Part 23

Sherman at this time was put in command of the military division of the Mississippi, with Schofield, Thomas, McPherson, and Steele under him. Grant was to conquer Robert E. Lee and his large army at the East; and Sherman, Joseph E. Johnston's army at the West and South.

Supplies were at once gathered by Sherman at Chattanooga for one hundred thousand men, which would necessitate one hundred and thirty cars, of ten tons each, to reach that city daily. Confederate raids under Forrest and others were frequent; but, as in the case of Grant, nothing could deter Sherman.

On May 5, 1864, the great army started for Atlanta, Ga., prepared to fight its way. The men fought bravely at Resaca, at Allatoona Pass, and elsewhere.

During the month of May, Sherman had advanced his army, as he says, "nearly a hundred miles of as difficult a country as was ever fought over by civilized armies. The fighting was continuous, almost daily, among trees and bushes, on ground where we could rarely see a hundred yards ahead." Sherman had lost 9,299 men; nearly two thousand in killed and missing, and over seven thousand wounded. The enemy's loss was a little over half that number.

From June 10 to July 3 an almost constant battle was waged about Kenesaw Mountain, with a loss on our side of nearly eight thousand, and the Confederate loss considerably less.

An amusing remark came to Sherman's ear at Kenesaw. One of the Confederate soldiers said to another, "Well, the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard General Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up the _tunnel_ near Dalton, and that the Yanks would have to retreat, because they could get no more rations."

"Oh," said the listener, "don't you know that old Sherman carries a _duplicate_ tunnel along?"

The enemy were constantly driven back towards Atlanta. On July 22 a bloody battle was fought near Atlanta, usually called the Battle of Atlanta, in which the brave General McPherson was killed in the hottest of the fight when passing from one column to another. He rode into a wood, and soon his horse returned, wounded, bleeding, and riderless. His body was recovered, with his gauntlets on and boots outside his pantaloons, but his pocket-book with his papers was gone. The spot where he fell was soon retaken by our men, and the pocket-book and its contents were found in the haversack of a prisoner of war, captured at the time.

McPherson was only thirty-four years old, over six feet high, universally beloved, and apparently destined for a great future. Sherman could not look long upon the body. "Better start at once, and drive carefully," said the bluff but tender-hearted general to McPherson's staff, as he covered the body with the flag. It was taken home to Clyde, Ohio, where it was received with great honor, and buried near his mother's house in a small cemetery, part of which is the family orchard where he played when a boy.

General John A. Logan took the command after the death of McPherson, and fought bravely. The attack was made upon his line seven times, and seven times repulsed.

Sherman was often in extreme danger. Once, when he, Logan, and a few others were talking together, a minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor in the breast. A memorandum-book saved his life. At another time a cannon-ball passed over Sherman's shoulder and killed the horse of an orderly behind. Another ball took off the head of a negro close by Sherman.

The month of July was an extremely hot one, but the soldiers had been in almost constant conflict. Our loss in that month was about ten thousand men, and that of the enemy perhaps greater by a few hundreds.

Sherman's men tore up railroad-tracks, made bonfires of the ties, wrapped the heated rails round trees and telegraph poles, and left them to cool,--such rails could not be used again,--and filled up deep cuts with trees, brush, and earth, commingled with loaded shells, so arranged that they would explode if disturbed. Thus the devastation of war went on.

Atlanta was full of foundries, arsenals, and machine-shops, and was called the "Gate City of the South." "I knew that its capture," says Sherman, "would be the death-knell of the Southern Confederacy."

Sept. 2 Atlanta could bear the Federal guns no longer, was evacuated by the enemy, and our troops marched into the city with great rejoicing. The losses during these four months had been over thirty thousand on each side.

President Lincoln wrote to Sherman: "The marches, battles, sieges, and other military operations, that have signalized the campaign, must render it famous in the annals of the war, and have entitled those who have participated therein to the applause and thanks of the nation."

Grant wrote from City Point, Va., "In honor of your great victory, I have ordered a salute to be fired with _shotted_ guns from every battery bearing on the enemy.... I feel that you have accomplished the most gigantic undertaking given to any general in this war."

Sherman at once required all the citizens and families resident in Atlanta to leave the city and go North or South as they chose, with a reasonable amount of furniture and bedding. This order was denounced by Hood, who had relieved Johnston, as unprecedented and cruel. A bitter correspondence took place, in which Sherman said, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.... You might as well appeal against the thunder-storms as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable; and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride....

"I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success. When peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter."

Hood then took his army into Tennessee, and much of the old battle ground was fought over. Allatoona Pass was wonderfully defended by General John M. Corse, who lost a cheek-bone and an ear by a ball cutting across his face, but still led his men, holding the pass and killing the enemy three to one. Mr. John C. Ropes regards this fight "as one of the most memorable occurrences of the war."

At Resaca, when General Hood demanded its surrender, Colonel Clark R. Weaver said, "In my opinion, I can hold this post. If you want it, come and take it." But Hood did not attempt it after his losses at Allatoona.

Sherman saw the impossibility of holding the country and defending the railroads without constant losses. He telegraphed Grant, "With twenty-five thousand infantry and the bold cavalry he has, Hood can constantly break my road. I would infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and of the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta ... and with my effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea."

On the morning of Nov. 15, 1864, this great army of about 65,000 men began its march from Atlanta to the sea. The depot, round-house, and machine-shops of the Georgia railroad had been burned. The fire destroyed the heart of the city, but did not reach the mass of the dwelling-houses. The army carried sixty-five guns, or one to each thousand men. Each gun, caisson, and forge was drawn by four teams of horses. There were twenty-five hundred wagons, with six mules each, and six hundred ambulances with two horses each. Every soldier carried on his person forty rounds of ammunition, and in the wagons were enough cartridges to make up two hundred rounds to a man. The procession occupied five miles or more of road.

Corps commanders alone were intrusted with the power of destroying mills, cotton-gins, etc. "Where the army is unmolested," said Sherman, "no destruction of such property should be permitted."

The cavalry and artillery were allowed to take horses, mules, and wagons, especially from the rich, who were not usually as friendly as the poor. Soldiers were not to enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, but might gather vegetables and stock. Regular foraging parties might gather provisions at any distance from the road travelled.

As the great company moved out of Atlanta, the black smoke of her buildings rising high in air, the men sang "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave." "Never before or since," says Sherman, "have I heard the chorus of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah!' done with more spirit, or in better harmony of time and place."

As Sherman moved past his men, some of them called out, "Uncle Billy,"--they usually called him this,--"I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!"

The first night they camped by the roadside near Lithonia. All night long groups of men were tearing up railroads and bending the heated rails around trees or telegraph poles.

At the towns the white people came out to look upon the hated intruders, and the colored people were frantic with joy. Each day foraging parties, "Sherman's bummers" as they were called, usually about fifty men from a brigade, would go out to the plantations for food.

"The foragers," says Major-General Jacob D. Cox in his "March to the Sea," "turned into beasts of burden oxen and cows, as well as horses and mules. Here would be a silver-mounted family carriage drawn by a jackass and a cow, loaded inside and out with everything the country produced, vegetable and animal, dead and alive. There would be an ox-cart, similarly loaded, and drawn by a nondescript tandem team, equally incongruous. Perched upon the top would be a ragged forager, rigged out in a fur hat of a fashion worn by darkies of a century ago, or a dress-coat which had done service at stylish balls of a former generation." Many of the horses and mules collected were shot, as it produced a bad effect on the infantry when too many idlers were mounted.

The usual march for the army was about fifteen miles per day. The Southern press urged that the invading army be destroyed, starved, obstructed by gun, spade, and axe. But the great host swept on.

At Milledgeville the arsenal and such public buildings as could be used easily for hostile purposes were burned, while several mills and thousands of bales of cotton were spared. Other places shared the same fate.

As the army neared Savannah, they were assured by some prisoners whom they took, that it would be found strongly fortified. On one of the roads torpedoes had been planted, one of which exploded when touched by a horse's hoof, killing the animal and literally blowing off the flesh from the legs of the rider. This so angered General Sherman, that he made some rebel prisoners, much against their will, pass over the road to explode their own torpedoes, or to discover and dig them up.

Sherman demanded of General Hardee the surrender of Savannah. This Hardee declined to do; but he evacuated the city about the time the assault was to have been made, leaving behind his heavy guns, cotton, railway-cars, steamboats, and other property, but destroying his iron clads and navy-yards. The ground outside the forts was filled with torpedoes, as was also the Savannah River. Log piers were stretched across the channel below the city, and filled with the cobble-stones that formerly paved the streets. A heavy force at once set to work to remove the torpedoes and other obstructions from the river, and Savannah became the great depot of supply for the troops. Very many destitute Southern families were fed by Sherman.

Sherman telegraphed the President, Dec. 22, 1864: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with over one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."

There was great rejoicing at the capture of the city, as now Sherman could march into the Carolinas and lay them waste, and then join his army to that of Grant, who was besieging Lee in Richmond. Thomas had conquered Hood at Nashville. The end of the war could be plainly seen.

Grant congratulated Sherman on his brilliant campaign. "I never had a doubt," he said, "of the result. When apprehensions for your safety were expressed by the President, I assured him, with the army you had, and you in command of it, there was no danger but you would _strike_ bottom on salt water some place; that I would not feel the same security, in fact, would not have intrusted the expedition to any other living commander."

Lincoln wrote, "The undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce.... But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide."

Congress passed a vote of thanks to Sherman and his men for the great March to the Sea, of three hundred miles in twenty-four days. This march greatly interested Europe, though Sherman never considered it so important as the passage of the army afterwards through the Carolinas.

The _London Times_ said: "Since the great Duke of Marlborough turned his back upon the Dutch, and plunged hurriedly into Germany to fight the famous battle of Blenheim, military history has recorded no stranger marvel than this mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown route, against an undiscovered enemy." Noted army men regard it as having "scarcely a parallel in the history of war."

In January the whole army left Savannah, Ga., for Columbia, S.C. Sometimes, in pouring rains, they waded up to their shoulders through swamps previously considered impassable, or made roads for miles through the mud by corduroying them with rails and split trees.

The Confederate General Johnston said later, in the hearing of General Cox, concerning this part of the march, "he had made up his mind that there had been no such army since the days of Julius Cæsar."

"Whoever will consider," says General Cox, "the effect of dragging the artillery and hundreds of loaded army wagons over mud roads, in such a country, and of the infinite labor required to pave these roads with logs, levelling the surface with smaller poles in the hollows between, adding to the structure as the mass sinks in the ooze, and continuing this till the miles of train have pulled through, will get a constantly increasing idea of the work, and a steadily increasing wonder that it was done at all."

On Feb. 16 Sherman camped near an old prison bivouac opposite Columbia, called Camp Sorghum, "where remained," he says, "the mud-hovels and holes in the ground which our prisoners had made to shelter themselves from the winter's cold and the summer's heat."

When the army entered Columbia, they found a long pile of burning cotton-bales, which Sherman was told had been fired by General Wade Hampton's men before their departure. At night a high wind fanned these flames; and though Sherman's men assisted in trying to put out the fire, the heart of the city was burned--several churches, the old State House, hotels, and dwellings. About half the city was in ashes. Sherman gave the mayor five hundred cattle to feed the people, and one hundred muskets to preserve order after the departure of his army.

One lady saved her home from pillage by showing to the troops a book which Sherman had given her years before. The boys knew Uncle Billy's writing. They guarded her house, and a young man from Iowa tended her baby while she was receiving a social call from Sherman.

While in Columbia, a poem was presented to Sherman by Adjutant S. H. M. Byers of the Fifth Iowa Infantry, written while a prisoner in that city, where it was arranged and sung by the prisoners. It was entitled "Sherman's March to the Sea," beginning,--

"Our camp-fires shone bright on the mountains That frowned on the river below, As we stood by our guns in the morning, And eagerly watched for the foe; When a rider came out of the darkness That hung over mountain and tree, And shouted, 'Boys, up and be ready! For Sherman will march to the sea!'"

Sherman at once attached Byers to his staff.

Several foundries, the factory of Confederate money, and the state arsenal at Columbia, were destroyed by Sherman before leaving. Charleston was evacuated Feb. 18, for fear of its falling into Federal hands; and Wilmington was captured by General Terry Feb. 22. At Cheraw a large number of guns and thirty-six hundred barrels of powder were taken; at Fayetteville a magnificent United States arsenal was destroyed by our men.

Two battles were fought at Averysboro and at Bentonville, Johnston now commanding the Confederates, our loss being over two thousand men in both battles. March 23 Sherman's army entered Goldsborough, N.C., after a march from Savannah of four hundred and twenty-five miles, across five large rivers, and innumerable swamps, in fifty days, the army being almost as fresh as when they started from Atlanta.

General Sherman then left his army under Schofield, and started for City Point, Va., to meet Lincoln and Grant on March 28. "When I left Lincoln," says Sherman,--this proved to be their last meeting,--"I was more than ever impressed with his kindly nature, his deep and earnest sympathy with the afflictions of the whole people, resulting from the war, and by the march of hostile armies through the South." He wanted no more blood shed, and was anxious for the men on both sides to return to their homes.

"Of all the men I ever met," said Sherman, "he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

Sherman returned to his army, and made ready for one more march, to meet Grant. He was to start April 10. However, April 6 Richmond fell, and Lee and his whole army surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Va., April 9, 1865.

Sherman's army were resting, April 11, at the end of the hour's march, when a staff-officer galloped along the lines, shouting, "Lee has surrendered!" The soldiers were wild with delight, and flung their caps at him, as they shouted, "You're the man we've been looking for these three years!"

A Southern woman came to the gate with her children as the columns passed, and, learning the reason of the commotion, looked at her little ones, while the tears fell down her cheeks, and said tenderly, "Now father will come home."

April 13 Johnston asked for a suspension of hostilities; on the evening of April 14 Lincoln was assassinated, to the great grief of the nation; April 18 a basis of agreement was effected between Sherman and Johnston, which was modified at Washington, so as to correspond with the terms made between Grant and Lee. On April 26 Johnston surrendered to Sherman his whole force, 36,817 men, and the troops in Georgia and Florida, 52,453, making 89,270 men. The march to the sea and through the Carolinas had helped, as Sherman believed it would, to end the Civil War.

There remained only for the closing scene the grand review of the Army of the West for six hours and a half along Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, May 24, the day following the review of the Army of the Potomac. Some of the division commanders, by way of variety, had added goats, cows, and mules, loaded with poultry, hams, etc. There were also families of freed slaves in the procession, the women leading the children. Each division was preceded by its corps of black helpers, with picks and spades.

In Sherman's farewell to his army he urged those who remained in the service to continue the same hard work and discipline which they had had in the past, and those who went to their homes "not to yield to the natural impatience sure to result from our past life of excitement and adventure," but to make a home and occupation in our grand, extensive, diversified country.

"Your general," he said, "now bids you farewell, with the full belief that, as in war you have been good soldiers, so in peace you will make good citizens; and if, unfortunately, new war should arise in our country, 'Sherman's Army' will be the first to buckle on its old armor, and come forth to defend and maintain the Government of our inheritance."

After the war Sherman was in command of the military division of the Mississippi, with headquarters at St. Louis. He took especial interest in the development of the Northern and Southern Pacific railroads. When Grant was made General, July 25, 1866, Sherman was made Lieutenant-General. In 1869 when Grant became President, Sherman was made General, with the provision that the office should go to no other person. Sheridan was made Lieutenant-General with the same provision.

From Nov. 10, 1871, to Sept. 17, 1872, General Sherman travelled abroad in Turkey, Russia, Austria, and Western Europe, and received distinguished honors. He kept full notes. After his return he published his memoirs in two volumes, which the _Nation_ characterises as "one of the most noteworthy examples of self-revealing in the whole range of autobiography."

He received degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Princeton colleges. To Harvard college he sent a large picture of himself, which now hangs in the library. He was much sought after in social circles, and was an interesting speaker and writer. Once when speaking on the American flag to the pupils of the Packer and Polytechnic Institutes in Brooklyn, he said of the "Stars and Bars," the Confederate flag, "They cut out the blue. They left heaven out of their flag, and so were destined to defeat."

To the cadets at West Point he said: "When war comes you can have but one purpose--your country--and by your country I mean the whole country, not part of it." Everywhere he was outspoken, of simple manners, humorous, brave, unselfish, and comprehensive in mind and actions.

"The two or three great captains in any age," says the _Nation_, "are alike in the supreme qualities which make a general. They have the unruffled presence of mind which makes their intellectual operations most sure and true in the greatest and most sudden peril, and the true greatness which makes the most momentous decision and unhesitating action under vast responsibility, as if these were the every day work of their lives. The present generation has in our army seen two such, Grant and Sherman. It is doubtful if it has seen a third."

General Oliver O. Howard, who lost an arm under Sherman, writes, "Take him all in all, General Sherman was not only one of the greatest military geniuses in history, but a model of a kindly, generous, and faithful man in every position in life."

Sherman's soldiers idolized him. To them he was always "Old Tecums" or "Uncle Billy." He believed in fighting at the front. He said in his Memoirs: "No man can properly command an army from the rear. He must be at its front.... Some men think that modern armies may be so regulated that a general can sit in an office and play on his several columns as on the keys of a piano. This is a fearful mistake. The directing mind must be at the very head of the army--must be seen there, and the effect of his mind and personal energy must be felt by every officer and man present with it, to secure the best results."

General Sherman was strongly urged to become a candidate for the Presidency. He declined absolutely, as he did not wish its cares and duties; knowing also that the religion of his wife and children, Roman Catholicism, though he was not a Romanist, would cause opposition. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, though educated for the law, became a Catholic priest.