Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  Overall, the General was well satisfied, with one or two caveats. As he later related, “the whole army was in good position and in good condition. We had largely subsisted on the country; our wagons were full of forage and provisions; but, as we approached the sea-coast, the country became more sandy and barren, and food became more scarce; still, with little or no loss, we had traveled two-thirds of our distance, and I concluded to push on for Savannah.”

  The marches made by the Fifteenth Corps, south of the Ogeechee, had positioned its columns roughly opposite Millen and Scarboro, points only just reached today by units on the north side, so for many of Major General Osterhaus’s men this was a day of rest. Clothes washing figured in several diary agendas, as did bathing in the river and some of its tributaries. “There was a forage party sent out, they brought in pork, potatoes, & corn and fodder,” recorded a journal keeper in the 63rd Illinois. The history of the 53rd Ohio noted the discovery of a citizen who secreted himself underground with his goods. “He was buried with his valuables,” recounts the history, “but the sharp nose of the Union boys discovered the ‘stiff’ and brought it to the surface, together with the valuables. It was amusing to see the foragers going around prodding the ground with their ramrods or bayonets, seeking for soft spots, and when such were struck, they soon found a shovel to see what was buried beneath.”

  The exceptions to this pattern were two brigades—one each from the First and Fourth divisions—sent across the Ogeechee on the pontoon bridge to wreck the railroad between Millen and Scarboro. Viewing the railway route outlined by pyres of burning ties, an Illinois man reflected, “How terrible the sweep of an unchecked army!” The Fifteenth Corps brigades joined with others from the Seventeenth on the same mission. “At Millen there was a junction, one branch to Augusta, the other to Savannah,” reported a Wisconsin soldier. “We tore up the junction, burned the depot and five large buildings that were used for prisoners.” “Broke camp at daylight,” contributed a comrade in the 10th Illinois, “moved down railroad three miles and tear up, burn and twist—twenty eight rails first…, forty rails second time.”

  North of Millen, the roads followed by the Twentieth Corps took its columns to an intersection with the branch rail line between Millen and Augusta, just outside the former, where the men did what by now came naturally. “Having stacked arms and posted pickets, some distance from the [rail]road, we went to work; half of the regiment remaining at our arms, while the other half was at the work of destruction. As soon as a few rods of the road had been destroyed, the party at work was relieved by the party guarding the arms. Fence rails were set afire and the iron rails laid across, whereby the latter soon became bent and unserviceable. The road had been repaired by the rebels but a few days before, as we saw from the newly made ditches on both sides of the track, not supposing that we would be there so soon.”

  The course followed by the Twentieth Corps brought many of its units near enough to Camp Lawton that curious soldiers flocked to the place like tourists to a popular attraction, though the images they recorded were anything but pleasant ones.

  Samuel Storrow, 2nd Massachusetts

  Visited the Stockades where the Rebels confined our prisoners. The one we saw was 450 or 500 yards square on a gentle slope with a brook at the bottom. On the hill opposite was a fort which commanded the whole of the interior of the Stockade, within easy grape range.* The stockade was of pine logs a foot thick & 20 feet high, with sentry boxes perched on top & outside…. A slight railing ran all the way around about 25 feet from the stockade; this was the “dead line;” any man crossing or leaning on this was liable to be shot without any warning.

  John Potter, 101st Illinois

  The prisoners were compelled to erect houses or sheds for their own shelter. The material was soon all worked up and the later arrivals could not do any better than to scoop holes in the sand, and many of them died and were left, as it were, actually in graves of their own digging.

  George S. Bradley, 22nd Wisconsin

  The huts were built in all manner of shapes. Some had walls of logs, with a covering of timber, and over these a good layer of sand. Some had walls of turf, again others were cut into the ground perhaps two feet and then covered, sometimes with pine slabs, sometimes with sand, and some were simply thatched with pine boughs, while others were bare sheds. It made my heart ache to look upon such miserable hovels, hardly fit for our swine to live in, and here our brave soldiers had to stay.

  Rice C. Bull, 123rd New York

  There was not a soul around the place when we arrived and the only things left were a few dirty, filthy-looking rags. Not a long distance from the prison I was amazed to see the largest spring I ever saw; from it gushed a stream that would be called a small river in the North…, the stream from the spring ran near the stockade and I think furnished water for the prison; if so, they had at least good water.

  Peter K. Arnold, 28th Pennsylvania

  We saw one of the stockades where they had kept our prisoners. Many was the curse that was recorded against the Rebels by our troops on that day.

  David Anderson, 19th Michigan

  We found the bodies of several of our men lying unburied in this loathsome den; consigning them to the parent earth, our bugles sounded, and falling in line, solemnly and sadly we moved away.

  Once reports were confirmed that Camp Lawton no longer held any Union prisoners, Sherman’s interest in the place waned. Even though he and his staff spent several hours in Millen proper, he did not bother to make the short ride north to view the abandoned compound. All of which is not to say he had banished it from his reckoning. Individuals who had visited the place passed along their impressions, which was sufficient for Sherman to assign culpability to the rail junction that switched so many onto tracks carrying them to the prison. According to an officer in the 63rd Ohio, Sherman’s verbal instruction to Major General Frank Blair, commanding the Seventeenth Corps, “was to make the destruction [of Millen] ‘tenfold more devilish’ than he had ever dreamed of, as this is one of the places they have been starving our prisoners.”

  The punishment meted out by Sherman nearly had fatal consequences for Major Hitchcock, who was present in the town when the hotel (not normally a legitimate target) was set ablaze. He was watching it burn with some fellow staffers when word spread that a crazy old woman who lived in the town was still inside. Hitchcock raced into the burning building with two others, where they saw a few hardy foragers taking care of business before the flames consumed everything, but no victim was found. They finally located her outside the burning hotel, holding a goose on a makeshift leash and talking to herself. Before he departed, the conscious-stricken major left some U.S. money with a black woman, who promised to take care of her.

  The slow passage of the Twentieth Corps past Camp Lawton backed traffic using the roadway running past Buckhead Church, forcing the two trailing divisions of the Fourteenth Corps to seek an alternative route. This led Brevet Major General Jefferson C. Davis’s men to improvise a course north and then east, a path that took them into a region of swamps, dim roads, and two significant stream crossings.

  “Got lost, turned back, and cut across fields & woods, struck several woods, left them, kept cutting across,” scribbled a weary Illinois boy. Added a Wisconsin comrade: “Moved at 6 A.M. again over roads leading in almost every direction, sometimes almost in a circle apparently.” The tramp became even more of an ordeal for several Yankees who decided to emulate the blacks they saw chewing on sugar cane. “In a raw state the juice acts as a physic and the men were ignorant of the fact,” chuckled another Wisconsin soldier, “and besides not being used to it became the more readily its victim. After a few hours it was amusing to observe how anxiously the men would dodge aside in the woods or swamps which was the cause of much joking and merriment.”

  It required a small pontoon bridge to carry the two divisions across Buckhead Creek, after which there was another bridge needing repair to allow the columns to pass over
Rosemary Creek. Both were provided by the pontoniers of the 58th Indiana. “While crossing the pontoon at Buckhead, a mule loaded with sweet potatoes, lost his equilibrium and fell into the stream,” reported a member of the 113th Ohio. “He was fished out by the boys, more on account of the load he carried than for their love of the animal.”

  The bottleneck passing over Buckhead Creek provided General Davis with the opportunity to cut down on the size of the black host following his column. Davis, a Kentuckian, was not counted among the more racially enlightened members of the officer corps. Like many of his white peers, he had greeted President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation with profound skepticism, worrying that it “can do nothing but mischief.” His views on the matter of the proper status for the newly liberated African-Americans did not differ much from those of his immediate superior, Major General Sherman.

  Obeying verbal orders from higher up the chain of command, provosts kept blacks off the pontoon bridge while the soldiers and their wagons were using it. Then, after the military procession had completed passage, the pontoons were quickly pulled over to the far side of the stream, leaving the refugee column with no easy means of getting over. However, as an Illinoisan noted, “Nothing could induce them to turn back.” Buckhead Creek was simply too insubstantial a barrier to a determined people. By some accounts, about 500 “were left on the wrong side of the river sure enough, but when we broke camp next morning they were there again all the same.” There is some secondhand testimony that a few blacks drowned attempting to cross, and doubtless several turned back, but most persisted. Unfortunately for the refugees, the message understood by the officers who had ordered the action was to wait for a bigger stream before trying it again.

  Major General Sherman was seen in Millen by an Ohio officer who recollected him as a “very plain, unassuming man and [who] today is in undress uniform but has that big shirt collar on as usual.” Trying to read something in his expression, another Buckeye concluded that the General was the “most incomprehensible man I ever met with.” Yet beneath that implacable exterior, he was coolly calculating his enemy’s strength. “At Millen I learned that General Bragg was in Augusta,” Sherman stated, “and that General Wade Hampton had been ordered there from Richmond, to organize a large cavalry force with which to resist our progress. General Hardee was ahead, between us and Savannah, with [Major General Lafayette] McLaws’s division, and other irregular troops.” That accounting left out what was probably the greatest immediate threat to Sherman’s movements—Wheeler’s cavalry.

  Twice now Sherman had sent Kilpatrick’s men forward with orders to seek out and engage Wheeler’s troopers. The first time the Federal riders had been deflected in their course by Wheeler’s attacks, which forced them to seek refuge under the guns of the infantry. The second effort, this time backed by an infantry division, had not fared much better. After shoving Wheeler away from his defenses along Rocky Creek, the infantry/cavalry column had swung to the south of Waynesboro to camp around Thomas Station on the Millen-Augusta railroad.

  Although there is no evidence that Sherman met this day with either Kilpatrick or Baird, his intentions were made clear. As recollected by Baird’s staff officer, Major James Connolly, the infantrymen and cavalrymen “are to move up the R.R. tomorrow and drive Wheeler across Briar Creek, 5 miles north of Waynesboro.” Kilpatrick also got the message, instructing his two brigade commanders “to send surplus animals and all non-combatants to the wagon train; that in the morning the command would move to engage, defeat, and rout the rebel cavalry” then defending Waynesboro.

  Sunday, December 4, 1864

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1864

  At about noon, Sherman indulged himself by doing something he did often during the grand movement into Georgia—he took a nap. There were things to worry about, but as matters stood this December day, his attention to them was not urgently required. It was a time to drift with the random flux of events and not second-guess decisions already made. Writing in his journal, Major Hitchcock caught the gist of the moment: “Roads good generally except some heavy sand, and now and then wet swampy spots, but nothing bad. Trains move very well, animals all in good and most in splendid condition. Abundance of forage—chiefly fodder.” Sherman’s eyes may have been closed, but many of his men were convinced that his mind was never still. A diarist in the Seventeenth Corps scribbled today that he “passed ‘Uncle Billy’ sitting in porch of farm-house with his heels over the railing and his big head uncovered; thought he was asleep, but am not so sure about that.”

  Even as Sherman was resting, events were unfolding some twenty miles away that would cause him to wake up and counter an enemy action. A scouting party from the Seventeenth Corps, operating about a half day’s march ahead of the main column, approached Ogeechee Creek near Station No. 4½, where Sherman had anticipated trouble. Trouble there was, in the person of the reluctant warrior Major General Henry C. Wayne accompanied by perhaps 4,000 Georgia militia backed by three cannon. All were snugly dug in behind fresh earthworks running along the eastern side of the creek. Although the railroad bridge had been burned, Wayne fretted over his right flank, which he thought could be turned, as the stream “was fordable above us.”

  At 1:35 P.M. by his watch, the crackle of musketry announced the arrival of Federal troops along the creek’s opposite bank. As Wayne later reported, “Skirmishing began on our left and in front of the bridge on the railroad.” The Yankee scouts took stock of the situation, estimated Wayne’s strength at between 2,000 and 5,000 men, then sent a rider with the information back to Major General Frank P. Blair.

  It was early evening before Blair’s summary reached Sherman, who had been mentally preparing for just such a situation. Couriers departed his headquarters bearing fresh instructions for both wing commanders. Major General Slocum, with the Twentieth Corps approaching Sylvania, was alerted to be ready to switch over to a road that would carry him along the east side of Ogeechee Creek, leading into the enemy’s rear area. At the same time Major General Howard was instructed to have the Fifteenth Corps prepped to cross the Ogeechee River below the Rebel strong point.

  Sherman would not have the satisfaction of seeing how well his contingency plans performed. Back at Station No. 4½, Major General Wayne was relieved of command at 4:00 P.M. by Major General Lafayette McLaws, who had been sent up the line from Savannah by Lieutenant General Hardee.

  McLaws had served well under General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, but, following that battle, arguments with a superior during a campaign at Knoxville, Tennessee, cost him further service with Lee. Despite winning his case in a court of inquiry, McLaws was bundled off to his home state of Georgia to help as best he could. The experienced officer saw at once how exposed Wayne’s command was at Station No. 4½.

  Sherman’s turn toward Savannah had altered the entire paradigm of the campaign. Before his pivot at Millen, when a multitude of destinations seemed possible, Confederate strategy was to harass and delay. Even though President Jefferson Davis still believed that to be the operating principle, a subtle variation had been added. No longer was it considered acceptable to expose a command in a delaying operation. Maintaining an armed force in the field was assuming paramount importance, even to the extent of sacrificing cities.

  McLaws knew that Sherman’s threat against Station No. 4½ was merely potential on the evening of December 4, but the 4,000 men with Wayne were too important to risk losing. A fast-moving raiding force thrusting from above or below could cut the Savannah road, isolating Wayne’s men, leaving them with no place to go. That was unacceptable. Just ninety minutes after taking command, McLaws ordered everyone to fall back to Station No. 1½, near Pooler. In his Memoirs, Sherman commented that the veteran McLaws “must have seen that both his flanks were being turned, and prudently retreated to Savannah without a fight.”

  Even as the wheels of strategy whirred throughout the day, the main business of the march continued unabated. After destroying the Central of Georgia depot
and associated buildings in Scarboro (Station No. 7), the Seventeenth Corps proceeded slowly along the railroad right-of-way, with one brigade from each division detached to break it up. Brigadier General Manning F. Force, in charge of one of those brigades, observed that the day’s labor left his men “exhausted but lively as ever.” Yankee ingenuity was on display as an Illinois regiment put a gristmill into operation to process the kernel corn that was being gathered. General Force’s observation was borne out by the 68th Ohio, which settled in for the night “on a large plantation, where, finding molasses in untold measure, and kettles in abundance, we invited ourselves to an old-fashioned taffy-pulling party.”

  Marching in parallel across the Ogeechee River, the left two divisions of the Fifteenth Corps had no problem keeping apace. “We could see the smoke of the burning railroad all day on the other side of the river,” wrote a member of the 50th Illinois. There were few encounters with civilians to record, for, as a member of the 103rd Illinois noted, “Almost all of the people from this section have sloped.” Still, security remained high on routine agendas. “Went into camp,” wrote an Iowan, “built some light works this evening.”