CHAPTER LXX.

A GLANCE AT SAVANNAH.

On the 16th of November, 1864, Sherman began his grand march from Atlanta. In less than a month his army had made a journey of three hundred miles, consuming and devastating the country. On December 13th, by the light of the setting sun, General Hazen’s Division of the 15th Corps made it’s brilliant and successful assault on Fort McAlister on the Ogeechee, opening the gate to Savannah and the sea. On the night of the 20th, Savannah was hurriedly evacuated by the Rebels, and occupied by Sherman on the 21st. The city, with a thousand prisoners, thirty-five thousand bales of cotton, two hundred guns, three steamers, and valuable stores, thus fell into our hands without a battle. Within forty-eight hours a United States transport steamer came to the wharf, and the new base of supplies, about which we were all at that time so anxious, was established.

The city was on fire during the evacuation. Six squares and portions of other squares were burned. At the same time a mob collected and commenced breaking into stores and dwellings. The destroyers of railroads were in season to save the city from the violence of its own citizens.

A vast multitude of negroes had followed the army to the sea. This exodus of the bondmen from the interior had been permitted, not simply as a boon to them, but as an injury to the resources of the Confederacy, like the destruction of its plantations and railroads. What to do with them now became a serious problem. Of his conference with Secretary Stanton on the subject at Savannah, General Sherman says: “We agreed perfectly that the young and able-bodied men should be enlisted as soldiers or employed by the quartermaster in the necessary work of unloading ships, and for other army purposes; but this left on our hands the old and feeble, the women and children, who had necessarily to be fed by the United States. Mr. Stanton summoned a large number of the old negroes, mostly preachers, with whom he held a long conference, of which he took down notes. After this conference, he was satisfied the negroes could, with some little aid from the United States by means of the abandoned plantations on the sea islands and along the navigable rivers, take care of themselves.” Sherman’s “General Orders No. 15” were the result, giving negro settlers “possessory titles” to these lands. Thus originated the knotty Sea-Island controversy, of which more by-and-by.

The aspect of Savannah is peculiarly Southern, and not without a certain charm. Its uniform squares, its moist and heavy atmosphere, the night fogs that infest it, the dead level of its sandy streets, shaded by two and four rows of moss-draped trees, and its frequent parks of live-oaks, water-oaks, wild-olives, and magnolias, impress you singularly. The city, notwithstanding its low, flat appearance, is built on a plain forty feet above the river. The surrounding country is an almost unbroken level. Just across the Savannah lie the low, marshy shores of South Carolina. It is the largest city of Georgia, having something like twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Here, before the war, dwelt the aristocracy of the country, living in luxurious style upon the income of slave labor on the rice and cotton plantations.

Trade was less active at Savannah than in some of the interior towns, owing to its greater isolation. A flood of business passed through it, however. The expense of transportation was very great. Every bale of cotton brought down the river from Augusta, two hundred and thirty miles, cost eight dollars; and the tariff on returning freights was two cents a pound.

There were sixteen hundred colored children in Savannah, twelve hundred of whom attended school. Three hundred and fifty attended the schools of the Savannah Educational Association, organized and supported by the colored population. I visited one of these schools, taught by colored persons, in a building which was a famous slave-mart, in the good old days of the institution. In the large auction-room, and behind the iron-barred windows of the jail-room over it, the children of slaves were now enjoying one of the first, inestimable advantages of freedom.

If you go to Savannah, do not fail to visit the Bonaventure Cemetery, six miles from the city. You drive out southward on the Thunderbolt Road, past the fortifications, through fields of stumps and piny undergrowths, whose timber was cut away to give range to the guns, to the fragrant, sighing solitude of pine woods beyond. Leaving the main road, you pass beneath the low roof of young evergreen oaks overarching the path. This leads you into avenues of indescribable beauty and gloom. Whichever way you look, colonnades of huge live-oak trunks open before you, solemn, still, and hoary. The great limbs meeting above are draped and festooned with long fine moss. Over all is a thick canopy of living green, shutting out the glare of day. Beneath is a sparse undergrowth of evergreen bushes, half concealing a few neglected old family monuments. The area is small, but a more fitting scene for a cemetery is not conceivable.