Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  At 3:30 P.M. Kilpatrick’s advance challenged Macon’s defenses. A portion of the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry, with its quick-shooting Spencers, pushed to the creek, while the six guns of Kilpatrick’s horse artillery opened up on the hilltop positions. A few Yankee overshoots landed in the Central of Georgia Railroad’s workshop area, leading to a hasty exodus by the employees who took all the functioning engines and cars into Macon. Back on Dunlap’s Hill, a line of defenders in skirmish formation shook out from the earthworks to challenge the dismounted Illinois infantry.

  The full Federal deployment was masked by trees along the creek’s east bank, helping conceal a charging column of fours from the 10th Ohio Cavalry, which burst from cover and pounded up the hill. The Rebel gunners, who had a clear shot, were plagued by faulty friction primers, resulting in several misfires. “It was quite a descent to [Walnut Creek]…,” remembered one of the Ohioans, “but before the [Rebel] guns could fire the second round we were upon them with the saber.”

  The advantage was momentary. Even through Kilpatrick had two more cavalry regiments close on hand, none were moved forward to exploit the breach. The Ohio troopers on the hilltop began to take hits from the guns in Fort Hawkins, while in the distance they observed a well-organized line of infantry forming for a counterattack. Wrote the Buckeye commander, “Seeing that the [captured] guns could not be removed, and that there was barely time to withdraw the regiment before the rebels would be upon us, I ordered the column to retire.”

  While these events were unfolding along the main wagon road to Milledgeville, smaller-scale combat was taking place just to the south, where the railroad bridge traversed Walnut Creek. Here a detail from the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry succeeded in rushing the span and driving off its defenders, but they were almost immediately slapped back by a counterthrust. The Confederate soldiers (from the 24th Tennessee), then taking up positions covering the bridge, prevented the Federals from torching it. This proved something of a hollow victory, for just to the east details from three of Kilpatrick’s regiments were busy prying up the track and burning the ties.

  Dunlap’s Hill November 20, 1864

  Losses in this fracas were light. The gunners serving the two cannon that were briefly overrun suffered one dead and two wounded. The 92nd Illinois reported two wounded, and the 10th Ohio added seven more. At no time did Kilpatrick commit more than a small portion of his force to the spearhead, choosing to employ most of his troopers for railroad wrecking. Fully a third of his troopers were kept at the task overnight. In a message sent tonight to Major General Howard, Kilpatrick promised to keep blocking the roads in his sector “until the trains are well out of the way.” His command camped along the railroad, with pickets posted along Walnut Creek.

  A sour coda to this affair was reported by the Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel: “Some of our troops behaved badly in East Macon by plundering and committing other depredations after the enemy were driven off. We forbear to give details.”

  Major General Wheeler reached Dunlap’s Hill not long after the 10th Ohio had withdrawn. Fearing a follow-up attack, he used the first two of his brigades to arrive to fill in the defensive line. He then checked with General Hardee, who was concerned about reports that enemy raiders had visited Griswoldville. Since Wheeler’s weary riders represented the most veteran troops he had on the scene, Hardee issued orders for the officer to probe toward the manufacturing center that very night.

  CHAPTER 12

  “But Bless God, He Died Free!”

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1864

  Midnight–Noon

  Left Wing

  Heavy rains delayed the morning’s march schedule for John Geary’s division, still operating independently from the rest of the Twentieth Corps. The rear guard, supposed to break camp at 6:00 A.M., did not actually get under way until nearly three hours later. It fell to the last departing troops to finish the destruction of Denham’s Tanyard and Leather Factory. “Burned Denham’s Factory, tannery, and adjacent buildings, except dwelling houses,” reported one of Geary’s brigade commanders. “When we left the buildings were all ablaze,” wrote a New York diarist, whose colonel observed that as the regiment tramped past Denham’s the structures “were burning splendidly.”*

  Progress today was a slow go. An Ohio soldier acknowledged that the muddy tracks were knee-deep in places. An equally weary comrade still had the energy to quip that the “roads were perfectly horrid clay soil & our boots were very heavy for t’would stick like a poor man to his friend.” In his official report, Brigadier General Geary registered that the mud was “very deep and the streams much swollen.”

  Monday, November 21, 1864

  The route followed by Geary’s column carried the men past Turnwold Plantation, then home to a fifteen-year-old named Joel Chandler Harris, who would grow up to be a writer, creator of the Uncle Remus tales. The eager teenager, perched on a rail fence, never forgot the sights and sounds of the next few hours. “The skies were heavy with clouds, and a fine, irritating mist sifted down,” he recollected. “The road was more than ankle-deep in mud, and even the fields were boggy. There was nothing gay about this vast procession, with its tramping soldiers, its clattering horsemen, and its lumbering wagons, except the temper of the men. They splashed through the mud, cracked their jokes and singing snatches of songs.”

  Farther west, the other two Twentieth Corps divisions were having their own problems. The “morning dawned dark and lowering, with occasional gusts of rain,” reported a brigade commander. “Men under difficulty managed to keep up fires to get their breakfasts,” commented a New Jersey quartermaster. “Ground very soft and covered with water,” scribbled an officer from Illinois. “The roads were so bad we had to help the teams up every hill,” griped a Wisconsin soldier. The wagon drivers, recalled a New Jersey infantryman, “yelled [until] their throats [were] sore.” The Illinois officer happened to be present when Major General Slocum came upon a vehicle that was stuck fast in the glutinous gumbo. “Genl Slocum cussed…and ordered wagon destroyed,” he recorded.

  Beginning around midmorning the Union troops entered and exited Eatonton, which, one of them observed, “looked like a very nice town.” When a quartermaster from the 13th New Jersey passed through, he witnessed what he later termed “quite a ridiculous transaction—a female and a madder woman I never saw, smashing to bits a sewing machine because it was a Yankee invention, or else she determined no soldier should carry it off.” Eatonton was also the terminal stop on a branch line linking it to the Central Railroad at Gordon. “Burnt 3 large Railroad Warehouses and one Depot,” itemized a Wisconsin man.

  Little effort was made to pry and bend the railroad tracks. The rail line, according to a New York Herald reporter, was “a very shammy built concern, not available for a heavy traffic. It was laid with the old fashioned strap iron,* and appeared much worn. Not so much attention was paid to its destruction, although it was cut in several places…. No rolling stock was found upon it.”

  Also targeted were a few businesses and the 102-foot flagpole, as well as all physical evidence of the South’s peculiar institution. “You never saw such a complete wreck of Pa’s store,” related a resident. “There was not a five cents worth left in it.” According to a member of the 70th Indiana, the Federal troops “passed through Eatonton [and] cut down the flag pole.”† “At Eatonton the calaboose and whipping stocks were burned,” added an Ohioan, “and the negroes fairly danced to see them in flames.” There was a celebration too at the Farrar farm, where, after hearing the slaves complain about the neighbor’s fierce tracking hound, Sherman ordered the animal shot. Major Hitchcock noted that “the darkies there were in great glee over it. No wonder.”

  “I never saw so many soldiers, wagons, [and] livestock at one time before,” declared Miss Matt Marshall, an Eatonton resident. “It seemed to me that the whole Yankee army was passing through here.” The little boy of the town’s Methodist minister was so awestruck by the endless columns of men
that when one of them asked him to show where the chickens were hidden, he proudly revealed his father’s carefully constructed hiding place underneath the house. As Miss Marshall heard the sound of the Yankee bands announcing their arrival, she clenched her hands to suppress her indignation. At that moment she wanted very much to “hang every Yankee in the Confederacy.”

  Along Geary’s route, after the procession past Joel Chandler Harris had wound out of sight, the teenager made his way back to the plantation, where he found one of the older female slaves bending over the still body of her elderly companion.

  “What is the matter with him?” asked Harris.

  “He dead, suh!” the woman answered. “But bless God, he died free!”

  Members of the Left Wing’s other half, the Fourteenth Corps, managed to find their own lighter side to the day’s travails. The “soil here consisted of a sticky white Clay [and] we had to carry klumps along on the feet the size of a peck measure,” commented a concise Wisconsin man. “The mud was ankle deep and as adhesive as sticking plaster,” commiserated a Minnesota comrade, “and with our heavy loads we floundered through it in as cheerful frame of mind as a squad of bounty jumpers going to execution.”

  In an effort to pick up the pace, General Sherman forwarded to the Fourteenth Corps’ commander intelligence of a byway across Murder Creek that connected with a main road leading toward Milledgeville. However, what looked doable on a map proved less so for those tasked with following the alternate course. “The difficulties of our march were much increased by the obscure roads we followed,” muttered an Illinois soldier. “Every body is in a fuss,” contributed another member of that regiment. “Mud knee deep. Reg’ts and Brigades all mixed up.”

  Sherman kept his headquarters party waiting until 11:00 A.M., still hoping to hear from Major General Slocum and the Twentieth Corps.* “Dismal day and steady rain,” complained Major Hitchcock. Finally the party plodded off, “threading our way through and by wagons laboring along, up hill and down, or stuck fast.” Sherman decided to tag along with the division crossing Murder Creek. Not long after getting over the rain-swollen stream, he and his staff spotted a house, where they stopped for lunch. The woman who greeted them was quick to explain (much to Hitchcock’s skeptical bemusement) how much her family had opposed the war.

  Even as Sherman and Hitchcock were chatting with the house owner, other members of the headquarters staff were talking with “a very smart negro woman,” who proved remarkably well informed regarding the overall history of the war. She had borne a child fathered by her white master, likely because the mistress of the house was unable to produce her own. Consequently, her treatment at the hands of the woman was quite harsh. When the slave asked about Sherman, the aides obligingly pointed him out to her. Catching sight of the General, she exclaimed: “Dar’s de man dat rules de world!”

  Right Wing

  Chance and circumstance presented Confederate forces around Macon with their best opportunity yet to do some serious damage to Sherman’s aspirations. Thanks to the poor roads and unceasing rain, the Right Wing was stretched out for more than twenty miles, with its head just at Gordon, while its wagon-heavy tail was still slogging through Hillsboro. One consequence of the Union feint toward Macon was to concentrate Confederate military assets (Wheeler’s cavalry, various militia, and detached veteran units) more effectively than if it had been ordered. So while Rebel forces in this quarter were well in hand, any Federal numerical advantage was compromised by the attenuated columns, which left Howard thin all over. A strong thrust from Macon toward Clinton held the real prospect of overwhelming a significant portion of the Right Wing’s supply train, and wreaking havoc with Sherman’s timetables.

  It was a time for risk-taking, but the command-and-control systems put in place by Richmond and the state of Georgia were utterly unequal to the task. The two officers who might have brought the requisite leadership to Macon—P. G. T. Beauregard and Richard Taylor—were not yet on the scene thanks to the decrepit transportation network. The officer in charge, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, understood that his primary responsibility was the security of the Georgia and South Carolina coast. His temporary assignment to Macon was for the sole purpose of defending that point. Once the direct threat had passed, Hardee’s attention shifted back to his principal charge. The other experienced military man on the scene, Major General Wheeler, was too busy reacting to the Federal movements to look beyond the enemy in his immediate front.

  All the remaining high-ranking individuals on the scene were state officers obsessed with protecting Macon from assault, and content to let matters lie as the danger diminished by the hour. No one was thinking about the grand scheme of things, or charged with coordinating a strategy to meet the constantly changing situation. The leadership vacuum was complete.

  None of this was known to Major General Oliver Otis Howard, who rightly assumed the worst. His biggest concern was that a strong Rebel effort, launched from East Macon, “might…catch our long snaky trains and cut them asunder.” To counter such a move, Howard ordered two Fifteenth Corps divisions to march from Clinton to the area northeast of Macon in order to block any attempt to cut the Gordon Road. A third division was shunted directly toward Gordon, while the Fourth (Corse) continued to provide close support to the slow-moving trains.

  “Weather wet and roads awful bad,” scrawled one of Corse’s men. “The roads are in a terrible condition,” agreed an Illinoisan, “and the mule teams are sticking in the mud in consequence.” Added a soldier in the 50th Illinois, “mud in places, knee deep; wagons getting mired every few moments.” In his postcampaign report, Brigadier General Corse recalled the exhausting period as one of “continuous wet weather and heavy roads.”

  Hillsboro was not even a faint memory for most of the departing Union soldiers, but for the town’s occupants the Federal visitation was never to be forgotten. Louise Reese came to realize that the Union incursion into their isolated world came in waves. First was the mounted advance, closely followed by the industriously efficient foragers. “They drove off every cow, sheep, hog, yea, indeed, every living thing on the farm—took every bushel of corn and fodder, oats and wheat—every bee gum, burnt the gin house, screw, blacksmith shop, cotton &c&c,” she said.

  Next through the town was the main column, which included Major General Howard with his staff, who paused at the Reese household for dinner. Behind the infantry was the wagon train, then arrived the “worst of all[,] the stragglers and most to be dreaded.” The guard departed with the wagons, leaving the ladies with only their wits to protect them from the vagabonds—white and black—who came prowling. Fortunately, except for some scary moments, the Reese family was left alone. “Thus passed the great Union army, composed of many nations and kinds of people,” reflected Louise, “through our beloved country leaving desolation and ruin in its track.”

  Noon–Midnight

  Left Wing

  Even though the trails were, as one of the Twentieth Corps’ soldiers put it, “in some places actually bottomless,” determined Yankees managed to scrounge and destroy. “I went to a farm house and got some sweet potatoes,” recorded a Michigan diarist, adding, “several hives of bees were upset & the honey taken.” A fellow member of the regiment (19th Michigan) thought that they were “living bully.” A soldier slithering along with John Geary’s detached division scratched that they “captured thirty mules, and burned several cotton presses and two hundred bales of pressed cotton.” Bad luck dogged a foraging party when one of its group was seriously injured in a riding accident. “I…was compelled to leave him at a plantation house,” admitted the officer in charge. “God only knows if we will ever see him again.”

  It was an especially vexatious day for the main column’s rear guard. About 1:00 P.M. all movement ground to a halt when an artillery wagon broke down, blocking the road. Then, with the column stalled, a number of Rebel cavalrymen appeared, threatening to attack the train until the 61st Ohio came hustling over to
chase them off. Finally moving again, the wagons advanced in an excruciatingly slow pace that, at 9:00 P.M., became no pace at all. Investigating the problem, the rear guard’s commander discovered “about sixty wagons [that] had become almost hopelessly stalled in a sort of quagmire.” Infantrymen set aside their rifles to lug and push. The day’s ordeal only ended around midnight, when the exhausted procession reached the assigned bivouac area.

  John Geary’s men camped on the plantation owned by a Dr. Nesbit. The mucky marching was exhausting as Private Oscar Wright, 5th Ohio, discovered when he was posted on picket and promptly fell asleep. The clatter of someone riding nearby woke Wright with a start. By then the interloper was gone, and despite the cold Wright was sweating as he thought about the extreme punishment meted out to sleeping sentries. “The rest of my vigil, you may be sure, was a wakeful one,” he attested years afterward.

  The main column, traveling off to the west, followed the railroad as far as Dennis Station. Teeth were chattering in the face of a stiff, cold wind that benumbed the columns. By now, casual vandalism was matter-of-fact. A soldier in the 102nd Illinois penned in his diary that his comrades “tore down [a] house to make coffee for dinner for kindling.”

  “Men are forging for potatoes, chickens, hogs, etc. and having abundance of every thing,” declared a Fourteenth Corps member. “Plenty of forage and we appreciate it on every occasion,” recounted a satisfied officer in the 86th Illinois. Despite Brevet Major General Davis’s official invective against the black refugees, their numbers continued to increase, and several white soldiers found much to admire. “Many of the female slaves who are following the army have marched barefooted through the mud all day carrying their bundles[,] but they did it willingly for ‘Liberty,’” said a Minnesota man. The leading division camped tonight some seventeen miles from Milledgeville.