Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  What there was to consume was absorbed by the columns as they plodded eastward. “Poor people live here and are losing all their provisions,” commiserated a Missouri officer. One surprise came when they reached the swampy belt fringing the Ogeechee. There the persistent foragers “found the refugees’ camps who were trying to hide from the Yankee invaders, but we hunted them out most effectively.” According to an Iowan, the prowling Yankees “got 60 horses & 40 negroes [and] got lots of cattle.”

  While these animals were being driven back to the main column, one of the horned cows decided to charge a file of marching infantry. A farm boy from the 50th Illinois got in front of the onrushing beast, planted himself with bayonet fixed, and prepared to meet the foe. “It was more of a shock than he had bargained for but he stood it manfully,” reported a comrade, “amid the cheers of the spectators.”

  The major exception to the generally unencumbered Fifteenth Corps’ passage was that undertaken by the wayward brigade at Wrightsville, which had a lot of ground to cover to close the gap with its parent command. “Had to make right angle to the left in order to join the rest of the Div[ision],” related an Illinois soldier. “Every mile or oftener was a slough that delayed & vexed all. Took a north & north east course around & among swamps for ten miles…. A very pleasant day—got with the rest of the Div[ision] this evening. But little encouragement to know that we took the wrong road yesterday & required all of today’s work to get us right again.”

  Two divisions of the Twentieth Corps continued to grind up the Central of Georgia Railroad track. “Our course is marked by a line of fire,” wrote a New York officer. This proved to be a problem, as noted by a Massachusetts officer in his journal. “The marching by the side of the burning track was perfectly infernal, & the word may be taken in a very literal sense,” he scribbled. “There was a swamp on each side in many places so that we could not get away from it.” The swath of destruction stretched as far east as Station No. 10½, also known as Bethany.* One major find was a yard full of cut timber, stored in readiness to repair the line once the army had passed. An officer on the scene estimated the cache at three million board feet. “Burned it,” reported a New Yorker. “It made a splendid fire.”

  The Third Division of the corps, babysitting the wagons and cattle, reached Louisville on November 19. The evidence of stubborn but futile resistance, and the feeling that Louisville’s citizens had asked to be taught a lesson, loosened the already slack restraints on the men’s behavior. “Hung an old man to try to make him tell where he hid his money,” related an officer. “Many are becoming highwaymen by their mode of life.” “It is really heart-rending to enter some of these houses and see how like demons our soldiers have behaved,” said a Wisconsin officer. “On the other hand, we find many noble incidents, where privates, as well as officers, generously alleviate the suffering of the inhabitants.”

  All of the Fourteenth Corps was now settled around Louisville. Save for the one brigade shunted off to succor Kilpatrick’s cavalry, most of the other men not on duty spent the day foraging. A number scrapped with bands of Rebel cavalry roving around the outside of the picket perimeter. One Ohio officer was in charge of fifty men tasked with clearing out an unoccupied plantation a few miles beyond the security zone. “But as we were filling a cart large enough to haul one half of the Southern Confederacy,” he recollected, “a squad of Johnnies appeared and commenced firing on us. We soon were in condition to return the compliment. We were annoyed but a short time when they withdrew. We were not long in finishing our business at that point I assure you, but we got all we could haul away.”

  Louisville was the first Southern town that the Fourteenth Corps had been able to pause in during the current campaign, so a sense of unwinding spread all along the chain of command. “Col. [James W.] Langley…Brigade Commander, and his whole staff, were on a big drunk tonight,” complained an Illinois soldier. “They have been out to a wine distillery and had imbibed to beastly intoxication, and are playing the fool on a large scale. If they were reported to their superiors they would be unstrapped* and sent home in disgrace.” Perhaps it was a coincidence, but back in the peaceful camp of the 52nd Ohio, a relaxed soldier was writing in his diary that the regimental band “is just now playing their evening tune and the lively notes of ‘Coming through the rye’ float gently on the breezeless air.”

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1864

  Interlude in Violence

  In one of those awful coincidences of war, a pair of bloody battles were fought this day—November 30—on opposite ends of Sherman’s march. Each was a product of the General’s decision to undertake the grand movement, though neither would have any immediate impact on his operations. One dwarfed the other in terms of numbers engaged or losses sustained, but in each scenes of carnage were terrible and commonplace.

  The “lesser” of the two had its origins in Sherman’s ability to see several moves ahead on the chessboard of war. Writing on November 11 to the army’s chief of staff, Major General Henry W. Halleck, Sherman anticipated that as he approached the Atlantic coast, Southern leaders might try to concentrate a force in his front using the railroad running between Savannah and Charleston. To prevent that from happening, the General wanted a Union column from the Department of the South to raid inland in order to cut the route “about December 1.” Prodded by this request, a divisional-strength expedition was organized by cobbling together units borrowed from Charleston to Florida. The plan was to penetrate the coastline using the Broad River near Hilton Head, South Carolina, land at a peninsula-like bulge called Boyd’s Neck, and from there march west just seven miles to strike the railroad near Grahamville, South Carolina.

  Simple enough in concept, the operation proved a disaster in execution. Staffed at the top with second-and third-rate commanders prone to timidity, consisting of units that had never functioned together before in a large-scale expedition, and requiring effective coordination between the army and navy, the scheme was further crippled by dollops of bad luck. Delayed in landing thanks to a thick fog, then sent out initially on the wrong road, the weary invasion force—which should have reached the railroad on day one—flopped into camp a few miles short of the goal on the night of November 29. These proved to be critically important miles and hours for the Confederacy.

  Between the Federal troops and the vital railroad route was a low ridge that provided a natural bastion, which eager hands had improved. Named Honey Hill, it was manned by a mix of South Carolina and Georgia troops, the latter just rushed there—including some Peach State units that had been mauled at Griswoldville. How these determined Georgians reached Honey Hill was a story in itself. Even as Sherman’s forces had pushed through Milledgeville, then on to Louisville, these units had marched south, then east, from Macon, eventually reaching a rail line to board cars that carried them into Savannah. Once there some courageous decision-makers realized that the threat to communication with Charleston overrode issues of parochial sovereignty, so they routed them into South Carolina just in time to meet the Federal advance on November 30.

  The payback was all the sweeter when it became known that the Yankee force included black units. While Sherman himself was willing to defy his commanders in chief (Grant and Lincoln) by refusing to take any African-American units with him on the march, the broad strategic implications of his campaign thrust a number of them into harm’s way, including perhaps the most famous of all—the 54th Massachusetts (Colored). Of the eleven infantry regiments engaged on the Union side at Honey Hill, six were African-American.

  The Confederates had a naturally strong position, were well dug in, and were highly motivated. Thanks to poor leadership, the bewildered Federal infantrymen were committed to the fight in a piecemeal fashion, with no overall plan. The engagement, begun at midday, ended at dusk when the bloodied, battered Federals withdrew. The Rebels defending the railroad (who never numbered more than 1,500) counted some 200 casualties, including 8 killed. The Union expedition (which total
ed more than 5,000 men) lost 750, nearly 90 of these fatalities. The critical rail line between Charleston and Savannah remained in operation. The next day, the victorious Georgia militiamen returned to Savannah, where they were added to the city’s garrison.

  While it was more directly related to Sherman’s operation, the battle of Honey Hill paled in comparison with the grand-scale combat that also occurred this day in south-central Tennessee at Franklin. The quixotic General John B. Hood, ignoring Beauregard’s entreaties and adhering to a schedule of his own making, launched his much-anticipated invasion of the Volunteer State on November 21—the day before Sherman entered Georgia’s capital. Hood’s first goal was Nashville, after which anything seemed possible—at least to John B. Hood.

  The same storm systems that brought discomfort to Sherman’s men in central Georgia struck Hood’s legions with even more misery. Snow, ice, and punishing cold pummeled the Rebel warriors. For the first ten days of this operation, Hood’s men shadowboxed with a small Federal army under Major General John M. Schofield that Major General George Thomas had positioned near the southern border to monitor enemy movements.

  Hood, proving more determined and resourceful than Schofield, actually managed to get between the Union force and Nashville at a place called Spring Hill on November 29. The poor condition of Hood’s army, the matter of his personal exhaustion and professional shortcomings in command of so many troops, and a panic-inspired animation on Schofield’s part resulted in the Federals eluding the trap to take up a defensive position nearby at Franklin, with the Harpath River to their rear.

  Furious at his missed chance at Spring Hill to deal the U.S. cause in Tennessee a serious blow, Hood ignored legitimate concerns and alternate strategies offered by his subordinates to hurl his army directly at the enemy’s defensive works at Franklin in a series of sledgehammer assaults that buckled and bent but did not break them. Of the approximately 22,000 Federals engaged, roughly 10 percent were killed, wounded, or missing/captured. In contrast, Hood’s army, numbering here some 23,000, suffered losses that exceeded one-third of its strength, including six irreplaceable generals.

  Incredibly, Franklin was not the end of Hood’s campaign, merely an appalling midpoint. On December 1, Schofield would continue his withdrawal into the defenses of Nashville, where George Thomas waited, still unsatisfied with the hand Sherman had dealt him and not at all confident he could stop Hood. For his part, Hood trailed after Schofield. Despite the awful damage done to his army at Franklin, given the stakes that were on the table and the absence of any alternatives, he really had no choice. Very soon now, Sherman’s cavalier allocation of troops to hold the line in middle Tennessee would be put to the ultimate test.

  Wednesday, November 30, 1864

  At this juncture, Sherman worried most that the enemy was going to mount a significant defense along the line of the Ogeechee River. He need not have concerned himself. Almost as if it had been designed this way, the zones where Sherman was expecting trouble fell outside those where Confederate leaders were focusing their attention. General Beauregard, in overall command, had departed Macon for Mobile, Alabama, where he believed his presence was urgently required. His sole contribution to affairs near the coast was to advise Lieutenant General Hardee not to expect any more help in Savannah than he had already received.

  Hardee’s attention was fully occupied by reports of an enemy raid against his rail connection to Charleston,* and the pressing need to build up his landside defenses. General Braxton Bragg in Augusta, temporarily tasked with directing operations against Sherman in Beauregard’s absence, limited his strategic initiatives this day to ordering repairs to the Georgia Railroad and urging Wheeler to keep hitting the enemy’s cavalry.

  Whatever potential there was in a stout defense of the Ogeechee River line would be unrealized and unimagined by the men who, in Jefferson Davis’s way of thinking, should have been combining resources and coordinating efforts to stop Sherman. Instead, each had created a self-imposed arena of responsibility, beyond which no thought was given. It was as if none of the officers desired to impinge in the slightest on the prerogatives of the others. While courteous in the extreme, it was also not a very effective way of putting obstacles in Sherman’s path. As a member of the General’s staff observed about this time: “Every place we come to we fear that the rebels are fortifying such and such points always about two days march from us but we still continue our journey over a country having a greater natural capacity for protection than any I have yet seen.”

  Combined Left/Right Wings

  Two divisions of the Fourteenth Corps remained encamped around Louisville along with Kilpatrick’s bone-tired cavalrymen. The remaining infantry division followed its leading brigade southward toward the station on the Central of Georgia line known as No. 10, or Sebastopol. The security perimeter ringing Louisville was tested throughout the day by small bands of mounted men engaged in hit-and-run attacks. “There are not many rebels around us but they are slowly collecting in the hope of impeding our progress,” observed a Minnesota man.

  Soldier Levi Ross was part of the 86th Illinois roused from its camp reveries by a sudden uptick of firing on the picket line. The men were hustled into formation, then hurried toward the sound of the guns. “As we filed up the road we saw the enemy in line of battle and mounted for a charge,” remembered Ross. “Soon we reached the picket line, and deployed for the reception of the charge. Our entire regiment had come out and likewise deployed at short intervals on either side. The sight of reinforcements deterred the enemy from his intended charge yet he remained in line exposed to our fire. Occasionally he would dash down toward us, then suddenly wheel about and get out of range.”

  This “game,” continuing throughout the day, was repeated at various points along the security boundary. Infantryman Ross had two close calls and a chilling reminder that the enemy was playing for keeps. He viewed four bodies of Union foragers, “all shot through the head and powder burnt. I saw them with my own eyes and therefore it needs no confirmation.” All this hostile activity grated on the nerves of the officer commanding the corps, Brevet Major General Jefferson C. Davis, who complained to his boss that his “foragers are circumscribed to the limits of the picket-lines; so the general commanding will see the necessity of our getting out of this soon.”

  The division sent to Sebastopol managed to avoid all these problems as the enemy’s focus remained on Louisville. “Any quantity of forage on the road, in the way of potatoes, meat, sorghum, honey, &c.,” wrote a member of the 104th Illinois. Another in that regiment never forgot the celebration that greeted them when they reached the railroad station area. “The negroes had a grand jubilee after dark; the boys built a platform, provided a fiddle, and the darkies more than hoed it down, one old fellow dancing on his head, and keeping time to the music.”

  Also congregating at Louisville was the Twentieth Corps. One division had already arrived; the other two finished wrecking the railroad as far as the Ogeechee River, where they destroyed the railroad bridge. The men then marched north to cross to the Louisville side below the city, using Cowart’s Bridge. To the west of the town engineers took up the pontoon bridge that had carried the wagons of the Left Wing across the Ogeechee.

  Sherman made the decision to pause the Left Wing at Louisville entirely on military grounds. Yet it had an unintentioned humanitarian impact, as slaves from the whole region began congregating there. “Thousands of colored people joined the columns every day,” recorded a New Yorker, “many of the women carrying children in their arms, while older boys and girls plodded by their side.” “Supposed to be 2,000 along with Army,” added an Illinois comrade. “Coming in very fast.”

  For the Fifteenth Corps, this day’s marching kept the men entirely on the south side of the Ogeechee River, as Sherman intended. This was his ace in the hole should the enemy make a stand at Millen behind the natural obstacles created by the merging there of Buckhead Creek and the Ogeechee. If the Confederates did s
tand fast, the Fifteenth would be in position to cross the river below to flank them. For the men of the corps, that meant spreading across trails in Jefferson, Johnson, and Emanuel counties, pushing through a region of pine forests that gave way to swamps.

  The “roads a complete wilderness,” complained a Missouri soldier, “only pine trees[,] the most stupid place God created.” According to an Ohio comrade, “during that whole distance [marched this day] only one log hut greeted our vision and that was inhabited by a ‘love lorn widder’ with six tow headed children.” A member of the 103rd Illinois encountered a German-American who professed complete loyalty to the Union. The sound of a passing band brought tears to his eyes and anger to his tone. “This is the first music I have heard in four years; it makes me think of home,” he blubbered. “D——n this Georgia pine woods.”

  There were delays as numerous patches of swamp ground necessitated either a detour or corduroy path. “Have to make our roads,” groused a soldier in the 48th Indiana. “The sloughs are called creeks but they spread out like swamps,” complained an Ohio officer. “I do not think an army could move with any rapidity through this country during the wet season.” It all lent an air of exasperation to some of the men. “The roads are desperate,” scrawled one, “our supplies are becoming shorter and shorter, darkness seems to be falling on our path.”

  Darkness fell across the path of the Sample plantation, seven miles below Summertown, where South Carolinian Sue Sample was visiting her sister-in-law. For days the ladies had been emotionally whipsawed by conflicting rumors—first that the Yankees could be expected any day, then the reassurances that they were passing at least sixty miles away. The pair had just returned from visiting a neighbor when one of the plantation slaves cocked his ear and said, “Listen Miss Sue, what dat?” It was the sound of military drums beating, more like six miles than sixty distant. Sample went into the house to lie down, for she had hardly slept the previous night from anxieties. Hardly had she closed her eyes before she was shaken awake with someone saying, “Get up, the Yanks are in the yard.”