Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea

by Noah Andre Trudeau

  When he wasn’t handling this matter, Hardee was planning the military evacuation with Beauregard. Both officers were operating with consciences cleared by official sanction from Richmond. Beauregard had received the confirmation he sought for his decision to abandon Savannah after making “the fullest possible defense consistent with the safety of the garrison.” Hardee was the recipient of a personal note from President Jefferson Davis, assuring him that the cupboard had been scoured for possible reinforcements but that the shelves were bare. Davis cautioned Hardee to “make the dispositions needful for the preservation of your army.”

  The arrival of Sherman’s surrender demand forced them to set aside their work, and “after full consultation,” a response was crafted. Though dated December 17, it would not pass through the lines until the next day. One of Beauregard’s aides thought that Hardee’s riposte was “clear, firm, to the point. It was written with moderation and dignity, and in that respect was in contrast with the communication of the Federal commander.”

  HDQRS. DEPT. OF S. CAROLINA, GEORGIA, AND FLORIDA,

  Savannah, Ga., December 17, 1864.

  Maj. Gen. W. T. SHERMAN,

  Commanding Federal Forces, near Savannah, Ga.:

  GENERAL: I have to acknowledge receipt of a communication from you of this date, in which you demand “the surrender of Savannah and its dependent forts,” on the ground that you have “received guns that can cast heavy and destructive shot into the heart of the city,” and for the further reason that you “have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison can be supplied.” You add that should you be “forced to resort to assault, or to the slower and surer process of starvation, you will then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and will make little effort to restrain your army,” &c. The position of your forces, a half a mile beyond the outer line for the land defenses of Savannah, is, at the nearest point, at least four miles from the heart of the city. That and the interior line are both intact. Your statement that you “have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison can be supplied” is incorrect. I am in free and constant communication with my department. Your demand for the surrender of Savannah and its dependent forts is refused. With respect to the threats conveyed in the closing paragraphs of your letter, of what may be expected in case your demand is not complied with, I have to say that I have hitherto conducted the military operations intrusted to my direction in strict accordance with the rules of civilized warfare, and I should deeply regret the adoption of any course by you that may force me to deviate from them in the future.

  I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

  W. J. HARDEE,

  Lieutenant-General

  A Union staff officer familiar with the exchange of messages afterward noted that “both [Sherman and Hardee were] ‘only talking,’ and both knew it.”

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1864

  Messages between Grant and Sherman crossed each other in transit today; Grant’s gracefully conceding to Sherman, Sherman’s still tactfully pressing his argument. Now that it was official that Sherman’s force had safely reached the coast, Grant was able to formally praise his subordinate “on the successful termination of your most brilliant campaign.” Then, after grumbling again about how hard it had been for him to get George Thomas moving, Grant did allow that he “has done magnificently [at Nashville], however, since he started.” This victory, coupled with some minor successes elsewhere, caused Grant to reconsider, and then cancel, his earlier orders for Sherman to join him in Virginia. Once more he was ready to defer to the older man’s judgment. “I want to get your views about what ought to be done and what can be done,” he wrote. Grant closed his note: “I subscribe myself, more than ever, if possible, your friend.”

  Sherman’s missive, composed before Grant’s arrived, opened with a summary of recent events. The General felt the need to rebut several points made by Hardee in his rejection of Sherman’s demand. Then he went on to make sure Grant understood that the obstacles standing in the way of his transferring his army to Virginia—dense fogs, mud banks in the Ogeechee River, only six feet of low-tide water at the loading wharf—would inevitably result in “more delay than you anticipate.”

  Regarding the capture of Savannah, Sherman’s thinking had jumped from slow but sure, to faster even if more costly. “I still hope that events will give me time to take Savannah,” said Sherman, “even if I have to assault with some loss.” In his Memoirs, Sherman said that from the moment he received Hardee’s “letter declining to surrender” he had decided that “nothing remained but to assault.” Orders were issued this day to his wing commanders “to make the necessary preparations at once for assaulting the place.” Sherman’s planning at this stage had little finesse. “I…resolved to make the attempt to break his line of defense at several places,” he said, “trusting that some one would succeed.”

  For all his tough talk, Sherman was loath to spend lives on taking Savannah if there was a less costly way of winning the prize. “Of course I must fight when the time comes,” he admitted to his daughter Minnie before the start of the Georgia campaign, “but wherever a result can be accomplished without Battle I prefer it.” The best way to achieve that result was to pinch off Hardee’s connection to Charleston, and the force best placed to do that was Foster’s. Sherman said to Foster: “It is all important that the railroad and telegraph wire should be broken between the Savannah River and Charleston.” Sherman was hoping for a “bold rush,” but he was realist enough to realize he was pushing a weak reed. If a bold rush wasn’t possible, Sherman was content to let Foster’s men “whale away with their 30-pounder Parrotts and break the road with cannon balls,” something they hadn’t been able to accomplish in several days of trying.

  The longer Sherman mulled it over, the greater seemed the risks in allowing Major General Slocum to pursue the same objective by sliding the Twentieth Corps across the Savannah River via Argyle Island, or even Hutchinson Island just below it. In making this argument to himself, the General reasoned that “the enemy held the river opposite the city with iron-clad gunboats, and could destroy any pontoons laid down by us between Hutchinson’s Island and the South Carolina shore, which would isolate any force sent over from that flank.” Haunted by a notorious defeat in the first year of the war when a Federal force was pinned against the Potomac River and almost annihilated, Sherman vowed not “to make a mistake like ‘Ball’s Bluff’ at that period of the war.”

  Had he not been so determined to push the Foster option, a thoughtful review of his initial objections to Slocum’s suggestion would have revealed greater possibilities than he imagined. The Confederate Savannah River Squadron had but one fully operational ironclad in its arsenal, which could only reach Argyle Island with its guns from extreme range at high tide. The next largest gunboat (wooden) was in a similar fix. Slocum’s men had already demonstrated with the capture of the Resolute that a well-sited land battery could successfully engage timbered gunboats. Also, Colonel Carmen’s men had become very adept at moving troops by barge, a process that could be easily halted and concealed when an enemy smokestack was sighted. There were risks in such an operation. Where Sherman misjudged was in assessing them. Ultimately, his decision to push Foster to do more would take extra time—something, as it turned out, he did not have.

  On the southern front, the first elements of Hazen’s division (Fifteenth Corps) “commenced taring up the [rail]rode and twisting the irons,” according to an Indiana soldier. The brigade he was in, added an Ohio comrade, “went to work at once tearing, burning the railroad, twisting the iron rails, and destroying the telegraph wires and poles.” Farther south along the right-of-way, Mower’s division of the Seventeenth Corps was yet tramping to reach its assigned work zone. Still, the soldiers managed to find time to forage liberally on the countryside. Several regiments visited Walthourville, which one Yankee described as “a small aris
tocratic village, situated in a pine grove—pretty churches—residences vacated.” “There we got some corn meal and killed hogs,” added a Hoosier, “as they were the first chance we had to kill hogs since we had been in the [county],…we lived sumptuously that night and grew fat.”

  Operating in the same neighborhood was a brigade from Baird’s Fourteenth Corps division, whose sole concern was getting grub. The men located all they needed near Hinesville, where one of them remembered that they “found plenty of sweet potatoes, rice & corn with which we loaded up our teams.” One detachment swung around toward Riceboro, passing Midway Church, which provided an Indiana boy a cause to meditate upon the people who built and used it. In the end, he was “glad after all to know that the citizens once knew one who was able to help in time of trouble.”

  More than one of Baird’s soldiers took stock of the large number of alligators lurking in the swampy areas. This night a 75th Indiana enlisted man decided to play a joke on his recently acquired black servant, who was terrified of the creatures. Sending him into the swamp to fetch wood, the soldier trailed along out of sight, waiting until they had gone deep enough into the morass before making a convincing splashing sound in the water. The servant immediately dropped his load of kindling to race back to camp, where he babbled a vivid tale of his encounter with the terrible monster. The laughing soldier tried to explain it was all a joke, but the frightened black refused to reenter the swamp. The prankster now had to fetch his own firewood, leaving him to wonder “whether the joke is on him or me.”

  Immediately west of Savannah, the throaty grumble of artillery provided a steady backdrop to the day as the city’s defenders reacted quickly to provocative acts or just followed a prearranged program of harassing fire. The members of one Wisconsin regiment found themselves camped with Yankee guns behind them and Rebel cannon in front. The enemy’s “bombs, shells, and balls…would go over our heads,” said one in the unit. “Our batteries would reply by also shooting over our heads, so we were between two fires. But we were safer than if we had been on the firing line. Sometimes a ball would come low and break off a limb of a tree, but we could dodge the limbs.”

  The engineers of the 58th Indiana labored throughout this day building fascines—stout bundles of rice straw fifteen inches in diameter, seven and a half feet long, stiffened with a pole through the center core, all held together by Confederate telegraph wire. Soldiers advancing to the attack would each tote a bundle for deposit into ditches or quicksand marshes as instant corduroy. The officer in charge, Colonel George P. Buell, set up something of an assembly line in the camp. The various fascine components were stacked in construction order so that the men could walk from one workstation to the next, building their bundle as they progressed. The task continued well after sunset, as the engineers turned out 700 of them. “It looks very romantic this evening to see the men making fascines by candle light,” observed a member of the regiment.

  Sometimes directives to prepare for an assault were corrupted in transmission into orders to launch an assault. One such instance this day was recollected by a soldier in the 147th Pennsylvania: “Our Division was drawn up in line of battle and arrangements were made to carry the enemy’s works in our front by a night attack. The night was cold, dark and dreary, and as we were not allowed to build fires to keep warm, for fear of arousing the suspicions of the enemy, and as may readily be conceived, we suffered considerably. At about 12 o’clock midnight the order was countermanded and the men were allowed to break ranks and retire for the night well pleased with the turn affairs had taken.”

  There was more action on Argyle Island as Confederates on the South Carolina side of the river made it clear that they didn’t appreciate the Yankee squatters. During the night Colonel Carmen had hauled Captain Charles E. Winegar’s Battery I, 1st New York Light Artillery, from the Georgia mainland to reposition it on the island. The gunners whose enthusiastic barrage had disabled the Resolute were equal to the task of suppressing the Rebel horse artillery that had been harassing the work details.

  Even as the two sides were exchanging their mini-broadsides, Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams, commanding the Twentieth Corps, met with Carmen and, as the colonel recollected, “informed me that Sherman had heard from Grant; that all was uncertainty at headquarters, and that for the present I make no effort to cross, and meanwhile to examine further up the island for an additional crossing, as he thought more men would be sent over.” Later, about 9:00 P.M., Carmen received fresh orders. He was authorized to cross just two regiments to the South Carolina shore at dawn to establish a beachhead. The brigade commander was cautioned not to advance farther into the country than was consistent with establishing a prudent defensive line.

  The aggressive officer, knowing that employing just two regiments would be enough merely to stir up a hornet’s nest of trouble, strongly suspected he would have to commit his entire brigade before the little foray was over. He had already sought a blank check to reinforce any party he put over, and while he had not received specific approval, neither had he been told that he couldn’t do so. Even before the operation began, Carmen had decided that unless otherwise directed, he would assume he had the necessary authority to reinforce the two regiments. Major General Sherman may have hesitated to directly challenge Rebel forces north of Savannah, but Colonel Carmen was proceeding with no such qualms. What it would do to Sherman’s developing plans remained to be seen.

  In Savannah, the Confederate high command was focused on getting out of town. “Active, urgent preparations for the evacuation were instantly begun,” said a Beauregard aide. “It was now but a question of a few days.” For once, Beauregard’s anger had gotten some results. Work on the all-important pontoon bridge between Savannah and the South Carolina shore was being “prosecuted with…vigor,” said his aide-de-camp. As part of the planning, Beauregard today completed a memo indicating where the various parts of Savannah’s garrison were to report once they had left the city. Also given their life-or-death instructions were the ships of the Savannah River Squadron. The shallow-draft wooden gunboats were to try to break out upriver to Augusta; the deeper-drawing ironclad Savannah was to seek the open sea; and the nearly immobile ironclad Georgia was to be scuttled. A number of warships still under construction were to be burned to prevent their capture.

  Even though he already knew the answer, General Beauregard addressed an appeal to Richmond for more troops, suggesting they be detached from General Robert E. Lee’s army for service with him. Specifically requested were the divisions of major generals Robert F. Hoke and Bushrod R. Johnson, both of which contained a large proportion of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina regiments. Beauregard’s request was forwarded to Lee, who promptly threw the matter back into the lap of Jefferson Davis with the ultimatum: “If Hoke and Johnson are sent south it will necessitate the abandonment of Richmond with the present opposing force.” There the matter ended.

  Amazingly, only a few leaks about the ongoing planning reached the rank and file. A Confederate marine posted near the Little Ogeechee River wrote after the fact: “Of our weakness I was fully sensible and was convinced all along that should Sherman with his disciplined and hardened troops storm us, he could carry our works, yet the idea of evacuation had not entered my head, for we had been told that Genl. Hardee had decided to hold the City [at] all hazards. So when I was informed privately by a friend…[on December 18], even [before] some of our higher officers dreamed of it, that the place was to be abandoned, I could not realize it.” A military telegrapher working in the city, in a letter written this day, acknowledged that Savannah’s only hope was a miracle. “Our works are very strong,” wrote Thomas Carolin Clay, “but pray we may look to the Almighty & not trust to our weak arms of flesh.”

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1864

  Sherman’s growing impatience to take Savannah, his nagging frustration over Foster’s inability to close the back door, and the inevitable delays in communicating with the North now led t
he General to a fateful decision. As he had yet to receive Grant’s December 18 note, he was still operating under the assumption that he would be personally taking the bulk of his army to Virginia. Sherman very much wanted Savannah in his pocket before then; believing that the only way he could motivate Foster was to confront him, the General decided to visit the timorous subordinate at his Hilton Head Island headquarters.

  Before departing, Sherman dictated identical messages to major generals Howard and Slocum, advising them of his absence and instructing them “to push the preparations for attacking Savannah with all possible speed, but to await orders for the attack.” Not specifically addressed was his earlier approval to Slocum’s request to push a brigade across Argyle Island into South Carolina, “seemingly threatening in flank the movement of troops attempting to escape from Savannah.” Either it slipped Sherman’s mind or else he did not consider such an action sufficiently provocative to trigger a Savannah evacuation; otherwise he would have either called it off or refrained from visiting Foster until the enemy’s reaction was known.