Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  Contrary to popular notions, Sandersville’s Masonic lodge enjoyed no special protections. The building had been entered and ransacked by the time a couple of Union officers who were Masons learned of it. They managed to salvage a number of ceremonial artifacts, which they left in care of Mrs. “L.F.J.,” whose father had been a member of the order. The biggest beneficiary of this plunder was probably the supply train managed by a New Jersey lieutenant named Garrett S. Byrne. Hardly had the officer learned of the incident when he returned to his train to discover that some prankster “had made odd fellows or masons of all my mules by pulling the aprons around their heads, adorning one of my wagons with a huge representation of a skeleton and…for a few days there was nothing used around the train for towels but aprons and scarves, and the mules looked like so many marshals in a 4th of July celebration.”

  Perhaps the most viewed corpse of the entire campaign was encountered in Sandersville. Major Hitchcock observed the body lying in front of a church, as did a half dozen other diarists and journal keepers. “Should judge the poor fellow was about 40, powerfully built man, in a dark colored homespun uniform and a ball had gone though his heart,” recorded an officer. “We laid him out on the church steps near where he fell, [and] placed a bible on his bosom.” Soon afterward, when the 2nd Massachusetts passed the dead man, “one of Co. C went & pulled off his shoes.” Later still, when a Wisconsin soldier was wandering through the town, he reached the church just as a few Federals were “putting him into a rough coffin, and his grave was being dug near the church.”

  “So sudden an advent of so many ‘Yankees’ seems rather to astonish the natives both black & white,” observed an Ohio man, “the latter looking on sullenly at a distance while the former rush out upon the sidewalks with expressions of great satisfaction.” A New Yorker deemed the white citizens to be “strong secesh,” while a Michigan surgeon fell in with “an intelligent half blood who testified that slaves here were bred same as stock…. A crime to be able to read. Such we find slavery in central Georgia.”

  Major General Sherman spent this night in Sandersville. He patiently endured a rambling discourse from a local preacher intent on interceding for the town’s helpless females and youngsters. Sherman finally waved him away with a terse statement: “I don’t war on women and children.” Remembering the sight of Wheeler’s troopers burning fodder outside the town, he told other residents “that, if the enemy attempted to carry out their threat to burn their food, corn, and fodder, in our route, I would most undoubtedly execute to the letter the general orders of devastation made at the outset of the campaign.” Sherman was certain that those listening to him “would be sure to spread the report.”

  It was here that the General learned of Howard’s long delay at the Oconee River, causing him to halt the Left Wing until he “heard that the right wing was abreast of us on the railroad.” Ahead of his columns was the line of the Ogeechee River, a natural obstacle more formidable in places than the Oconee. At least one staff officer in the Fourteenth Corps worried that if the Rebel defense of that river was as stubborn as that they had just encountered, “it may give the whole army considerable trouble to get across.”

  Left Wing (Cavalry)

  Twenty miles or so north of Sandersville, Brigadier General Kilpatrick’s men continued their mission. Riding with them were several reporters; the one writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer had been traveling with the infantry but managed to wrangle a spot on this expedition in search of some adventure. This day provided plenty: “We marched at 7 A.M., crossed the Ogeechee, and passed through Gibson, a small place, where the militia of that county had been ordered to assemble that day. We captured there a Colonel, Major, Captain, Lieutenant, and some privates. We crossed Rocky Comfort Creek; deep, but not wide, and camped on Big Creek. In the morning, about two hundred men were sent as an advance to cut the railroad between Augusta and Savannah, at a place called Wainsboro.* The county was very thickly timbered with pine, but the roads good.”

  There’s an air of mystery surrounding this special operation mentioned by the correspondent. Ostensibly, and as reported by Brigadier General Kilpatrick, it was aimed solely at the railroad bridge over Brier Creek, just north of Waynesboro, linking that place and points south with Augusta. However, a postwar account by one of the cavalrymen who took part strongly suggests that there were really two schemes in motion at the same time.

  The first strike group, the “official” one, was the railroad-wrecking sweep to Brier Creek Bridge. The second, the “unofficial” one, was described by that trooper—Julius B. Kilbourne—as a “forced march to rescue the Union soldiers then prisoners at Millen.” Kilpatrick assigned two members of his staff to lead these strikes; his assistant adjutant-general captain Llewellyn G. Estes, and one of his aides-de-camp, Captain Edward M. Hayes. The soldiers taking part were drawn from several regiments, principally on the basis of their good health and having horses in sturdy condition. Extrapolating from the fragmentary evidence in hand, it would seem that Captain Hayes led the bridge-burning party, while Captain (later Major) Estes headed south for Camp Lawton. Both groups departed camp well before sunrise.

  “The roads were dry, and it was a bright moonlight night,” recollected Kilbourne. “We silently moved on during the long night through forest and towns, with nothing to break the silence save the tread of the horses or clatter of our sabers and sound of the bugle to dismount and lead our horses on coming to a stream, and then to close up and move on.” The small column continued pressing southward in the daylight. “About the many plantations which we passed we saw no one but now and then some old gray-headed man walking about the house, looking at us as we passed.”

  It was about 4:00 P.M. when they first glimpsed the Camp Lawton stockade. Reflecting on the suffering captives, Kilbourne related: “How our hearts leaped with joy at the sight and at the thought that we should be able to effect their release!” Captain Estes eased forward with a few men. After a short scout he returned with the disappointing news that the camp was empty of living Union prisoners; the officers had been transferred to Columbia, South Carolina, the enlisted men (those not exchanged) moved into Florida. It was a bitter pill for everyone. After wrecking a few camp buildings, the special operation group turned back to link up with the main body.

  Somewhat after Estes and his men made their discovery, Captain Hayes with his command reached the Brier Creek Bridge. Here they “destroyed a portion of the track and partly burned the railroad bridge,” as well as pulling down the telegraph wires before reversing course.*

  The bulk of Kilpatrick’s command camped this night about Sylvan Grove, covering the road to Waynesboro. Unknown to the Union general, Confederate major general Wheeler, having disengaged from the fighting around Sandersville after leaving one brigade behind to shadow and harass the Union infantry, had marched north with all the troopers he could muster. His scouts had told him of Kilpatrick’s incursion, and this time Wheeler was determined to hit his impudent opponent hard.

  Right Wing

  It wasn’t long after dawn when a few frantically signaling figures on the west bank of the Oconee River indicated that the way across at Ball’s Ferry was clear of Confederates. The flanking force sent to trap them had found the defenses empty, the enemy gone in the early morning hours. The Rebs, scribbled a gleeful Ohio diarist, “had lit out.” At 7:15 A.M. the officers with the pontoon sections of the 1st Missouri Engineers were ordered to set down both bridges at the ferry site. It took a while to recall the equipment that had been used overnight to get the flanking party across the river, so it wasn’t until after 9:00 A.M. that the bridge builders plus equipment were on the scene. The swift-running Oconee River here was nearly 250 feet wide and 10 feet deep. The plan was for one bridge to be used by the Fifteenth Corps, with the other reserved for the Seventeenth. With Major General Osterhaus nettling everyone with his fretting the engineers went to work.

  This meant that most of the troops on the east bank were in a hol
ding pattern. In the 55th Illinois the boys took the opportunity presented by the idle time and nearby river “to wash their clothing, for which there was certainly great need.” The impulse was less sanitary in the 30th Ohio, whose members were “busy chucklucking.” The soldiers of the Second Brigade, First Division, Fifteenth Corps were read a letter from Major General Howard to Major General Osterhaus congratulating them for the Griswoldville victory. “Officers from other commands who were looking on say that there never was a better brigade of soldiers,” Howard’s note enthused. One Illinois soldier in the Seventeenth Corps spent time gazing at a solitary civilian, whose plight added a poignant incident to his daily diary entry: “Old man to right of road—arms folded, looking over his silent home and desolate fields!”

  By 11:00 A.M. the double pontoon was finished, with the first troops crossing before noon. The passage itself was not without some anxiety. An Iowa man tramping across never forgot how the weight of the column “would settle the frail [pontoon] boats low in the water, but the pontoons proved to be reliable.” For a second occasion in this operation, Right Wing officers took advantage of the bottleneck “to take in all horses where they had no proper papers for them,” related a foot soldier. This time, however, many of the Yankee boys were wise to the move. “We…went to the river & tried to swim our horses across, as it was the order to corral all extra horses,” recorded an Illinoisan, who added, “I lost mine.”*

  According to Major General Howard’s chief of staff, an old word was given a new meaning this day. It was the recollection of Lieutenant Colonel William E. Strong, assistant inspector-general for the Right Wing, that it happened as the command party was waiting impatiently to cross the Oconee at the pontoon bridge. Holding up the group for the better part of an hour was an “immense cavalcade of mounted foragers” clogging the limited crossings with their plunder. It was all too much for a surgeon in the group, Dr. Edward A. Duncan, who exclaimed: “Damn the bummers they are always bumming around when they are not wanted.” Strong declared that the word “seemed so appropriate that it was accepted from that moment and within two days was in every body’s mouth.”

  Strong’s reminiscence is likely too pat, but it does pin down a time and a place to introduce the word that would become inextricably bound into the fabric of the March to the Sea. Indeed, those participants who penned postwar memoirs avoided mentioning it at their own peril. Yet there was no general agreement on what the word actually meant. For some it referred to low-ranking headquarters personnel who used the relative freedom of their positions to scrounge around. Others were equally certain that it was best applied to the regular details specified in Sherman’s orders on foraging. Still more lined up askew, agreeing that the bummers were foragers, but not part of any official detachments.

  It was not a freshly minted word, but one that was repurposed. Sherman believed it came out of New York City, where (he said) it referred to loungers who sold their votes on election day. In a letter he wrote in 1883, the General related that the vote sellers sat around firehouses on their “bums” waiting for the highest bidder. A more modern writer traces it back to a German word (bummler) referring to tramps. Where all the postwar users of the word agree is applying it to the task of foraging.

  The word bummer is virtually absent from contemporary diaries and letters written by campaign participants. It does appear in the text of a field order issued on December 1 by the Third Division of the Seventeenth Corps. Referring to officially designated foragers, the orders read: “‘Bummers’ are entitled to a position in the ranks, and must be provided with it.” Any other reference in orders to the men detailed to gather supplies for the columns terms them foragers.

  The word caught on because it fit so well. “He was a logical product of this campaign,” wrote a Michigan veteran. “The Georgia forager, a unique character such as the world has never seen before, coined for himself the name of Sherman’s Bummer,” contributed a Hoosier officer. “To provision his army on the way Sherman made use of a new organization, which may fairly be said to have been his invention; though I have never heard that he claimed a patent on it,” cracked a New Yorker. Underlying the lightheartedness attached to the word was a grim reality as expressed by a soldier in the Fourteenth Corps: “The typical military bummer was a character full of good humor and the milk of human kindness, but with a soul sternly set upon the duty of despoiling the country.”

  Once past the river, the Seventeenth Corps angled northward to intersect the Central of Georgia Railroad at Station No. 14, also called Oconee. The Fifteenth Corps turned more to the northeast to reach a map reference called Irwins Crossroads. It was slow going for both corps; just getting all the men, wagons, and animals (including cattle herd) over the river would take all night. “It was an almost bottomless swamp and there were no fields in sight so that rails to corduroy were not to be had,” complained an Iowa infantryman. “Many of the worse places were corduroyed with small trees but it consumed a great deal of time to thus fix the roads.” Even on the eastern side there were marshy areas to navigate. This led a member of the 47th Ohio to conclude that “Georgia now seems to be all swamps.” A comrade in those Buckeye ranks let propriety slip when he wrote in his diary that the men were “obliged to wade in the mud and water up to our a—es.”

  While a few of the horticulturally inclined marveled at their first encounters with palm leaves and Spanish moss, others scattered about in search of food. “Here we had plenty of forage, molasses and sweet potatoes,” wrote a soldier in the 50th Illinois. As they were looking for potable water near their night camp, a party of the 66th Indiana came upon a cache of stashed furniture: “a lot of chairs, a nice side table for a parlor, some meal, 3 saddles & some other things.” The Yankees hauled the goods back to camp to enjoy their dinner in fine style. “Poor foolish simpletons,” remarked one of the Hoosiers, “if they had left them in their house they would have been guarded by our provost guard, but when they hid such things out in the wood we appropriated things as we actually used for our own especial benefit.”

  The stubborn defense of the Oconee River proved something of a wake-up call for most of the soldiers, who up to this point in the grand movement had seen little evidence of a Southern will to fight. From this day forward an infantryman in the 50th Illinois fully expected to “have a skirmish nearly every day…as the Johnnies are getting quite thick in front.” “It is reported that the rebels are concentrating some fifty miles ahead of us and are strongly fortifying themselves on the Ogeechee river,” added a soldier in the 11th Iowa. A comrade in the 81st Ohio got hold of a local newspaper proclaiming that Sherman was desperately seeking an “‘out let,’ and if 10,000 resolute Georgians will only come to the rescue, Sherman’s whole army can be captured.”

  This soldier’s editorial riposte: “Let’em come!”

  CHAPTER 17

  “I Never Was So Frightened in All My Life”

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1864

  In Richmond, President Jefferson Davis made an effort to sort out the tangle of overlapping and interlocking jurisdictions that were undermining any effective response to Sherman’s march. With General Beauregard west of the Oconee giving every indication of remaining there for the present, even as Sherman’s forces maneuvered east of the river, Davis wanted some centralized decision-making out in front of the Yankee horde. Military protocol dictated that the job go to the senior officer on the scene, so General Braxton Bragg in Augusta was informed today that he had been given full authority over “all combinations [aligned] against the present movements of the enemy.”

  Accepting the assignment with great reluctance, Bragg in his blunt assessment made it clear that his heart wasn’t in the effort. “In assuming it I must candidly express my belief that no practicable combinations of my available men can avert disaster,” he prophesied. Monitoring these changes in Virginia, an experienced War Department clerk and observer of political infighting anticipated a scrap when Beauregard returned east to pick up the
reins. “Here, then, will be war between the two B.’s—Bragg and Beauregard,” he snorted; “and the President will be as busy as a bee. Meantime, Sherman may possess the land at pleasure.”

  In Washington, planners were sifting through the conflicting Confederate press reports, trying to predict where along the Atlantic coast Sherman would appear. It was anticipated that the Union force would be short of munitions and supplies, so the objective was to stage everything in depots located close to where Sherman was expected to show himself. This day, President Lincoln’s military adviser, Major General Henry W. Halleck, directed the Commissary and Ordnance departments to begin stockpiling goods at Hilton Head, South Carolina. In a related move, the officer responsible for getting the mail delivered to Sherman’s men felt that he no longer had to maintain the pretense that the general was going into Tennessee. All deliveries intended for Sherman’s force had been forwarded to Nashville, but now that it was patently obvious that the Federals were not headed in that direction, the postal authorities were authorized to reroute everything to Baltimore, Maryland. From there it could quickly be put onto ships for transport to any port on the Atlantic coast.

  Sunday, November 27, 1864

  Combined Left/Right Wings

  For the first time in the current campaign, the two halves of Sherman’s grand army were operating in close concert. Although still functioning as independent wings, their movements were those of a single entity headed in one direction. Today each wing assigned a division to wreck the railroad; each sent a division to guard its wagon train (both moving along the main road through Davisboro), and each sent divisions off on parallel routes—the Left Wing swinging around toward Louisville by way of Fenn’s Bridge, the Right Wing using plantation roads to reach Riddleville, some six miles southwest of Davisboro.