CHAPTER LXVI.

SHERMAN IN MIDDLE GEORGIA.

According to a tradition which I found current in Middle Georgia, General Sherman remarked, while on his grand march through the State, that he had his gloves on as yet, but that he should take them off in South Carolina. Afterwards, in North Carolina, I heard the counterpart of this story. As soon as he had crossed the State line, “Boys,” said he to his soldiers, “remember we are in the old North State now;” which was equivalent to putting his gloves on again.

At the mere mention of these anecdotes, however, many good Georgians and North Carolinians blazed up with indignation: “If he had his gloves on here, I should like to know what he did with his gloves off!”—and it was not easy to convince them that they had suffered less than their neighbors in South Carolina.

A Confederate brigadier-general said to me: “One could track the line of Sherman’s march all through Georgia and South Carolina by the fires on the horizon. He burned the gin-houses, cotton-presses, railroad depots, bridges, freight-houses, and unoccupied dwellings, with some that were occupied. He stripped our people of everything. He deserves to be called the Great Robber of the nineteenth century. He did a sort of retail business in North Carolina, but it was a wholesale business, and no mistake, in Georgia, though perhaps not quite so smashing as his South Carolina operations.”

Confederate soldiers delight in criticisms and anecdotes of this famous campaign. Here are two or three samples.

“When we were retreating before old Sherman, he sent word to Johnston that he wished he would leave just a horseshoe, or something to show where he had been. Hood always left enough; but Johnston licked the ground clean behind him.”

“Didn’t we have high old times laying in the water, nights when we had a chance to lay down at all! I remember, one of our boys was told he must move his position, one night, after we’d just got comfortably settled down in the wet. Says he, ‘I’ve got my water hot, and I be d——d if I’m going to move for anybody!’”

“The approach to Savannah was defended by splendid, proud forts, bristling with long old cannon, and our cowardly militia just run from them without firing a shot!”

“You should have seen Washington’s statue, at Columbia, after Sherman burned the city! Nose broke, eyes bunged, face black and blue, and damaged miscellaneously, the Father of his Country looked like he’d been to an Irish wedding.”

The citizens talked with equal freedom, but with less hilarity, of the doings of the “Great Robber.” A gentleman of Jones County said:—

“I had a noble field of corn, not yet harvested. Old Sherman came along, and turned his droves of cattle right into it, and in the morning there was no more corn there than there is on the back of my hand. His devils robbed me of all my flour and bacon and corn meal. They took all the pillow-slips, ladies’ dresses, drawers, chemises, sheets, and bed-quilts, they could find in the house, to tie up their plunder in. You couldn’t hide anything but they’d find it. I sunk a cask of molasses in a hog-wallow; that I think I should have saved, but a nigger boy the rascals had with ’em said he ’lowed there was something hid there; so he went to feeling with a stick, and found the molasses. Then they just robbed my house of every pail, cup, dish, what-not, that they could carry molasses off to their camping-ground in. After they’d broke open the cask, and took what they wanted, they left the rest to run in a river along the ground. There was one sweet hog-wallow, if there never was another!”

A lady, living near Milledgeville, was the president of a soldiers’ aid society. At the time of Sherman’s visit she had in her house a dry-goods box full of stockings knit by the fair hands of patriotic ladies for the feet of the brave defenders of their country. This box she caused to be buried in a field which was afterwards ploughed, in order to obliterate all marks of its concealment. A squadron of cavalry arriving at this field, formed in line, charged over it, and discovered the box by a hollow sound it gave forth under the hoofs of the horses. The box was straightway brought to light, to the joy of many a stockingless invader, who had the fair ladies of Milledgeville to thank for his warm feet that winter.

The Yankees took special delight in killing dogs, many an innocent cur having to atone with his life for the sins committed by bloodhounds used in hunting down negroes, conscripts, and escaped Yankee prisoners.

Sherman’s field-orders show that it was not his intention to permit indiscriminate destruction and plundering.[17] Yet these orders appear to have been interpreted by his men very liberally. A regiment, was usually sent ahead with instructions to guard private dwellings; but as soon as the guards were removed, a legion of stragglers and negroes rushed in to pillage; and I am convinced that in some cases even the guards pilfered industriously.

Wilson’s men, when they seized fresh horses for their use, turned the jaded ones loose in the country. Sherman’s army-corps acted on a different principle. The deliberate aim seemed to be to _leave no stock whatever in the line of march_. Whenever fresh horses were taken, the used-up animals were shot. Such also was the fate of horses and mules found in the country, and not deemed worth taking. The best herds of cattle were driven off; inferior herds were slaughtered in the fields, and left. A company of soldiers would shoot down a drove of hogs, cut out the hind-quarters, and abandon what remained.

“The Federal army generally behaved very well in this State,” said a Confederate officer. “I don’t think there was ever an army in the world that would have behaved better, on a similar expedition, in an enemy’s country. Our army certainly wouldn’t. The destruction of railroads, mills, and gin-houses, if designed to cripple us, was perfectly justifiable.

“But you did have as mean a set of stragglers following your army as ever broke jail. I’ll do you the credit to say, though, that there were more foreigners than Yankees among them.

“A lot of these rascals came to my house, and just about turned it inside out. They wouldn’t wait for my wife to give them the keys of the bureau, but smashed in the drawers with the butts of their muskets, and emptied them.

“My sister, living near me, gave her plate and valuables, locked up in a trunk, to a negro, who took it and hid it in the woods. Then, to avoid suspicion, he joined the Yankees, and was gone with ’em several days. She felt great anxiety about the trunk, until one morning he came home, by the way of the woods, grinning, with the trunk on his shoulder.

“My wife did like my sister. She gave her money and plate to a negro, who hid it; but he didn’t get off so well as the other darkey. The Yankees suspected him, and threatened to hang him if he didn’t give it up. They got the rope around his neck, and actually did string him up, till they found he would die sooner than tell, when they let him down again.

“Your fellows hung several men in my neighborhood, to make ’em tell where their money was. Some gave it up after a little hanging; but I know one man who went to the limb three times, and saved his money, and his life too. Another man had three hundred dollars in gold hid in his garden. He is very fat; weighs, I suppose, two hundred and fifty pounds. He held out till they got the rope around his neck, then he caved in. ‘I’m dogged,’ says he, ‘if I’m going to risk my weight on a rope around my neck, just for a little money!’”

An old gentleman in Putnam County, near Eatonton, related the following:—

“Sherman’s men gave my son-in-law sut! He had made that year thirty-two hundred gallons of syrup,—more than he had casks for; so he sunk a tank in the ground, and buried it. The Yankee soldiers all came and helped themselves to it. He had the finest flower-garden in the country; they made his own slaves scatter salt, and corn-on-the-cob, all over it, then they turned their horses on, and finished it. They made my own daughter wait on them at table. She said she kept servants for such work; but they replied: ‘You are none too good.’ They robbed all the houses through here of all the jewels, watches, trinkets, and hard metals the people didn’t put out of their way; and stripped us of our bedding and clothing.”

Sherman’s invasion of the South cannot properly be called a raid: even Wilson’s brilliant expedition with twelve thousand cavalry is belittled by that epithet.

Sherman had under his command four infantry corps and a corps of cavalry, pursuing different routes, their caterpillar tracks sometimes crossing each other, braiding a belt of devastation from twenty-five to fifty miles in breadth, and upwards of six hundred miles in extent. The flanking parties driving the light-footed Rebel cavalry before them; bridges fired by the fugitives; pontoon trains hurrying to the front of the advancing columns, when streams were to be crossed; the hasty corduroying of bad roads; the jubilant foraging parties sweeping the surrounding country of whatever was needful to support life and vigor in those immense crawling and bristling creatures, called army-corps; the amazing quantity and variety of plunder collected together on the routes of the wagon-trains,—the soldiers sitting proudly on their heaped-up stores, as the trains approached, then, in lively fashion, thrusting portions into each wagon as it passed,—for no halt was allowed; the ripping up of railroads, the burning and plundering of plantations; the encampment at evening, the kindling of fires, the sudden disappearance of fences, and the equally sudden springing up of shelter-tents, like mushrooms, all over the ground; the sleep of the vast, silent, guarded hosts; and the hilarious awakening to the toil and adventures of a new day; such are the scenes of this most momentous expedition, which painters, historians, romancers, will in future ages labor to conceive and portray.

Warned by the flying cavalry, and the smoke and flames of plantations on the horizon, the panic-stricken inhabitants thought only of saving their property and their lives from the invaders. Many fled from their homes, carrying with them the most valuable of their possessions, or those which could be most conveniently removed. Mules, horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, were driven wildly across the country, avoiding one foraging party perhaps only to fall into the hands of another. The mother caught up her infant; the father, mounting, took his terrified boy upon the back of his horse behind him; the old man clutched his money-bag and ran; not even the poultry, not even the dogs were forgotten; men and women shouldering their household stuffs, and abandoning their houses to the mercies of the soldiers, whose waving banners and bright steel were already appearing on the distant hill-tops.

Such panic flights were often worse than useless. Woe unto that house which was found entirely deserted! To the honor of Southern housewives be it recorded, that the majority of them remained to protect their homes, whilst their husbands and slaves ran off the live stock from the plantations.

The flight from Milledgeville, including the stampede of the Rebel State legislators, who barely escaped being entrapped by our army,—the crushing of passengers and private effects into the overloaded cars, the demand for wheeled vehicles, and the exorbitant prices paid for them, the fright, the confusion, the separation of families,—formed a scene which neither the spectators nor the actors in it will soon forget.

The negroes had all along been told that if they fell into the hands of the Yankees they would be worked to death on fortifications, or put into the front of the battle and shot if they did not fight, or sent to Cuba and sold; and that the old women and young children would be drowned like cats and blind puppies. And now the masters showed their affection for these servants by running off the able-bodied ones, who were competent to take care of themselves, and leaving the aged, the infirm, and the children, to the “cruelties” of the invaders. The manner in which the great mass of the remaining negro population received the Yankees, showed how little they had been imposed upon by such stories, and how true and strong their faith was in the armed deliverance which Providence had ordained for their race.

Footnote 17:

See, in _Special Field-Orders, No. 120_, issued Nov. 24th, 1864, the following paragraphs:—

“IV. The army will _forage liberally on the country during the march_. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather near the route travelled corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables or corn-meal or whatever is needed by the command; aiming at all times to keep in the wagon trains _at least ten days’ provisions for the command, and three days’ forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings_ of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass during the halt or a camp; they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and drive in stock in front of their camps. To regular foraging parties must be intrusted the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road travelled.

“V. To army-corps commanders is intrusted the power _to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c._, and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods _where the army is unmolested no destruction_ of such property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army-corps commanders should order and _enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility_.

“VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, when the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts; and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.”