Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  Finding the next meal was still very much on everyone’s mind. “Rations are getting shorter every day,” worried a New Yorker. “The men are anxious to take the city as they know they will have plenty of rations when they get there.” Some officers decided not to wait until the cracker line was operating, so a number of foraging parties were dispatched this day. It was a brigade-sized force that left the Fourteenth Corps’ rear area, crossed the Ogeechee River at King’s Bridge, then set course for Hinesville. For others the effort and results were on a smaller scale. “I manage to get potatoes enough for supper, by digging about an hour in an old potato patch,” said one Illinois soldier.

  A number of fortunate units would remember December 16 for reasons having nothing to do with food. “Received a large mail from our Northern friends,” exclaimed an Illinois diarist. “What a scene our camp presents as the boys are scattered here and there, perusing the letters just received from loved ones a thousand miles or more away, and talking over with each other the news from home; some, it is true, mingled with sadness, as they learn for the first time of the death of some near or dear friend, or other misfortune…, but, with very few exceptions, all seem happy, and we all utter the silent prayer, deep down in our heart, ‘God bless our dear ones at home.’”

  “This last trip through Rebeldom had made letters a priceless boon,” contributed a Wisconsin man, who also engaged in the complementary pleasure of responding. “I never knew what luxury there was in writing, until I was debarred the privilege,” he said. The postmaster for the First Division, Fourteenth Corps, reported that the “three hundred dollars’ worth of stamps which I obtained for the Division was only a fraction of what were wanted for the first mail out from Savannah and I was kept busy franking letters that there were no stamps for.” Homesickness washed across the letter-reading camps, a feeling accentuated that evening when a Rebel band on the other side played “Home, Sweet Home.” Confessed one Yankee after that performance: “Some of us felt blue.”

  Included among this day’s letter writers was William Tecumseh Sherman, who wrote to his wife, Ellen. Sherman’s pride in his own accomplishments and that of his men was evident as he described the cheers the sailors gave him (“the highest honor at sea”), the trust his men placed in him (“The soldiers think I know everything and that they can do anything”), and his strong feelings for them (“I never saw a more confident army”). It was clear to the General what his army had accomplished in the March to the Sea and why: “We have destroyed nearly 200 miles of Railroad and are not yet done…. We lived Sumptuously, turkeys, chickens and sweet potatoes all the way, but the poor women & children will starve. All I could tell them was, if Jeff Davis expects to found an empire on the ruins of the South, he ought to afford to feed the People.”

  Sherman also shared insights with his wife regarding his next military moves. “I have some heavy guns coming from Port Royal, and as soon as they come I shall demand the surrender of Savannah, but will not assault, as a few days will starve out its Garrison about 15,000, and its People [about] 25,000,” he told her. In closing, he revealed an impish side not often seen by his men or staff: “Await events and Trust to Fortune. I’ll turn up when & where you least expect me.”

  Sherman didn’t mention the visit he’d had with his postmaster, Colonel A. H. Markland. “I’ve brought you a message from the President,” Markland said at their meeting. “He asked me to take you by the hand wherever I met you and say ‘God bless you and the army.’ He has been praying for you.” Sherman thought a moment. “I thank the President,” he said at last. “Say my army is all right.”

  In a subsequent reference to Lincoln’s gesture, Sherman added that he felt “thankful for his high favor. If I disappoint him in the future, it shall not be from want of zeal or love to the cause.”

  Argyle Island was the hot spot along the opposing lines. Taking full advantage of the limited sanction Sherman granted him, Major General Slocum upped the Union presence there from two regiments to a full brigade. By now Colonel Carmen and his staff had a system of transferring men across from the Georgia mainland down to a fine art, so little time was lost in transporting them. Once they were landed, the newcomers were treated to a somewhat unsettling sight for soldiers used to seeking cover. “A rice field as far as the eye could reach,” was a New York soldier’s assessment, “level as a plain.” A diarist in a companion Empire State regiment added that the troops crossed the broad rice fields in single-file formation.

  Once they reached the small building complex where the rice was being processed, the Yankee boys encountered the local slaves, who were getting a crash course in capitalism. At first, commented a Federal, “any quantity of rice was to be had, and at almost any price, as the negroes did not know a ten-cent stamp from a five-dollar bill.” Before long, however, the slaves “knew enough to say ‘one dollah’ whenever they were asked the price of rice.” Hardly had the brigade assembled near the mills when the Rebels across the river opened an artillery battery from the opposite shore; meanwhile, a gunboat downriver joined in the chorus, catching Colonel Carmen’s men in a vicious crossfire.

  A Massachusetts soldier termed the enemy’s barrage “annoying, stopping the rice-mill, and forcing the troops to lie all day behind a dike.” “They made excellent practice & set one of the storehouses on fire, burning it to the ground,” confirmed a comrade in the Bay State regiment. “Even while lying near that old mill under the splinters flying thick in every direction,” chimed in a New Jersey officer, “[I] had to laugh at a negro, dropping in, get under a big load of bed clothes as a shell whistled occasionally by me.”

  Colonel Carmen decided to do something about his predicament by detailing some riflemen from the 3rd Wisconsin to harass the land-based gunners. “I was sent with my Company to get as close as possible to them on our side of the river, and either silence them or drive them off,” reported Captain Julian Hinkley. “I got up within about a hundred and fifty yards of them and opened fire. They immediately turned their guns on us, and for a few minutes gave it to us hot.” Hinkley’s firing line was along the riverbank, with the men standing in the cold water. One of the shooters later avowed that the “lads of the company made it interesting for the rebels, in spite of chattering teeth.” By the time a relief party from the 2nd Massachusetts replaced the Wisconsin riflemen, the enemy battery had departed for more peaceful climes. “We blazed away, but were replied to only by musketry,” said a Bay Stater. “I think we hit some of them as we could hear them holler several times just as we fired.”

  The exchange of gunfire eventually sputtered into a sullen silence. For what it was worth, Carmen’s brigade was now in undisputed possession of Argyle Island, though most of the soldiers who had made it so could not imagine why anyone cared. Observed one New Jersey officer: “Gen. Sherman does not seem in any hurry to take the city.”

  One officer who was in a hurry to get into Savannah was General Beauregard, who left Charleston at 8:00 A.M. bound for the city. He tarried a bit at the headquarters of Major General Samuel Jones, whose troops were holding the roadway open between those two points. When Beauregard got near Pocotaligo, he detrained for a transfer to wagons in order to sidle past the section of track threatened by the Yankee batteries. The long-distance enemy fire had yet to damage the line, but Beauregard did not want to risk a lucky hit that could close the passageway. Once beyond the danger zone, Beauregard’s staff piled onto another train that carried them near to the now destroyed Savannah River Bridge, where they took to the roads.

  When Beauregard reached the city at 11:00 P.M., he could not help but notice that the pontoon bridge he had told Hardee to build was, in the estimation of one of his aides, “only about one-third constructed.” The problem was a lack of boats. Hardee’s engineers had decided that the flat barges used to transport rice or cotton would serve the purpose, so the search was on to find enough of them. When one of Hardee’s subordinates protested that assigning troops to gather in the craft would disru
pt plans he had to strike the enemy occupying Argyle Island, the general answered that the “attack is of no importance when compared with that of getting the flats into the river and down to Savannah.”

  The clock was ticking. There were ominous signs that Savannah’s once firm resolve was beginning to soften. Anticipating the orders to evacuate, some overeager officers ordered warehouses stocked with army provisions opened, “and all persons were told to help themselves.” A soldier on the scene thought it a “very questionable mode of defending a city, but a good example to be followed in good time and in good order by any who prefer to give or sell provisions to Confederate soldiers and their families rather than to hoard them up for raiders and Yankee invaders and plunderers.” Even more chilling, there were additional desertions from the battalion of enemy POWs—twenty-seven of them in one instance. Two of the unfortunates, captured before reaching the Union lines, were subjected to interrogation, where they revealed a plot that threatened to compromise Savannah’s defenses.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1864

  The officer commanding the leading division in the Gulf and Savannah Railroad wrecking expedition was less than pleased with his assignment. “My time [for this operation] was limited to five days,” complained Major General Joseph A. Mower. “This limitation of time would make it necessary for me to march twenty miles per day, and give me one day in which to destroy twenty miles of railroad.” Still, orders were orders. “Broke camp at daylight,” recorded an Illinois soldier, “heavy fog—country flat—bog—trees dripping with dew—small bridge broke through—halt.” The forced pace took its toll. “Saw Men sun struck,” scrawled an Illinois diarist. Mower’s command camped for the night around Midway Church, where the foraging began to resemble former times during the March to the Sea. “We got some sweet potatoes and negro peas so we had a good supper,” commented a Hoosier in the 25th regiment.

  Those soldiers in Brigadier General William B. Hazen’s Fifteenth Corps division, part of the same mission, were no more pleased with their assignment than was Mower. “Leaving camp before the steamers with commissary supplies had arrived at King’s Bridge, the regiment could draw no government rations and the country afforded very little besides rice,” growled an infantryman in the 55th Illinois. “The very fatiguing labor of tearing up the track, added to the insufficiency of food, proved severe upon the men.” An officer in the nearby 47th Ohio reported that one “man in Company B gave out on this march and died tonight.”

  Moving in parallel with these two divisions was a brigade of soldiers from the Fourteenth Corps whose sights were set solely on foraging. These columns moved through “a low level[,] wet & mostly timbered country” that so disoriented the men that several were certain that “we are in the state of Florida.” For most it was a hungry tramp until late in the day, when they struck bonanza. “I shot a hog as the Regiment camped and skinned out a ham and Lieut. Starbuck had some yams and we got a square meal and we done it Justice,” sighed a contented member of the 75th Indiana. “I thought I was hollow to my toes.” A comrade in the 105th Ohio agreed that “there was plenty & such a time as we had eating. It’s wonderful how often & how much a half-starved man can eat in a given time.”

  Back along the siege lines more and more regiments bid welcome to their mail carriers. “Card-playing stopped,” noted an Indiana man in the 22nd regiment, “and all read the news from home.” In the 85th Illinois “the hearts of the men were made glad” by the mail, while a soldier in the 147th Pennsylvania would affirm “how glad we were to hear from our loved ones again.” “The 29th presents the appearance of a vast reading room today,” marveled an Ohioan, “as our mail has once more arrived and it is greedily devoured after some five weeks being passed without hearing from the ‘outer world.’” One reader-respondent was rather rudely reminded that there was a war going on. “Rebels shell while I was writing and [hit] the limbs of a tree right over me so I change position,” recorded a nonchalant correspondent in the 16th Wisconsin.

  Almost all the Confederate defensive effort this day was limited to artillery. “We lie in a swampy piece of woods within good musket [range] (though for the heavy timber out of sight) of the Rebel works,” wrote an Ohio soldier. “By way of amusement they shell the heavy timber we are in and [today]…they fired half a dozen times into our camp with grape-shot. Nobody was hurt. These shells splinter the trees nastily.” “Our pickets are so close that they call to each other,” added a New Yorker, “and when they send a shell the rebels will say ‘How do you like that, Yanks?’ and the first thing you know, over goes a shower of bullets from our boys.”

  On Argyle Island, Colonel Ezra Carmen began the day with orders to land a hundred-man recon force on the South Carolina shore. To his immense frustration, the tide was ebbing, dropping the river level too low for the heavy barges he intended to use; since there simply weren’t enough shallow-draft craft to be found, the operation had to be scrubbed. Today’s main accomplishment was to keep the rice mills operating despite harassing fire from a Rebel horse battery that once more appeared across the way. “One of ours answered,” noted a Massachusetts soldier, “& soon shut them up.”

  In sharp contrast to taking Fort McAllister, Major General Sherman initially approached the capture of Savannah in a very methodical and thorough manner. With a supply line now open, he was already receiving the heavy-caliber siege cannon he needed to pound the city into submission. The bulky, unwieldy tubes took time to wrestle along the marshy roads into firing positions, which also had to be prepared. Still, Sherman saw no reason why he shouldn’t go on the record with an official call to Lieutenant General Hardee to capitulate in order to save Savannah’s citizens from harm. Accordingly, as Sherman recollected, “I rode from my headquarters…over to General Slocum’s headquarters,…and thence dispatched (by flag of truce) into Savannah, by the hands of Colonel [Charles] Ewing, inspector-general, a demand for the surrender of the place.”

  HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI

  In the field, near Savannah, Ga., December 17, 1864.

  General WILLIAM J. HARDEE,

  Commanding Confederate Forces in Savannah:

  GENERAL: You have doubtless observed from your station at Rose-dew that sea-going vessels now come through Ossabaw Sound and up Ogeechee to the rear of my army, giving me abundant supplies of all kinds, and more especially heavy ordnance necessary to the reduction of Savannah. I have already received guns that can cast heavy and destructive shot as far as the heart of your city; also, I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied; and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah and its dependent forts, and shall await a reasonable time your answer before opening with heavy ordnance. Should you entertain the proposition I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, and the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge a great national wrong they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war. I inclose you a copy of General Hood’s demand for the surrender of the town of Resaca, to be used by you for what it is worth.

  I have the honor to be, your obedient servant,

  W. T. SHERMAN,

  Major-General.

  [Inclosure]

  HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF TENNESSEE

  In the Field, October 12, 1864.

  TO THE OFFICER COMMANDING U.S. FORCES AT RESACA, GA.:

  SIR: I demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of the post and garrison under your command, and should this be acceded to, all white officers and soldiers will be paroled in a few days. If the place is carried by assault no prisoners will be taken.

  Most respectfully, your obedient servant,

  J. B. Hood,

  General.

 
After dispatching the message, Sherman was talking with Slocum when an aide appeared with a matter for the Left Wing commander’s attention. Receiving a nod in response, the staff officer waved over Colonel Ezra Carmen, who had arrived from Argyle Island to better understand how his little effort fit into the larger picture. Not one to be intimidated by high rankers, Carmen stood before the two senior commanders to explain how feasible it would be to push two brigades onto the South Carolina shore to cut the Union Causeway. When Sherman mentioned the danger from Rebel gunboats, Carmen expressed confidence in the field artillery’s ability to drive them off. Sherman lapsed into a moody silence, and Carmen shut his mouth. “My rank did not permit me to press the matter,” he later wrote, “though I thought a great opportunity was being lost.”

  William J. Hardee had his hands full this day suppressing a mutiny in the battalion of troops recruited from disaffected Union prisoners of war. The two would-be deserters captured yesterday revealed an imminent plot among the men to immobilize their officers, spike their cannon, then surrender en masse to the Federals. Wasting no time, Hardee struck fast and hard. According to an officer in the city’s garrison, the battalion camp “was suddenly surrounded by detachments from the 55th Georgia, and by Jackson’s Augusta battalion, and two field-guns loaded with canister were brought to bear on them. The men were deprived of their arms, and the ringleaders, five in number…were seized. These, and the two privates apprehended the previous night in the act of deserting to the enemy, were tried by a drum-head court martial, on their own confessions convicted of mutiny and intended desertion to the enemy, sentenced and executed.” The impressed battalion was then “marched under guard to Savannah where it was closely watched during the rest of the siege.”