continuous medley of cheers and yells broke from the troops as they traversed the long passage while brigade followed brigade debouching from the exit and making away into the woods.”

  At this point in the operation the supply gathering system was operating with few hitches. “Each regiment had its detail for foraging, duly authorized and supplied with passes, two or three from each company, which would start off on roads to right and left of the road on which the reserve of the regiment and the teams were to move,” explained a Connecticut soldier. “The boys would separate in parties of four or five upon each road, and visiting farm-houses would thoroughly ransack the place and get not only all the rations and forage which were needed but teams, horses, and mules to draw them to the road on which the main line of march was made, and there transferred to the regimental wagons and issued by proper authorities…. Besides the authorized foraging for general supplies, there was a great deal of individual foraging done.” Recorded a Wisconsin diarist of this day’s pickings: “We had pancakes and honey, potatoes and pork for supper.”

  By the time the tail end of the Third Division moved out, the narrow roads had been thoroughly churned by the two divisions moving ahead of it. This slowed the wagon train to a crawl, forcing the soldiers to keep pushing them along until well into the night to cover the assigned distance. This resulted in one of the more striking scenes of the march, as a long stretch of road was illuminated after sunset by parallel pyres of pine fence rails running along the shoulders of the lane. It was, recorded a Massachusetts soldier, “a grand scene;…two walls of fire…extending as far as the eye could reach, with here and there burning cotton gins and out buildings, and the heavens above, and all before, around and behind them, light as day with the flames of the burning pitch.”

  Behind the Twentieth came the Fourteenth Corps, two divisions moving on a parallel route several miles to the left, a third holding station
in Milledgeville. Orders for the First and Second divisions to march came as an unpleasant surprise for some soldiers. When the members of the 17th New York “saw no signs of moving we commenced cooking Thanksgiving dinner,” recollected one of them. “Just as we had it nearly started orders came to move, and as we could not carry a half-cooked dinner we had to throw it away.”

  Images of women ran like a red thread through the skein of today’s events, from the mysterious, to rebellious, to forlorn. According to Brigadier General William P. Carlin, just as his division was marching over the Oconee River “a woman on horseback crossed at the same time with a pass from General Sherman, from which circumstances it was understood that she was a spy for him.” For some of the units marching behind Carlin’s division the women they encountered were subtly and unsubtly defiant. The ladies watching the Fourteenth Corps pass through Milledgeville “were quite numerous but they were very rebellious,” reminisced an Ohio boy. “One of them covered her face as the stars and stripes were carry by.” “In passing through Milledgeville a woman threw a large stone from a two story window at Pvt. John Cooper, Co. I, barely missing him,” reported a member of the 104th Illinois, who was silent on the fate of the rock chucker. Another female gave vent to the tremendous strain of the past days. East of the capital, as a column including the 113th Ohio was passing a residence, “a soldier asked a woman if supper was ready,” said a Buckeye. “She burst into tears and replied that she had not a morsel of food in the house.”

  The lucky members of the Third Division got to spend the day in Milledgeville. Even though all the Twentieth Corps and most of the Fourteenth had already left, these Yankees had no compunctions about taking anything they deemed “duly confiscated or contraband. As a result the city was pretty well ransacked and things torn up generally.” Still, necessary military routine was not ignored, at least by an officer in the 2nd Minnesota who found himself drilling new recruits who, having joined the regiment at Atlanta, had been marching ever since. “The morning was quite frosty and handling the polished steel of our gun barrels with bare hands was cold business,” he recollected. “Some of the men were gray men. One never had drilled before and some of them had only been on drill a few times.”

  A number of small foraging parties that ventured away from the town found the countryside spotted with roving bands of Confederates. One that tangled with about thirty Rebels had to call for help. “Two of our boys were wounded,” noted an officer. “Their wounds will probably prove fatal. One half of the rebel squad were dressed in our overcoats.” Other gunfire, this in town, denoted a tragic incident, recorded in the annals of the 75th Indiana: “A very unfortunate affair occurred here in the shooting of two negresses (half white) by a member of one of the Regiments of our Brigade, while standing upon the balcony of a house viewing our troops marching through the streets.” The unfortunate individual who fired the shot was held at brigade headquarters until the incident was investigated. “Subsequently it was proven that the shooting was purely accidental, and the man was released.”

  Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led his headquarters out of Milledgeville at 10:00 A.M. Noting that it was Thanksgiving, Major Hitchcock offered a silent prayer: “God hasten the day when we shall all unite, North and South, East and West, in heartfelt thanksgiving for Peace and Victory over these accursed rebel leaders!” In one last piece of necessary business, Sherman called in Dr. R. J. Massey, who ran the city’s biggest hospital, to inform him that he was now responsible for twenty-eight Union soldiers deemed too sick to travel. When Massey asked what Sherman wanted done with them, the General answered: “If they die, give them a decent burial; if they live, send them to Andersonville, of course.” Catching the doctor’s surprised look, Sherman added: “They are prisoners of war, what else can you do? If I had your men I would send them to prison.”

  After traveling from Atlanta to Milledgeville in the company of the Fourteenth Corps, Sherman now shifted over to the route of the Twentieth. Before long the command party began overtaking the tramping files. “General Sherman passed our column at 12 M., and was cheered heartily by all the troops,” wrote a Pennsylvanian in the Second Division. A Wisconsin man from the First Division paid more attention to the moment. He wrote: “General Sherman rode along through the division, wearing his slouched, black hat, black cloak with high collar nearly hiding his face, looking neither to the right or left, buried in deep thought, unheeding the remarks of the men, who queried loud enough for him to hear, whether ‘Uncle Billy knows where he is going?’”

  “We are now in the regular pine region,” Major Hitchcock observed, “dense growth of pines on all sides, save where cleared.” The volunteer aide, who was taking part in his first military operation, got a bit of a fright when the staff suddenly came upon the spectacle of a division deploying across a field. “What, they are coming into line!” Sherman exclaimed. A closer examination showed that it was only a midday rest stop. “But for five minutes H.H. expected a fight ‘then and there,’” Hitchcock commented, enjoying the joke on himself. “Knows now how the expectation feels.”

  Since they had outdistanced the headquarters baggage train, Sherman’s aides found him a house for the night near the west bank of Gumm Creek.* The occupants, a woman of sixty-five and her unmarried daughter of thirty-five, were initially frightened, but Sherman calmed them. The older woman’s story had a sad ring to it—husband dead, no boys in the war, the women opposed to it all. Even as they conversed inside with Sherman, practiced foragers swept the outside area clean. “Rascals borrowed all her pots and kettles, even tea-kettle,” exclaimed Major Hitchcock. He got a chuckle when the older woman, learning that Sherman’s surgeon was a bachelor, began to advertise her daughter’s good points.

  “If one stopped to think over all the losses or estimated all the real anxiety and suffering caused by the simple march of an army like this, it would be sad enough,” Hitchcock reflected afterward. “But it’s no use.” He found himself recalling something Sherman had told him only the other day. Said Sherman: “Pierce the shell of the C.S.A. and it’s all hollow inside.”

  PART THREE

  Milledgeville to Millen

  NOVEMBER 25–DECEMBER 4

  CHAPTER 15

  “We Went for Them on the Run”

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1864

  Four days earlier, while piecing together his defense of the Oconee River Bridge, Confederate major Alfred L. Hartridge realized that his right flank was vulnerable to an enemy force moving toward Sandersville from Milledgeville. To impede such a move, he sent his cavalry (the Ashley Dragoons) to wreck the bridges over Buffalo Creek, a natural choke point. Hartridge’s men returned after carrying out their mission, leaving behind several outposts to watch and report. The importance of this slight action would exceed anything the major might have imagined.

  Left Wing

  Major General Henry W. Slocum’s Left Wing continued its drive toward Sandersville—the Twentieth Corps now on the inside track, the Fourteenth running outside. Operating on a roughly parallel course well off the left flank of the Fourteenth was Kilpatrick’s cavalry, on a mission without reference to the infantry routes. These troopers were up early, one of them long remembering how the bugles this day “rang out beautifully, clear as bells, first from Division head-quarters, quickly repeated at Brigade head-quarters, and quickly again at the head-quarters of the regiments, and still again at the headquarters of the companies,…and then the fires began to gleam everywhere, like the gas-lights of a great city…. It was a beautiful day, and, with no enemy in front or rear, the command marched rapidly.”

  Friday, November 25, 1864

  The infantrymen were also stirring. “Morning cold but not so bad as the last four nights,” groused a member of the 102nd Illinois. As the two long columns began twisting their way eastward, the tail end of the Fourteenth Corps pulled out of Milledgeville to follow its compatriots. Bands were playing despite the early hour, leading one Ohio boy to reflect that its citi
zens “doubtless breathe a sigh of relief as they witness our departure.” There was some unfinished business as the state magazine, emptied of its contents, was dynamited. Another Ohio soldier, in the process of crossing the Oconee, recalled hearing “two explosions.” “Blew up the powder house and burned the bridge across the Oconee,” added a Minnesota soldier, whose memoir highlighted a final act that many in the capital would later find the most reprehensible of Sherman’s brief stopover.

  Among those watching the Yankees leave was Anna Maria Green, whose father was superintendent of the Georgia Lunatic Asylum. Hardly had the last Federal soldier disappeared into the woods across the river when the cry went up, “Our cavalry is coming.” A few mounted men brandishing pistols entered the town, announcing themselves as part of Wheeler’s cavalry. Miss Green was one of those whose anger at enduring the enemy occupation was transformed into a fierce Confederate patriotism. “How can they hope to subjugate the South!” she exclaimed to her diary. “The people are firmer than ever before.” Green also recorded the name of the only victim of rape mentioned by name in the annals of Sherman’s march—a certain “Mrs. N.” “Poor woman,” commented Green. “I fear she has been driven crazy.”*

  The Confederate troopers belonged to Brigadier General Samuel W. Ferguson’s brigade of Iverson’s division in Wheeler’s command. They didn’t cut an especially martial figure. One Milledgeville resident described them as “mere boys,” while another thought they were “very ragged and for the most part…bare footed.” Still, they were Confederates after all and welcomed as such. Brigadier General Ferguson was pleasantly surprised to witness how the “women ran out [of their houses] and knelt on the side walks, with hands joined in prayer, and tears streaming down their cheeks, and…these were tears of joy.” The troopers quickly checked the town, then congregated at the river’s edge to stare at the wrecked bridge. Ferguson needed to know where the Yankees had gone, so at his orders, a party of scouts swam their horses across the rain-swollen Oconee to chase after them.