the Chattahoochee River. During the next three days a farther advance
was made across Peach Tree Creek, and we were now but a few miles from
the fortifications of Atlanta. On the afternoon of the 20th, General
Hood, the new Confederate commander who had succeeded Johnston, came out
of his entrenchments and made a furious attack on our lines. The brunt
of it fell on our Corps, which was somewhat in advance of the others.
Our Regiment being in the second line was not engaged, for the first
line repulsed the enemy along the entire front. The fighting was very
severe, the Confederates coming up to the attack again and again. The
loss in our Corps was about 2,000 killed and wounded; that of the enemy
must have been double that number.
On the night of the 21st I went on picket duty with instructions to
advance my picket line if possible, for the enemy's pickets were so
close that their stray bullets were causing much annoyance in our camp.
We were not very successful during the night; but in the morning, when
the whole Brigade picket line under Major Smith of the One Hundred
Fiftieth New York, moved forward, the enemy had disappeared. As was now
becoming quite usual, a number of their men remained behind to be taken
prisoners.
Major Smith's orders were to advance until he found the enemy. So we
slowly pushed forward through their strong but abandoned works, and
encountered no serious opposition until within about a mile of their
fortifications immediately surrounding the city. We met their picket
line on a hill, and drove it back a half mile, but they brought out
against us such a strong force that we in turn were obliged to fall
back, taking our stand on the hills where we had first met their
pickets. From this position they did not seriously attempt to dislodge
us.
From our vantage we could see all of their manoeuvers. Apparently there
were not more than 2,000 or 3,000 troops to prevent our entry into the
city. I have always believed that if there had been someone high enough
in command to have used the troops where I was that day, Atlanta could
have been captured much more easily than it was six weeks later. At
about six o'clock our Corps came up, and our picket line, once more
moving forward, drove the Confederate skirmishers to within two hundred
yards of their forts.
The next day a battery of twenty-pound Parrott guns was planted on the
hill and commenced throwing shells into the city over our heads. The
enemy replied with spirit, and we received many of their compliments
that were intended for the battery. Our men protected themselves by
throwing up an earthwork in front of the camp, with a ditch behind it
wide enough and deep enough to shelter all in case of necessity. The
officers all had heavy earth barricades built in front of their tents,
and these furnished fairly good protection.
I remember to have been one night in the Colonel's tent when the shells
were flying pretty lively. We were just discussing whether his
embankment would stop a shell, when one came along and buried itself in
the ground a little in front without exploding. The Colonel went out and
found that it had gone two feet into the ground. One of the other
officers present expressed the opinion that it would have gone through
the breastwork if it had struck properly. The words were scarcely out of
his mouth when another shell struck the work, penetrating about
two-thirds of the way, and exploding without damage.
At another time we were not so fortunate. A shell struck the barricade
of Captain Orton of Company K, passed through, and exploded in the tent,
mortally wounding him and seriously wounding Lieutenants Barager,
Blanchard, and Schweers, who were with him. Lieutenant Barager served
until the end of the war; but a few years after its close, he became, as
a consequence of that shock, a physical and mental wreck.
The enemy's sharpshooters were close enough to us to keep dropping their
bullets incessantly into our camp. It was at first rather annoying to
have them come pattering around whenever anyone moved, but in time we
became so accustomed to the missiles, that we went about our ordinary
business as though there were no Confederates within forty miles. On one
occasion the Thirteenth New Jersey went out in front of the line and
captured thirty-five of the enemy's pickets, and burned the houses where
the marksmen had been stationed.
On July 28 General Hooker was at his own request relieved of the command
of our Corps. He had taken offence at being jumped by General Howard for
the command of the Army of the Tennessee, after the death of General
McPherson in the battle of July 22. I do not believe that the highest
officers generally sympathized with Hooker, but the Corps as a whole
felt that his loss was a serious blow. He had large personal influence
on his troops. During an active campaign, virtually every soldier in his
Corps saw him almost daily. If there was a picket line to be
established, he personally examined it; if an assault was made on the
enemy, he was with the foremost, always brave to the extreme of
recklessness. He was, moreover, careful of the welfare of his men. He
made his commissaries attend strictly to business, and his Corps would
often be furnished with the delicacies of army rations when others were
short or had nothing but hardtack and salt pork. It was a common remark
all through the army that Joe Hooker fed his men the best, and fought
them the best, of any of the corps commanders. Of course his men
worshipped him and under him were invincible; for the same reason the
enemy dreaded him worse than anything else mortal.
The newspapers of the day said that the appointment of General Howard
was the work of President Lincoln. But it was reported in the Corps,
that General Sherman had been the prime mover. It was freely whispered
among us that Sherman, with all his great talents and acknowledged
ability, was affected with the same weakness that was said to have
troubled Napoleon--the not being able to look with complacency on the
great personal popularity of a subordinate. Sherman was reported to have
allowed this feeling to break forth into positive insult of General
Hooker and his Corps in the presence of subordinates. For instance, on
the night after the battle of Peach Tree Creek, before any returns of
casualties had been made, Hooker told Sherman that he had lost that day
nearly 2,000 men. "Oh pshaw!" answered Sherman, "that's nothing; they'll
all be back in the morning." Later it was found that 1,700 members of
the Corps had been killed or wounded, and that they had successfully
repulsed the whole Confederate army with a reported loss to the latter
of 6,000.
Before leaving, General Hooker invited all the colonels in the Corps to
call on him, and told them frankly his reasons for resigning. He said
that during the whole campaign he had been subjected to unbearable
insults and indignities, and his Corps and its performances had been
underrated and disparaged. And now, to have promoted over him a junior
officer from this Department, whose rank and service were far below his,
was the last straw; his reputation as a soldier and his honor as a man
would not, he said, admit of his remaining.
The enemy's picket line had been temporarily quieted by the advance of
the Thirteenth New Jersey, but was now again annoying us. These pickets
were on a ridge about two hundred yards in front of their main line of
works, and not more than four hundred yards from our camp. They had
lines of pits dug all along their position and could at any time
communicate with their main line. Our pickets were also located in pits,
but could only be relieved at night. It was determined to reverse this
order of things. So at daylight on July 30, at a preconcerted signal,
our whole Brigade picket line, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Morse
of the Second Massachusetts, jumped out of their pits, crossed the
intervening space at a run, and captured the enemy's entire line,
numbering seven officers and ninety-seven men.
A regiment was immediately sent out to reenforce our men, and
breastworks were hastily thrown up. From their forts and main
breastworks, the enemy poured into us a shower of shot and shell; but
our men held their position all day, many of them firing as much as two
hundred rounds of ammunition. At night the position was made impregnable
against anything save a movement in large force; and in the morning the
enemy were compelled to withdraw their artillery and close the
embrasures of their forts.
For some weeks there was not much change in the situation, so far as we
were concerned. There was much hard work for the men in the trenches,
and they were all getting anxious for the capture of Atlanta. I believe
nine-tenths of them would rather have fought the matter out in an open
battle than to have kept on scraping and shoveling to dig them out. It
seemed to us at the time that between our army and that of the
Confederates, there had been enough dirt dug, from Louisville to
Atlanta, to have built all the railroads in the United States.
For a time in our advanced position, firing on the picket line was
constant, and there were many casualties. In a week or two, however, a
sort of truce was established, and firing ceased. Just before I had
rejoined my Regiment on the Chattahoochee, our pickets had been quite
friendly with the pickets of the enemy. They had traded coffee for
tobacco, and had offered to take letters and send them to Union
prisoners in their hands. I should at this time have liked to send a
letter to my brother. But now they would not go as far as that; nothing
would induce them to meet us between the picket lines for trading; to
all our advances they replied that their orders forbade them to do so.
On August 25 important changes were made in the disposition of our
troops. Our Corps was withdrawn from before Atlanta and moved back to
the Chattahoochee River. The rest of the army was moved around to the
south of Atlanta, temporarily abandoning its communications; this was in
order, by threatening his flank, to compel Hood to come out of his works
and fight us in the open.
Throughout that day our heavy guns poured a constant stream of shot and
shell into the city. As soon as darkness had settled down on the camps,
we silently folded our tents and moved back. I had been on picket duty
that night; it was still and clear, and the slightest sound could be
heard at a great distance. As I passed along the picket line, from man
to man, and gave them the word to follow instructions--which were for
each man, as I passed him, to leave his post and go back silently to the
rear--I could hear the Confederates changing their relief just a little
in my front. In one case I heard the old sentinel tell the new one to
"keep a sharp watch on those Yanks over there," for they were up to
something and he believed they were going to attack.
At the railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee, where we took position,
earthworks had already been built. We strengthened them and built new
ones, so that by the night of the 26th we were in condition to fight the
whole of Hood's army. Hood was, however, too busy south of Atlanta,
where Sherman now was, to trouble us; and we had several days of
complete quiet. It was a great relief, after our experiences in the
trenches, to be able to walk around without hearing the bullets whistle
about our ears. Not the least of our enjoyment was, to have a good river
close at hand to bathe in.
During our stay here, General Slocum arrived and took command of the
Corps. When he made his first tour around the camp, he was given a royal
reception by his old command. They had all been anxious to have as their
leader someone who had been identified with them in the Army of the
Potomac. With that army they had won their laurels, and they wished
still to be known as a part of it.
Slocum was a very different type of man from Hooker. The latter was
brilliant and dashing, and in the excitement of battle his ardor and
personal courage carried him where the fire was hottest. Slocum, on the
contrary, reminded one of the descriptions of Marlborough. Cool and
unimpassioned he directed a battle as he would a review. Without
particularly avoiding danger, he would not rush recklessly into it.
Hooker was an inveterate boaster. Slocum usually said nothing. I think
most men would have considered Hooker the better leader, and Slocum the
better man.
Late on the night of September 1, while I was on picket duty, I heard in
the direction of Atlanta what I at first thought was artillery. The
rumbling kept increasing in intensity until it seemed like the heaviest
firing I had ever heard. Finally, a number of terrific explosions lit up
the air. At six miles distance they seemed like bright flashes of
lightning. I knew then that the enemy were blowing up their powder
magazines. I supposed, however, that Sherman was fighting his way into
Atlanta from the south.
At daylight a reconnoitering party was sent out toward the city. They
found it evacuated, except for a small rear guard of cavalry which was
soon driven out. The remainder of the Corps moved up in the afternoon,
our Regiment reaching the city at about dark. Sherman's flanking
movement had been completely successful. He had met Hood on the Macon
Railroad, near Jonesboro, and had beaten him terribly. The Confederate
commander had been obliged to evacuate Atlanta at once, blowing up
eighty cars of ammunition which had been cut off by the capture of the
railroad at Jonesboro. He had been compelled to destroy, also, the large
rolling mill of the city, which was said to have been the only mill in
the South where plating for gunboats could be manufactured.
We found more Union sentiment in Atlanta than anywhere else in the
South. As our Brigade entered the city, at about nine o'clock at night,
many of the women brought out buckets of water for us to drink. They
were very bitter against Hood's army, which they said had robbed them
of everything that could be carried off, with the excuse that the
Yankees would steal it anyway. They were agreeably disappointed to find
that the Yankees did not rob them of a thing.
Immense quantities of tobacco were abandoned by the Secessionist
citizens who left town. This fact ruined the sutlers' trade in that
article. On the day before Atlanta fell, tobacco sold in our camps at a
dollar a plug, and fifteen cents for cigars. On the day after, plug
tobacco passed about for five cents, and cigars were twenty-five cents a
hundred. Our men found tobacco in every conceivable place. One lot of
twenty boxes was dug out from under a big ash-heap. It was, however, the
only plunder obtained, for the most stringent orders were issued against
pillaging occupied houses.
The effects of the Union bombardment could everywhere be seen in the
city. Almost every house had the marks on it of shot and shell. One man
showed me a dozen shells that had struck in his garden. The families
remaining in the city had all built in their yards bombproofs, to which
they had fled for safety whenever the shelling was in progress.
On September 6 Sherman's army came back from Jonesboro, and went into
camp in the vicinity of town. For a time we enjoyed the luxury of
complete rest, after our four months of continuous campaigning. On
September 23 our Regiment received from Wisconsin 200 fresh recruits,
who had just been secured under the draft. Every one was a substitute,
and a splendid lot of men they were physically, representing almost
every nation in Europe--English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Germans, French,
Norwegians, and I don't know how many others. Some of them could not
speak a word of English. Over a dozen were full-blooded Chippewa
Indians, who until they put on the uniforms of the United States Army,
had never worn the clothing of civilized people. They were all excellent
raw material, and in the course of time made good soldiers. I recall
only two of the entire 200 who deserted.
About the first of October, Hood set out on his trip to the North, in
the attempt to starve us out of Atlanta. On October 3 Sherman started
after him with all of the army except our Corps, which was left to hold
the town. Our camps were now changed around so as to defend the city on
a shorter line. Our Brigade was moved from the south to the northwest
side, and set to work to build new breastworks, or rather to rebuild the
old ones of the Confederates.
The enemy succeeded in getting upon our railroad to the North, and for
about twenty days we were completely cut off without news or provisions.
However, they had left us the whole of the country southward to forage
in; and this, together with the rice we had captured in the city, and
the "beef dried on the hoof," as the men called the cattle that were
driven in, kept us a long way from starving. Every week our forage
trains would run out into the country to the south, and gather in from
500 to 700 wagon-loads of corn, besides living, while they were out, on
the best that the land afforded. Moreover, we had our provisions all to
ourselves; for on September 10 Sherman had ordered all the citizens of
the town to leave either to the North or to the South.
On October 11 our Regiment went out for the first time on a foraging
expedition. There were 2,500 men in the detachment, and a train of about
500 wagons. About fifteen miles south of Atlanta we found plenty of corn
for the animals; and for the men, abundance of sweet potatoes and other
dainties not laid down in the army menu. In two days we had our wagons
laden with all that could be hauled away. About a fortnight later we
went out again and brought in over 800 wagons of corn.
The forage which we thus gathered was the salvation of our animals and
beef cattle. The mules had been on half rations of grain all summer,
quite without hay, and the whole country in the vicinity of Atlanta had
been grazed over until it was as bare as a city street. The beeves that
had been driven down from Louisville, had for weeks nothing to eat save
the leaves and sprouts on the bushes. It was a standing joke among the
men that the commissary always killed for beef those animals that could
not survive until the next day.
_The March to the Sea_
On October 29 came the first through trains from Chattanooga, after the
movement of Hood to the North. On the same day came orders to reduce
baggage and prepare for marching. Soon, rumors were spreading about the
camp that we were to start on a fifty days' campaign, without
communications. On November 4 we were ready to move. I wrote numerous
letters of good-bye to friends at home, telling them that they would
hear from me next at Charleston or Savannah. I hoped that it would be
Charleston, for I wanted the people of South Carolina who started the
war to feel its effects and to reap their share of the horrors.
On November 5 we started out and marched three miles from town. The next
day, however, we returned in order to wait until the Army of the
Tennessee might be paid off. This gave us a chance to vote in the
Presidential election, which we had come very near missing. Our Regiment
gave Lincoln 304 votes and McClellan 21. For another full week we
remained in Atlanta, our Regiment being occupied the entire time in
tearing up railroad tracks and destroying everything of value in the
city. By the time we were ready to leave, Atlanta was worth little more
to the Confederates than any other piece of ground of similar size. On
November 15 we started out in earnest on the now famous "March to the
Sea." Our last view of Atlanta, the prize for which we had so long
struggled, was a column of dense smoke from its burning buildings; we
had destroyed everything in town except the churches and private
residences.
Our expedition numbered about 50,000 men, under the command of Sherman.
Thomas's army remained behind to look after Hood. We took with us only
about twenty days' rations, for the country through which we passed was
expected to furnish the remainder of our needs. The army proceeded in
two columns--the right wing under Howard making for Macon; the left
under Slocum making for Augusta. Each corps, also, took a different
route in order to be able to subsist more easily on the country.
Our Corps proceeded along the Augusta railroad, which we destroyed as
we went along by burning the ties and twisting the heated rails. Parts
of the country were poor and furnished little forage. Other portions,
however, compensated by giving us an abundance of sweet potatoes and
pork, with occasional lots of corn meal, flour, and sorghum, and, for
the first arrivals on the plantation, chickens and turkeys. On our route
we found plenty of good horses and mules, and all the forage that we
could carry off. Occasionally, also the enterprising forager would
capture some apple-jack or corn whiskey.
At Madison we turned and took the road to Milledgeville, the capital of
Georgia. Geary's Division, however, followed up the railroad to the
Oconee River, and destroyed the Oconee bridge. We entered Milledgeville
on the 22nd without opposition, and camped in the state-house yard.
During our stay, our Regiment and the One Hundred Seventh New York
guarded the city. I took up my quarters with an acquaintance of one of
my Wisconsin friends, and saw to it that his house and family were not
molested. He had several hundred bales of cotton stored near town,
which Sherman had consented to have bonded; but some zealous officer or
officious "bummer," had set fire to it before it could be saved.
Upon our approach to Milledgeville, Governor Brown of Georgia, had
released all of the convicts in the State Prison at that place. In
celebration of their freedom, their first act was to destroy the old
prison. Our first work was to destroy the Milledgeville arsenal, in
which was stored a large quantity of Confederate arms and ammunition. We
carried out and threw into the river, all of the ammunition in the
magazine, and burned up all of the arms and equipment. Besides several
thousand stands of good arms, there were a lot of old-fashioned rifles
and shot-guns, and thousands of pikes and bowie knives that had been
manufactured by the State for the militia, with which to repel Yankees.
In the state-house were millions of dollars of Georgia State money, in
bills of all denominations and to these the men helped themselves
without limit. All of the cotton in the vicinity that could be burned
without endangering good buildings, was destroyed, and that which was
stored in the city was bonded not to be turned over to the Confederate
Government, or used for its benefit. I was sent out with a detachment of
men to search the stores for tobacco, and found enough to load several
wagons, which kept the army supplied with that article until we reached
Savannah.
From Milledgeville we marched eastward toward Sandersville, through a
very poor country. At Buffalo Creek, a swampy stream about eight miles
from Sandersville, we found that the seven bridges crossing it had been
burned--the negroes told us that this had been done by the people of
Sandersville. We were delayed about three hours in repairing the
bridges, so did not arrive at Sandersville until the next morning. For
the last two days we had been on slim rations, and Sandersville was well
supplied. Of course there was a general rush for eatables, and the town
was soon raided. The citizens hurried to Sherman to make complaint and
get protection.
He turned on them and asked, "Which of you was it who set fire to those
bridges yesterday?" They all denied having done it, but admitted that it
had been done by citizens of the town. "Well," said he, "those that make
war must take the consequences," which was all the consolation they
got. Later, we found the man who fired the bridges; he was promptly
arrested and his property burned.
As we entered Sandersville we had a sharp skirmish with Wheeler's
Confederate Cavalry, in which two of them were killed. Our Indians
seemed to think it was not exactly right to leave the dead bodies with
their scalps on. They soon fell into the civilized custom of making war,
however, and did not afterward express any desire to take scalps.
From Sandersville we turned south until we reached the Georgia Central
Railroad at Tennille Station. We burned the railway buildings there, and
proceeded along the line, tearing it up as we went along.