SUMMARY OF THE CAMPAIGN — STRENGTH AND EQUIPMENT OP THE ARMY.
It is next to an impossibility to state in exact figures the numerical strength of Sherman's army; but competent judges estimate the forces in round numbers, to have been, on leaving Savannah, sixty thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and five thousand artillerymen, pontoniers, engineers, &c. One hundred guns were about the amount of cannon at the service of General Sherman. Each of the four corps had with it a wagon and ambulance train of about one hundred vehicle; the cavalry, three hundred, and pontoniers and engineers two hundred more-i-making, in all, a train for the entire army of not less than four thousand five hundred vehicles. Army transportation, in moving, generally occupies a length of road in the proportion of one hundred wagons per mile. General Sherman's train, upon this moderate estimate, would fill a road 'forty-five miles in length.
The transportation was divided in four parts; each moved with its command on a separate road, thus avoiding the difficulty of campaigning with so great an incumbrance as a baggage and supply train nearly fifty miles in length. Each corps transportation was about ten miles in length. The extent of country, front and rear, occupied by each column in moving through the country, was commensurate with the length of train.
EXTENT AND DURATION OF THE CAMPAIGN.
When we consider the duration of time that the army remained independent of its base, and the distance traveled, General Sherman's campaign through the Carolinas, stands prominent among the most wonderful feats of armies recorded in history.
The right wing left its communication with Beaufort, South Carolina, January 19, and marching nearly, if not quite five hundred miles, arrived at Goldsboro, North Carolina, March 25, thus being away from a base for the space of sixty-four days.
The left wing abandoned their base at Sister's Ferry, South Carolina, February 4, and reached Goldsboro March 5, after an interim of fifty days.
MANNER OF SUBSISTING.
During all this period, excepting fifteen days, for which rations were carried in the wagons, the corps subsisted on the country through which they passed. In order to accomplish this, each regiment, brigade, or separate command, organized foraging parties, which, under command of energetic officers, scoured the country on the flanks, and on by-roads, gathering in supplies of forage, flour, meal, chickens, bacon, &c, with which the rich plantations of Carolina abounded. Fayetteville, on Cape Fear River, was made the means of landing a limited amount of rations for the army; but it was insufficient to supply its demand for one day. No actual base was reached until the corps, arrived at Goldsboro.
TOWNS VISITED.
The following named districts and towns were entered. Everything found in them which could benefit the rebel cause, was taken or destroyed.
Beaufort District — Beaufort.
Barnwell — The towns of Barnwell, Midway, Hamburgh, Blackville and Aiken, all wealthy communities of from one thousand to two thousand people — were visited by portions of the right and left wings.
Orangeburg — Orangeburg; population, one thousand five hundred.
Lexington — Lexington; population eight hundred.
Richland — in this district, Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, is located. Prior to its occupation by Sherman’s army, it contained twenty thousand inhabitants. Before the war its population was not quite twelve thousand.
Kershaw — Contains Camden — the scene of a battle during the revolution— containing a population of about five thousand.
Chesterfield — Chesterfield Court House and Cheraw. The latter contains two thousand inhabitants, and was ' the scene of revolutionary strife.
Fairfield — Winnsboro; population two thousand. Lancaster — Lancaster; population one thousand.
In North Carolina, the important towns of Winnsboro, Rockingham and Fayetteville were visited. Fayetteville contains five thousand people.
PROPERTY DESTROYED.
In all of the places above named, and in many others j along the route, wherever public property could be, found, or property of any description that would aid the, forces opposing us, it was destroyed. Depots, car-shops, and manufactories were burned. In Columbia, Cheraw and Fayetteville, the demolition of this kind of property was immense. The Confederate Government had extensive establishments in all these towns. At Columbia and Fayetteville the arsenals were torn down; their contents made use of or destroyed. The Fayetteville Arsenal of construction, was one of the main sources from which the enemy drew his supply of munitions of war. The loss is undoubtedly as severe as any, the rebel cause has yet felt.
RAILROADS.
The following railroads were crossed by Sherman's columns; their culverts and bridges were more or less torn up and the rails twisted:
Savannah and Charleston Railroad.
South Carolina Railroad.
Columbia Branch, South Carolina Railroad.
Greenville and Columbia Railroad.
Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad.
Florence and Cheraw Railroad.
Camden and Branch South Carolina Railroad.
Wilmington, Rutherfordton and Charlotte Railroad.
Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, (in use.)
Newbern and Raleigh Railroad, (in use.)
The extent to which these railroads have been demolished, will render their repairs by the confederates a matter of improbability. The amount of material necessary for the work, is hardly to be found in the South. The two last roads in order are now employed in forwarding supplies to General Sherman's new base near Goldsboro.
RIVERS CROSSED.
A glance at the map of the Carolina, will illustrate to the most casual observer, the difficulties with which General Sherman in penetrating the country, had to contend. The many rivers and creeks which cross thick country in every direction, form obstacles such as are seldom met with in the movement of our armies.
The passage of the following rivers was safely effected by means of pontoons: Savannah River was crossed at Savannah; Saluda and Broad rivers, at or near Columbia; the Cahawba, at Rocky Mount; the Pedee, at Cheraw; Cape Fear river, at Fayetteville, North Carolina and the Neuse River near Cox's Bridge, three miles from Goldsboro.
The principal bridges constructed by the engineers were at the north and south forks of the Edisto, at Lynch's Creek, and over the Black and Lumber rivers in North Carolina.
SWAMPS AND QUICKSANDS.
The territory of South Carolina, except the country lying north and west of Columbia, and the region extending from Cape Fear River to the Neuse, in North Carolina, is very low and swampy. Swamps, extending miles in extent, occupy a great portion of the country, while the other portions seem to be filled with dangerous quicksands, over which men must pass carefully, and animals, with loaded teams, cannot pass at all, save over bridges or corduroy roads. In order to pass our trains in safety over these difficult places, it was necessary to lay rails or timber transversely on the roads, thus rebuilding them sometimes for miles. Very many days were occupied by the command in this kind of work— a necessary occupation, unless the abandonment of the entire train were preferred. It is calculated that the army laid two hundred miles of corduroy road.
BATTLES AND SKIRMISHES
Although there were very few hours when some divisions was not in contact with the enemy, the noteworthy engagements were very few. The principal fights are as follows:
Pocotaligo— Fought by the right wins at the inauguration of the campaign. The enemy driven in confusion.
Edisto— a brigade of Hood's army contested the crossing of the North Fork of the Edisto, with the Twentieth Corps. Union loss fifteen killed and wounded.
Aiken— Feb. 12— Kilpatrick’s cavalry repulsed, but subsequently reinforced and victorious. Union loss reported fifty-six killed and wounded.
Columbia— The Fifteenth Corps became engaged with the enemy, Feb. 16th, before the city. Hampton evacuated on the 17th of February.
Fayetteville, N. C— General Kilpatrick'
s camp charged by Wade Hampton's command, about ten miles west of Fayetteville. The camp was surprised and captured, but was subsequently recaptured.
Black River — March 16. — An engagement between two divisions of the Twentieth Corps, under General Slocum, and the enemy under Hardee. Three lines of rebel works carried by assault, with a Union loss of 1,050.
Mill Creek— Battles of the 19th, 20th, and 21st, between General Sherman's army and the combined forces of the enemy under General Johnston. The latter defeated and driven from the field. General Sherman's loss about 3,000 killed and wounded.
CAPTURES.
Independently of the enormous trophies found in Charleston and Wilmington, direct fruits of Sherman's victories, the army which marched in the interior captured about sixty pieces of artillery, five thousand prisoners, and almost fifteen thousand stand of arms, besides ammunition and ordnance stores in profusion. All that could not be carried was rendered useless and abandoned.
SUPPLIES AND FORAGE.
The animals employed in Sherman's army numbered at the least thirty thousand. They were fed exclusively from the granaries and corn-fields of the country through which they passed.
Estimating the subsistence captured by the army from a knowledge of its wants, which all concede were fully supplied during the campaign, the following calculations of the amount taken from the country and consumed will be found nearly correct.
Fifteen thousand head of beef cattle, five hundred thousand pounds of bacon and pork, three million pounds of flour and meal, one million bushels of corn, five thousand horses and mules.
In addition to the foregoing may be added a countless variety of articles of food or general utility. The only want which is at the present moment unsupplied, is that of clothing. Of course none that would be captured from the enemy could be of service to our men. Their uniforms and shoes are worn out. But the railroad is being used to its utmost capacity in equipping the Corps and refitting them preparatory to a new campaign.
General Schofield's command is performing the duty necessary at the depots, while General Sherman's veteran campaigners are resting from their late arduous march.
South Carolina is reaping at last the consequences of her treason. Though the chief instigator of the rebellion, her people have yet, until very recently, almost entirely escaped the evils which have fallen upon the sister States which she hurried into a participancy in her mad crime. While the war of her creation has depopulated other sections, ravaging the fields, obliterating towns and cities, and filling whole communities with suffering and death, disaster has not come near her doors; her fields have not been devastated; her people have only now and then felt the pressure of calamity. But at last, to her lips also, the chalice is presented. The danger she has defied is upon her in fatal earnest. A hostile and irresistible army treads her soil, laying waste her luxuriant plantations, arresting her cultivation, breaking down her haughty pride, and inflicting upon her people, with fullest measure, the losses and pains which they have braved and scorned through all the years of conflict. Now, if never before, South Carolinians will learn what it is to have a great army, stirred and moved by memories of the part they have, played in precipitating the nation into the bloody struggle, sweeping with unpitying purpose over peaceful fields, and through affrighted and defenseless towns. Now, following the desolate track of Sherman's majestic columns, and witnessing everywhere the wreck and ruin they have left as memorials of their presence, these rebel cavaliers who claim to be better stuff than Puritan mudsills, and boast a purer blood than flows in Northern veins, may see how fearful is the crime they have committed, how terrible the punishment it has invoked, and how false all their pretensions of superiority, and all their hopes of defense against aroused national law.
Nor will she find sympathy in her sufferings. She has sowed the wind; now when the whirlwind is come, prostrating all her vaunted strength, and carrying desolation everywhere, she must be content to sit, unpitied, among the ruins. The thousands of homes she has filled with mourning, the unnumbered hearts she has wrung with anguish, are all witnesses of the justice of her punishment. Let her drink the cup she has brewed, and lie on the bed she has made. The law of compensations enforces inexorably its own fulfillment; and the projectors of this rebellion can not escape its inevitable power. Some perception of this truth seems to have dawned even in the minds of the South Carolina conspirators, and now flashes out through all their frantic appeals for help.
RAVAGES OF WAR.
The Negroes were the most fearful in their ravages. I do not speak of ordinary foraging in an enemy's country, for the purpose of living as you pass through it, nor of taking horses and mules to supply the place of those falling out by exhaustion; this is right, necessary, in the system of warfare we have been compelled to wage. Nor of the wholesale destruction of public property, railroads, mills, canals, &c; this is also justified by the laws of civilized warfare. Nor of the burning of houses from which shots have been fired upon our advancing troops; this is perhaps a necessity. Nor even of the wholesale destruction of everything which could be destroyed in the Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan, under command of a superior; this was an exceptional case, and may have been— from the peculiar location of that valley, as the gate of entrance to the North, and from the deceitful character of its people— a military necessity. Let these pass unquestioned.
But there is another class of devastations widely different from these, which have been perpetrated to an extent of which the North has little conception. These may be classified, as first, "deliberate and systematic robbery for the sake of gain." Thousands of soldiers have gathered by violence hundreds of dollars each, some of them thousands, by sheer robbery. When they come to a house where an old man may be found whom the most rigid conscription had not taken, they assume that he has gold and silver hidden, and demand it. If he gives up the treasure cheerfully he escapes personal violence. If he denies the possession of treasure and they believe him, he escapes. If they do not believe him they resort to violent means, to compel its surrender. With a rope they will hang him until he is nearly gone, then let him down and demand the money —and this is repeated until he or they give up. Again, they will compel a man to “double-quick " for one, two or three miles, until he sinks from exhaustion, and then threaten him with death unless he reveals the hiding place of his riches. Again, they prepare the torch, and threaten to burn his house and all it contains, unless the money is forthcoming.
This robbery extends to other valuables in addition to money. Plate and silver spoons, silk dresses, elegant articles of the toilet, pistols, indeed whatever the soldier can take away and hopes to sell; these are gathered up and carried off to the extent sometimes of loading a wagon at one mansion. “What is done with these?" How many of them finally reach the North "by hook or crook, I will not affirm; some through the soldier's mail, some wrapped up in the baggage of furloughed officers, some passed through the hands of the regular official, having the permit of the government.
A second form of devastation practiced by some of our soldiers, consisted in the "wanton destruction of property which they could not use or carry away." Of this I have the evidence of sight, in some cases, of undoubted testimony in others.
Pianos cut to pieces with axes, elegant sofas broken and the fragments scattered about the grounds, paintings and engravings pierced with bayonets or slashed with swords, rosewood centre-tables, chairs, &c, broken to pieces and burned for fuel in cooking the food taken from the cellar or meat house — these are the subjects of bitter complaint from hundreds of non-combatants, many of them undoubted, true, original, Union men.
"But would our soldiers wantonly destroy property of Union men?" Not surely because they were Union men. But the claim of being such was often made untruly, and was therefore generally disbelieved by the soldier. If the claim was well founded, then the boldness and persistency with which it would be urged was taken as an offence, and the weaker party generally lost his money and had his pro
perty destroyed. The amount of property thus destroyed during the last year of the rebellion no one can tell. I have heard it estimated at hundreds of millions.
This robbery and wanton waste were specially trying to. The people, not only because contrary to right and the laws of war, but because it completed their utter and almost hopeless impoverishment. The depth of their losses and present want can hardly be overstated. In the proclamation of freedom to the slaves, their laborers, they lost what at the lowest figures they valued at two thousand millions of dollars. This might, have been borne if the able bodied men of the white families had been at home to take the place of the absent or idle freedmen, but they had been drawn into the war, many of them by a merciless conscription, and were now dead or hopelessly disabled for valuable labor on the farm. Further, four years of exhausting war had reduced the entire people to the barest necessities of life, — ladies of former wealth declared to me that they had lived on bread and water for two months at a time — others that they had seen meat but once per week, no tea or coffee or sugar for months; the demands of the army, and the less efficient labor of the slaves during the war having cleaned out the granaries and meat houses of the entire population. Still more, the people are absolutely without money. The gold and silver have gone to Europe or the North, the State banks have ceased, the Confederate money is worthless, and men of large wealth formerly — hundreds of thousands — have not had a dollar for months. Now add to this accumulation of deprivations, robbery and wanton destruction of what little is left them, and you can easily see how bitter their reproaches. I am persuaded that all other causes of estrangement will pass away and be forgotten long before this one is forgiven, and because it has neither justification nor palliation.
Personal Recollections of Sherman's Campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas Page 32