Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  His actual instructions to Taylor had more specificity. “You will cut and block up all dirt roads in advance of him, remove or destroy supplies of all kinds in his front,” Beauregard directed. “Wheeler’s cavalry,” he added, “will harass his flanks and rear.” Taylor was also told to proceed to Macon “with the available forces you can spare from your department.” This last was written more for the historical record than for reality because Taylor, as he had made patently clear in all briefings, had no troops to spare. Nevertheless, upon receiving the message, the Confederate officer headed toward Macon. “There was nothing to be said and nothing to be done, saving to discharge one’s duty to the bitter end,” he later wrote.

  Another Beauregard message went to Howell Cobb, who was with the Georgia militia troops at Griffin (where they had stopped after retreating from Lovejoy’s Station). Cobb was advised to prepare Macon for a siege, and also to look to the “safety of prisoners at Millen.” Writing to his wife in Macon, Cobb projected false bravado, avowing that he had “no serious fears now that Macon can be taken—still it will not be so comfortable to be there with a Yankee army around it.”

  Incredibly, with all the complicated planning for his Tennessee invasion fully under way, General Hood added his bit to the mix. He advised Wheeler: “If Sherman advances to the south or east destroy all things in his front that might be useful to him, and keep a portion of your force constantly destroying his trains.” The last suggestion, had it been aggressively pursued, might have caused Sherman real problems. It turned out to be but a lone voice lost amid the clamor of sectional commanders demanding that Wheeler employ his assets as scouts so they might monitor the enemy’s progress and prepare their defenses before issuing appeals for help.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Forage of All Kinds Abounds”

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1864

  Midnight–Noon

  Scrambling ahead of the approaching Union columns, panicked civilians raced to get out of harm’s way, spreading alarms everywhere. Those they warned faced some tough decisions. If there was thought to be time enough, various valuables and foodstuffs were secreted with varying degrees of guile, but almost always with the complicity of family slaves. Others shipped what goods they could to places they believed would be safe. Finally, as the portents increased in urgency, they had to decide whether to remain or flee.

  The Buttrills of Sylvan Grove, outside Jackson, waited too long to effectively hide much, but with Macon not quite forty miles distant the family patriarch, Asa Buttrill, loaded two large wagons with food and valuables before setting off for the city on November 16. That night the women of the household were cheered by a visit from a half dozen teenage boys (including Asa’s son, Taylor) scouting for the Macon militia. Asa’s daughter, Mary, and her aunt, Emma Manley, decided to flee to Macon the next day.

  Everyone was awake well before sunrise, preparing a carriage for the journey. Fortunately for the ladies, a convalescent Confederate soldier lodged with the Buttrills agreed to drive them. Once the women finished packing, the young scouts took station under cover in a nearby orchard, a prudent precaution, as it turned out. Suddenly a large party of armed mounted men swarmed around the house, their dust-covered uniforms presenting a mocking imitation of Confederate gray. In answer to their repeated calls for the man of the house to show himself, the family’s black butler explained, “He is gone.” Then Mrs. Buttrill appeared and faced the Yankee riders.

  Thursday, November 17, 1864

  “Madam, where are Wheeler and Forrest?” one of them demanded.

  “Sir, I do not know.”

  “Madam, don’t tell me a lie.”

  “Sir,” Mrs. Buttrill answered with some asperity, “I would have you know I am a Southern lady.”

  The Yankees were operating without support from the main column, gathering intelligence, not foraging, so they departed in a rush. With them went the young Rebel scouts, racing back to Macon with the news. In their haste, the Federals overlooked the family carriage hitched up and ready to go. After quick farewells, the twenty-two-year-old Mary, her aunt, two maids, and the convalescent driver drove off toward Macon.

  Right Wing

  The Seventeenth Corps marched First Division, Third, Fourth today, and was further subdivided when the Fourth shifted over to what one soldier called “a byroad.” While a more direct route, the Fourth Division’s trail crossed a large stream whose dilapidated bridge required time to repair before the wagons could proceed. Among the other two divisions, taking a more exposed course, security concerns were paramount. “Orders to be ready to resist and repel an attack that may be made on the train,” scribbled a Wisconsin soldier in his diary, adding, “expect an attack from Cavalry.” In the Third Division, Brigadier General Manning F. Force had to assign a full brigade “to help the wagons along.”

  It was payback time for a number of slaves in the area, who made sure that the Yankee officers heard all about the bloodhounds that tracked anyone trying to escape, including Union prisoners. Said one Illinois soldier: “Advance ordered to kill all bloodhounds and other valuable dogs in the country.”

  The Fifteenth Corps marched in one long column (Third Division, Fourth, First, Second) until about a mile past Locust Grove, when the procession split, the Third and Fourth heading east on the direct road to Jackson, while the First and Second tramped to the southeast on a longer circuit leading to Indian Springs. An Illinois man in the Fourth Division made note of the procedures for protecting the supplies: “The wagon trains are moved as far as possible on the road, preceded by a brigade, with here and there a detachment of troops marching in the road as guards, the rest moving in two ranks on either side of the train. The rear is guarded by a brigade.” A soldier in the 93rd Illinois was part of another detail watching over the wagons. “We are flankers on the right side of the train,” he scrawled in his diary, “the 59th [Indiana] on the other side…. We marched about one hundred yards from the road…, it was a hard place to march.”

  Foragers scattered out from the main column. An Illinoisan belonged to one such detail that came upon a “fine lot of Hogs of which we killed one dozin of,” he recollected. The meat was piled onto a wagon that was then driven to the main road, where the soldiers waited patiently for their division to reach them so they could distribute the goods to the quartermasters. “The poor people looked surprised and begged us not to touch their scanty commissariat,” stated an Ohio boy in the Third Division. He added a grim postscript: “Sherman’s order was to forage liberally off the rich, and it was rigidly observed.” “Now I reckon you want to know what the Yankees did for us,” wrote a McDonough resident afterward. “Well, bad enough but no worse than I expected.”

  So far in the operation Kilpatrick’s cavalry had been pressing southward along the Macon and Western Railroad, forcing the Confederates (cavalry and militia) to fall back in a general movement toward Macon. Today Kilpatrick broke the pattern by veering off the rail line in an easterly and southerly course to close up on the friendly infantry. One result of this action was that for this day at least, Yanks and Rebs were diverging instead of converging. “Country beautiful, forage in great abundance, and roads good, and very little annoyance from the enemy,” related an Illinois trooper. “Have had a little skirmishing,” contributed a diarist in the 8th Indiana Cavalry. “We have destroyed a large amount of cotton.” Added the Illinoisan: “We begin to find a great many good mules and a few good horses which are invariably taken by Sherman’s thieves, as the rebel papers call us.”

  Around midday the 5th Kentucky Cavalry was sent off along a side road to attack an enemy camp said to be on the Towaliga River. Instead of the brigade-sized force he had expected, the Kentucky commander found a small post of twenty men and one burned bridge. After completing his mission the relieved officer returned to the column, convinced that stupidity somewhere had sent his lone regiment on what might have easily become a suicide mission.

  Left Wing

  Those in Sherman�
��s headquarters party, camped outside Lithonia, were awake at 4:00 A.M., had breakfasted by 5:20, and were on the road by 7:00. They had just reached the village when progress ground to a halt. Per orders, the 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics was busy destroying the railroad, using the cant hooks that Captain Poe had ordered made especially for the job of effectively twisting the heated rails. Sherman, recorded a member of his staff, “had to stop & see that it was well done.” According to a passing member of the Fourteenth Corps, the General spent some time “standing on the R.R. track giving directions as to how he wanted the track torn up and destroyed.” “I attached much importance to this destruction of the railroad,” said Sherman, “gave it my own personal attention and made reiterated orders to others on the subject.”

  The destruction authorized for Lithonia was limited to the railroad line and any buildings connected with it. When the town’s depot was torched, sparks and fiery debris set several neighboring structures ablaze, which the soldiers made no effort to save. According to an Illinois officer, one of the ruined places had been a “fine dwelling.” By the time the Second Division passed through the village, some members of its household had salvaged what they could and sat disconsolately guarding the small pile. “The picture was a sad one and spoke volumes of War’s misery,” commented a soldier.

  The Fourteenth Corps (again marching in the order First Division, Third, Second) began passing through the next rail stop, Conyers, around midday. Many of its 500 citizens had opted to stick it out. Conyers, reported an Ohio man, was “full of women and children. Only two or three men seen.” The correspondent on hand for the New York Herald reported that the residents “flocked in large numbers to doors and windows to see the long expected and much feared Yankees, and listen to the music of a score of bands that gave forth their martial strains.” An Ohio officer with an eye for the ladies still recalled a Miss Glenns in later years. His assessment: “Pretty foot and ankle, beautiful complexion and I should have liked to stay a while as she asked, but no use.” Another soldier met up with an older woman who wearily related that this was the sixth occasion she had changed locations, starting in Kentucky, only to have the Yankees catch up with her every time. Enough was enough, and from here on, according to the soldier, “she reckoned she would let them go first.”

  A local character known as “Aunt” Winnie Puckett became enshrined in Conyers lore for protecting her business, Costley’s Mill. According to the hallowed tale, Aunt Winnie first put all the flour she had into sacks, then hid the packets in her millpond. Only the outer layers of flour caked in each bag, protecting the core. Then, when the Yankees actually appeared, Aunt Winnie raised such a ruckus that the soldiers left her—and more importantly, her mill—alone.

  Conyers was not without its divertissements. An Ohio enlisted man took advantage of an extended halt in town to read from some pilfered books, one containing Shakespeare’s sonnets, another an introduction to Greek grammar. When the soldier left the town, he promised himself that someday he would undertake a serious study of the ancient language. A divisional staff officer and his friend banged on doors in town until they found a house with a piano. His companion played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by a rendition of “Dixie” to assuage their reluctant host. This drew the man’s daughters out of hiding, and the young ladies allowed themselves to be induced to sing a Confederate song or two. A splendid time was had by all. “We left them, though, notwithstanding their elegant and patriotic songs,” remembered the officer. “They, no doubt, hoping we might be shot before night.”

  The country around Conyers was “sandy & timber stands & scrub with an occasional pine,” scribbled a Minnesota diarist. “Forage of all kinds abounds, especially sweet potatoes,” wrote a Pennsylvanian. “We get sweet potatoes & one chicken. Sugar molasses abounds.” “All kind of forage plenty,” added a Hoosier; “Nice clothing and Dresses, Silk and…muslin, Thread, &c.”

  Before Sherman’s headquarters departed Lithonia, a signal corps officer with three escorts climbed a large hill located about a mile and a half northeast of the village. They reported smoke to the north, which Sherman’s staff interpreted as marking the course of Major General Slocum’s column. The Twentieth Corps had left its camps near the Yellow River and turned to the southeast, moving toward the town of Social Circle. The Second Division led the way, followed by the Third and the First. “Our course may be marked by the track of smoke we leave behind,” wrote a Massachusetts officer, confirming the signal officer’s observations. “We passed several cotton presses & store houses all in flames…. Every unoccupied house is burnt & as most of the people have left there are few left untouched.”

  This was territory not scoured by any previous Federal operations, so there were pickings galore. Captain Frank D. Baldwin of the 19th Michigan commanded one of the more respectable scrounging operations of the entire campaign. “My duties were defined and consisted of collecting forage & other supplies that would be of use to the command,” he proudly recounted. “Should any man of the detachment prove unsatisfactory in any way, I was authorized to send him back to his command to be replaced by another man. However, the command was composed of the best lot of men I ever saw; fearless & too orderly to indulge in vandalism & void of any desire for unlawful pillage & plundering.”

  Baldwin set a standard not often matched by others. “From the calves and hogs which we killed by a shot or by the bayonet, we ate only the hindquarters, the balance we left to rot, or for the dogs or buzzards,” reported an Illinoisan. A marcher in the 22nd Wisconsin remembered being passed by a forager “carrying an armful of bedding, making for some point or command ahead. A rain of gibes and jeers greeted him as he passed forward to the head of the regiment when [Lieutenant] Colonel [Edward] Bloodgood ordered him in charge of a guard by whom he was taken to the rear.” A soldier in the 149th New York reported that a regiment’s pet dog was “huge on catching fowls. Have honey & sweets from a building well filled[.] Had to laugh at one boy with a bee hive & the bees flying all around[.]”

  Seen from the other side, the effects of this foraging were devastating to individual planters. “[Cotton] Gin house and screw burned, stables and barn all in ashes, fencing burned and destruction all around,” wrote Thomas Maguire, whose Promised Land plantation suffered a Yankee visit. “The carriage and big wagon burned up, corn and potatoes gone, horses and steers gone, sheep, chickens and geese[,] also syrup boiler damaged, one barrel of syrup burned, saddles and bridles in the same fix.” In the days to come Maguire would face a threat from an unexpected quarter: “plundering neighbors who are here in droves.”

  Yet again the tail end of the column struggled to keep pace. “The trains moved awfully slow,” recorded a Connecticut man. “Short marches & long halts for the cattle to get a mile or two ahead,” complained a member of the 2nd Minnesota. Wrote one disgusted New Yorker, “Standing still in the road at 12.” A Wisconsin comrade reported that they “waited till heartily tired for an order to march.”

  Noon–Midnight

  Confederate Major General Joseph Wheeler transmitted three situation reports today. In them he finally identified the Fourteenth Corps as part of the Federal column, so for the first time Confederate authorities had a complete picture of Sherman’s forces. The absence of an overall commander was beginning to rankle the heavily stressed cavalryman. “Please give me [the] wishes and intentions of [the] Government, or send some one who knows the course they desire pursued,” he complained to Richmond. From the information he was getting, it seemed to Wheeler that several Yankee columns were on the “shortest road to Macon.” In that city, a civil order closed all the liquor stores, while a military directive from Major General Howell Cobb summoned every able-bodied man to arms. Another Cobb order put all transportation under central control.

  Cobb was caught in a seesaw of emotions. Maintaining a calm face to his wife, he joked that “we shall have lively times in the course of the next ten days.” Appealing directly to Jefferson Dav
is, he labeled Sherman’s movement “the most dangerous of the war,” and argued forcefully that if the garrisons of Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington, North Carolina, could be ordered to Macon, the chance existed to crush Sherman’s advance, leading directly to “the greatest result of the war.” Writing to Davis’s military adviser, Cobb worried that Macon’s feeble defenses could not withstand a major assault.

  Governor Brown’s eyes in Macon belonged to Brigadier General Robert Toombs, just arrived from Milledgeville, where he had defended Georgia’s sovereignty before the state supreme court. “Things are very bad here,” Toombs wired. Citing the paltry roster of units ready to defend the city, he urged the governor to “send all the troops you can. If we do not get help we must abandon this place.” The public face of iron resolve was presented by the city’s newspaper, the Macon Daily Telegraph: “Macon is to be defended to the last, and those best informed believe it can be held against any force Sherman can bring against it.”

  No one in the town of Madison, square in the path of the Left Wing, had any illusions of defense. Frantic residents hurried to fill a last train waiting at the depot with steam up, as a rueful Yankee described the next day, “with such things as they had time to get away with.” The townspeople did such a good job that another Federal would gripe about all the empty store shelves he saw. At least Madison’s residents did not have to deal with Wheeler’s men, a privilege denied those farther south. Writing to Jefferson Davis about a month after the events took place, a Griffin resident named P. A. Lawson explained, “When General Sherman left Atlanta Wheeler’s cavalry commenced their retreat before him, and but a handful of Sherman’s men ran W[heeler’s] whole command down to Griffin, and while S[herman’s] army was marching through Fayette, Clayton, Henry, and Butts [counties], Wheeler’s cavalry was burning up all the corn and fodder, driving off all the stock of the farmers for ten miles on each side of the railroad, all of from ten to twenty-five miles to the right and rear of Sherman’s forces. Worse than all, the stock of mules and horses which General Wheeler’s forces carried off, nine out of ten they have appropriated to their own use.”