Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  Next the Rebel troopers got down to the business of supplying their needs. A local boy named Willie, mounted on a mule left behind by the Federals atop a nice McClellan saddle he had been given, was asked by a trooper to dismount so he could better admire the boy’s fine animal. Hardly had Willie slid off his mule before the trooper climbed on and, according to a witness, “told him he had [just] swapped mounts.” A property owner just outside the town would later complain to Governor Brown about the “plundering band of horse stealing ruffians” who had cleaned him out. Given the choice of occupation forces, the citizen would much “prefer to trust to the generosity and justice of the Yankees.”

  General Sherman and his staff were in the saddle early. Per his orders, their unwilling host was rewarded with $50 in Confederate notes, to which one officer added $5 in U.S. bills. Major Hitchcock got in the last word during a parting exchange with the young lady of the house, who reproached him for waging war on hapless women. When the good major got her to admit that she would have shamed any man who didn’t enlist in the Confederate cause, he had her. “Then you have done all you could to help the war,” he announced as he departed, “and have not done what you could to prevent it.”

  The command party had ridden perhaps ninety minutes when a rider came from ahead, seeking Captain Poe. There was a problem at Buffalo Creek, where the chief engineer’s skills were sorely needed. From the outrider Major Hitchcock learned that the bridge or bridges over the creek had been burned. Already the leading elements were grinding to a halt, while behind them, the other segments of the Twentieth Corps were slowing to a crawl.

  The road that the corps was following led through the village of Hebron. An Illinois soldier mentioned that it consisted of “a few houses on each side [of the road] numbering altogether about six is all that can be seen of a town and all there ever was.” To this a New Jersey quartermaster contributed that Hebron had “the usual amount of negro huts and corn cribs.” He also remarked on the number of “very well made cotton gins and presses blazing away, to the right and left of us.”

  About three miles east of Hebron, Captain Poe reined his horse in before Buffalo Creek to assess the problem. “This Creek of itself is not to exceed thirty feet wide but the crossing is at a point where it overflows a space of 60 or 70 acres making it necessary for a bridge nearly a quarter of a mile in length,” wrote a later-arriving telegrapher. Actually, the puzzle confronting Poe was more complicated than building a single bridge. “The stream or swamp is here divided into eight channels, which are spanned by as many bridges, varying in length from 30 to 100 feet each,” wrote another officer. “Between these earthen causeways are thrown up.”

  Poe’s assessment told the tale. The eighty-foot main bridge, which spanned the central creek channel, was burned beyond repair. The damage to much of the approach bridging was less severe; in most cases, while the planking was gone, the supporting trestles were only partially damaged. The corduroy ramps leading over the fringing swamps had been thoroughly trashed, but were also the easiest to repair. Fortunately, Poe had with him Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Moore plus his section of the 58th Indiana pontoon train, as well as all the willing hands he could muster from nearby regiments.

  Security was not a concern thanks to the prompt action of the first unit on the scene. Lieutenant Colonel John B. Le Sage of the 101st Illinois had pushed a detachment to the creek’s east bank, where they chased away a few Rebel videttes. More trouble occurred around noon when several Southern mounted bands threatened the lodgment, but Le Sage’s reinforced perimeter held firm. There just weren’t enough Confederates in the area to cause a serious problem.

  Captain Poe kept his unskilled workers busy stabilizing the approach ramps. “The first thing to do was to get logs and rails to throw onto that mud to make it possible for the engineers to get their [pontoon] boats and other material to the river bank,” recollected one of those conscripted foot soldiers. The pontoniers started repairing the secondary trestle bridges “using timber procured from the woods” and laying down planking using balk and chess from their pontoon kits. Once a clear pathway to the central channel was established, three pontoon boats were deployed to stretch the eighty-foot gap. Then the process was repeated on the opposite side.

  The men worked in a well-organized fashion; nevertheless, there was a delay of four and a half hours that stacked troops up all the way back to Gumm Creek. “People are silly in destroying those bridges for we generally tear down the nearest house to build them again, and the longer we carry on our march the more time we have to prey on the miscreants,” declared a New Jersey officer. They made the most of the delay in the 29th Ohio. “While waiting here the boys amused themselves in various ways,” wrote a regimental diarist, “some by playing cards, others by betting largely at the ‘chuck luck’ board, while others would get several ‘Darkies’ of both sexes to ‘patting’ and dancing, we have enough of them in our Regiment to get up quite a ‘Cotillion.’”

  Major General Sherman passed the time waiting with his staff in a deserted house west of the creek, listening to two of his officers—Major Hitchcock and Colonel Charles Ewing—debate whether or not they should torch the structure when they depart. The pair were unaware that their boss was listening until he broke into their conversation.

  “In war everything is right which prevents anything,” Sherman announced. “If bridges are burned I have a right to burn all houses near it.”

  Hitchcock, feeling argumentative, countered that there had to be a link between the home owner and the bridge burners to justify such a course, but Sherman was having none of it. “Well, let him look to his own people,” he shrugged, “if they find that their burning bridges only destroys their own citizens’ houses they’ll stop it.”

  Ten miles north from where Sherman’s officers were debating the finer points of military ethics, Kilpatrick’s mounted column was also approaching Buffalo Creek, albeit the stream’s more shallow upper reaches. “Long Bridge, over Buffalo Creek,” according to a reporter traveling with the cavalry officer, “was found destroyed, but by cutting down the bank we crossed by fording.” Kilpatrick’s men would be delayed hardly at all.

  In between the cavalry and the Twentieth Corps marched the Fourteenth. Just about the time—2:00 P.M.—that Captain Poe declared the Buffalo Creek bridges open for Twentieth Corps business, the engineers with the Fourteenth Corps were coming to terms with their crossing challenge. Here the main channel had been spanned by a fifty-foot bridge (burned) approached via trestles (wrecked) running over a stretch of swamp. The 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics got the job of fixing the trestles and corduroying the banks, while the second section of the 58th Indiana tackled the bridge itself. Here the work would last nearly seven hours.*

  Considering the complexity of the task completed under Captain Poe’s direction, the four-and-a-half-hour delay for the Twentieth Corps ranked as a solid engineering achievement, causing but a minor inconvenience for the infantry column. It did save Sandersville from being occupied for another twelve hours since it allowed time for scouting detachments from Major General Wheeler’s command to establish a loose screen three and a half miles west of the town.

  Wheeler had pushed hard toward Augusta after crossing the Oconee near Dublin. He paused with most of his riders at Tennille, where he conferred with Lieutenant General Hardee, but not before sending scouts ahead to Sandersville. This force pounced on groups of mounted outriders, who proved to be foragers eager to be the first into the town. Wheeler’s men promptly attacked, driving the Federals back to their infantry columns, then about three or four miles east of Buffalo Creek.

  The infantry was alert for trouble, with skirmishers well forward, and even as their fire brought Wheeler’s troopers to a halt, heavier lines of battle scissored out, perpendicular to either side of the road. Once these had been aligned and steadied, a stronger line of skirmishers pushed ahead. Among them was John Smethurst of the 31st Wisconsin.

  “We went dou
ble quick through the bush and briers, over fences with our knapsacks on,” he recollected. “It was a good deal like work. We found the Rebels about a mile from the Brigade in line in a strip of woods. We had to advance on them over a large open field. They kept up a steady fire on us but did very poor shooting for not a man of us was hurt. Although the balls came rather close we did not get orders to fire until we were within two hundred yards of them. We could see them plain standing by their horses firing at us. At last the order came to fire. We gave them two or three volleys and then went for them on the run yelling like fury. They could not stay with us any longer so they mounted and left.”

  Sherman wished the Twentieth Corps to reach Sandersville this day, but the delays at the burned bridges, compounded by the late-afternoon scrap, meant that for the first time his schedule had been upset by enemy action rather than natural obstacles. Major Hitchcock recognized that something had changed in the overall military equation. “From this on we shall be impeded and harassed and have skirmishing every day,” he silently prophesied.

  While the foragers up front had gotten their noses bloodied, those operating to the sides and rear of the Twentieth Corps did quite well. “Forage plenty and men and animals faring sumptuously,” crowed an Indiana soldier. “We are now in ‘Peanut land’ and we not only had them by the peck but by the bushels.” “Among the variety of plunder which the boys have found at the farm houses in this vicinity were gamecocks, which have been brought into camp and distributed in great abundance,” contributed a Connecticut man, “and there is a cock fight at the cook’s fire in almost every company this evening.”

  Now that the Fourteenth Corps held the extreme left flank of Sherman’s movement, its foragers were more exposed to armed bands operating just a short distance from the main road. “The rebel bushwhackers shot several foragers to-day,” noted a record keeper in the 34th Illinois. “The foragers from the Brigade were attacked by about 100 rebel cavalry and driven back,” observed a member of the 104th Illinois, “leaving 8 or 10 men wounded or missing.” Yet, somehow, the determined Yankees managed to cope. “We get meat fresh and salt, Sorghum, Honey, Sweet Potatoes, and meal,” proclaimed a Michigan man. “The camp is full of provisions.” When a picket for the 86th Illinois was taken to task for killing a hog while on duty, he contested the charge. “The d——d old rebel wouldn’t give the countersign,” he protested to his captain. “So we…brought him down.”

  Incidents with children dominated this day’s record of soldier-civilian encounters, some of them heart-wrenching. One Michigan forager encountered a “little girl [who] said she wanted a postage stamp to send her co[u]sin a letter. He was a prisoner.” Two black children were brought to a brigade headquarters, as their mother “had left them and gone,” no one knew where. An Illinois soldier visited a nearby house, where he found a woman with several youngsters, one of whom “kept up a continual crying for something to eat.” The Yankee did what he could, even though he “had but one hard cracker to give them.”

  Sherman and his staff had their own close encounter with the locals. After crossing Buffalo Creek and waiting for the skirmish to end, they stopped at a house whose matron whined so much that Sherman chose to tent in the field this night. Not long after the camp had been set up, the General enjoyed a serenade from a regimental band. The only intrusion of work occurred when the aide sent by Major General Howard, his brother Charles, appeared to update Sherman on the Right Wing’s progress.

  Well to the north and east of this tranquil scene, Kilpatrick’s column reached the Ogeechee River at a point known as the Ogeechee Shoals. Scouts from the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry surprised a Rebel picket posted at the crossing, capturing most of them, including a dozen horses, which were welcome as many of Kilpatrick’s were jaded and sore. It had been an uncharacteristically quiet day for the troopers, who, encountering few of the enemy, had enjoyed good foraging. However, once at the shoals there was work to be done. “Here we destroyed a large cotton factory, mill and other buildings,” wrote a member of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry. In the house being used as operational headquarters, Kilpatrick allowed a member of his staff to scrawl a sentiment on the wall. The graffiti read: “May all the names engraved here / in the golden book appear.” Kilpatrick signed it, as did members of his staff.

  As the Left Wing infantry settled in for the night, full security was implemented. “The 1st and 3rd Divisions camp in line of battle semi-circle,” wrote a gunner in the Twentieth Corps. Officers were admonished “to have your picketing most thoroughly and carefully performed—pickets thrown well out.” One of those pickets was an Ohio private named John W. Houtz, who did his duty while he kept his diary up-to-date. “I got on a post by a swamp and a cold chilly place it is these frosty evenings,” he scribbled, adding that he “heard cannonading on our right [which] appears to be on the railroad.”

  This morning saw two of Jefferson Davis’s key generals positioned on the front line against Sherman. In Augusta, General Braxton Bragg took charge of the city’s defenses. Bragg was damaged goods. Once the great hope for Confederate aspirations in Kentucky and Tennessee, he delivered a major victory at Chickamauga, only to lose all the laurels and his command two months later when he was routed outside Chattanooga. His abrasive character created more fissures than bonds among western theater commanders, and only the president’s reluctance to retire West Point professionals kept Bragg on the active list. For a while the general served as the president’s military adviser, but when trouble loomed on the North Carolina coast in October 1864, Davis sent Bragg there. Now the president wanted his experience in Augusta.

  The threat posed by Sherman’s army loomed large enough in Davis’s calculations that he broke his own rule by allowing Bragg to bring with him some regular Confederate States units assigned to defend the North Carolina coast near Cape Fear. He also suspended a law restricting the use of militia reserves to their own states, so that there would be nothing to hinder South Carolina units from coming into Georgia or vice versa. Bragg himself had recently pointed out to South Carolina’s governor that the two states were joined at the hip. “If Georgia is saved South Carolina cannot be lost,” he informed the politician. “If Georgia be lost South Carolina cannot be saved.”

  Protective earthwork construction was accelerated, using a labor force made up of impressed slaves and Union prisoners who had volunteered to receive better treatment. At least one resident was less than thrilled with the galvanized Confederates, whom he described as “a great nuisance in this neighborhood. They steal, visit negro quarters and tamper with slaves, & in one instance committed robbery.” The city’s largest circulation newspaper did its part to boost morale with an editorial exhorting all citizens, “Now is the time, if ever, to defend their homes, their families and their all against future invasions and devastation.”

  Another town paper reported that the all-important Confederate Powder Works had been dismantled and relocated out of danger. Incredibly, especially for anyone who chanced by the massive twenty-six-building complex stretching for two miles along the Augusta Canal, the story was true. With Sherman’s threat looming, the man responsible for operating the complex—Colonel George Washington Rains—had ordered the facility’s critical machinery, supplies, and inventory packed onto trains for shipment to a safer location. Even with the Confederacy’s transportation resources stretched to the limit, the importance of the powder works was such that its relocation was given the highest priority.

  Bragg at once set to work examining scouting reports and poring over maps. His initial assessment was that while one enemy wing was being blocked by Wayne at the Oconee, the other had crossed the river at Milledgeville and “seems to be tending south.” Later in the day, when news of Sherman’s crossing at Buffalo Creek was confirmed and he learned of the clash outside Sandersville, Bragg recognized that Federal movements on November 26 “will determine whether he designs attacking here or on Savannah.”

  Savannah’s chief defender, Lieutenant G
eneral William J. Hardee, arrived at Tennille Station on the Central of Georgia Railroad around 1:00 A.M. Here, also known as Station No. 13, the general was little more than three miles south of Sandersville and a dozen from the Oconee River Bridge. Morning reports suggested that Confederate forces were holding their own; enemy columns were still being blocked by Major General Wayne before and below the railroad bridge, while the destruction of the Buffalo Creek crossings promised to delay if not halt enemy movements in that quarter. Hardee ordered up munitions and rations from Savannah, though he prudently had them cached at Davisboro (thirteen miles east) and Millen (even farther toward the coast). Although this is not explicit in the official records, Hardee seems to have convinced Major General Wayne to pay more attention to the fighting at Ball’s Ferry, since, at 11:00 A.M., the increasingly stressed militia officer dispatched reinforcements there.

  Having made his moves, Hardee now waited to see what the enemy would do next.

  Right Wing

  Throughout the day the Fifteenth and Seventeenth corps concentrated at Ball’s Ferry. The Federals were learning that the profusion of pine forests throughout the region represented a very mixed blessing. In a long entry for this day’s events, a garrulous Illinois soldier wrote that a “thick haze of black pine smoke” settled like a fog over the morning encampments, producing a “somber film that envelops the skin,” so darkening everyone’s complexions that “you could scarcely distinguish them from the dusky African.” Soap now headed the want lists as a “very necessary article of forage.”