General Sherman leaves Savannah.--His March impeded.--Difficulty In
collecting Troops to oppose him.--The Line of the Salkehatchie.--
Route of the Enemy's Advance.--Evacuation of Columbia.--Its
Surrender by the Mayor.--Burning the City.--Sherman responsible.--
Evacuation of Charleston.--The Confederate Forces in North
Carolina.--General Johnston's Estimate.--General Johnston assigned
to the Command.--The Enemy's Advance from Columbia to Fayetteville,
North Carolina.--"Foraging Parties."--Sherman's Threat and
Hampton's Reply.--Description of Federal "Treasure-Seekers" by
Sherman's Aide-de-Camp.--Failure of Johnston's Projected Attack at
Fayetteville.--Affair at Kinston.--Cavalry Exploits.--General
Johnston withdraws to Smithfield.--Encounter at Averysboro.--
Battles of Bentonville.--Union of Sherman's and Schofield's
Forces.--Johnston's Retreat to Raleigh.
After the evacuation of Savannah by General Hardee, it soon became
known that General Sherman was making preparations to march northward
through the Carolinas with the supposed purpose of uniting his forces
with those of General Grant before Richmond. General Hardee, having
left detachments at proper points to defend the approaches to
Charleston and Augusta, Georgia, withdrew the rest of his command to
the first-named city. General Wheeler's cavalry held all the roads
northward, and, by felling trees and burning bridges, obstructed
considerably the enemy's advance, which in the early part of January
was still further impeded by the heavy rains which had swollen the
rivers and creeks far beyond their usual width and depth.
The seriously impaired condition of our railroad communications in
Georgia and Alabama, the effect of the winter rains on the already
poor and ill-constructed country roads, the difficulty in collecting
and transporting supplies, to impeded the concentration of our
available forces, that Generals Beauregard and Hardee--the former at
Columbia, South Carolina, and the latter at Charleston--could only
retard, not prevent, the onward march of the enemy. At the outset of
his movement the Salkehatchie River presented a very strong line of
defense. Its swollen condition at that time, and the wide, deeply
inundated swamps on both sides, rendered it almost impossible to
force or outflank the position if adequately defended. It might have
been better if we had then abandoned the attempt to hold cities of no
strategic importance, and concentrated their garrisons at this point,
where the chances of successful resistance were greater than at any
subsequent period of the campaign. For, even if our expectation had
been disappointed, and had the superior numerical force of the enemy
compelled us to withdraw from this line, the choice of several good
positions was open to us, any one of which, by moving upon converging
lines, we could reach sooner than was possible to Sherman, whose
passage of the river must have been much encumbered and delayed by
his trains. Of these defensive positions, Branchville and Orangeburg
may be regarded as eligible: had Sherman headed his columns toward
Charleston, our forces would have been in position to attack him in
front and on the flank. Had his objective point been Augusta, he
would have had our army in his rear; and had, as proved to be the
case, Columbia been the place at which he aimed, our army would have
been able to reach there sooner than he could.
[Illustration: Lieutenant-General William J. Hardee]
General Sherman left Savannah January 22, 1865, and reached
Pocotaligo on the 24th. On February 3d he crossed the Salkehatchie
with slight resistance at River's and Beaufort bridges, and thence
pushed forward to the South Carolina Railroad at Midway, Bamberg, and
Graham's. After thoroughly destroying the railroad between these
places, which occupied three or four days, he advanced slowly along
the line of the railroad, threatening Branchville, the junction of
the railroads from Augusta to Columbia and Charleston. For a short
time it was doubtful whether he proposed to attack Augusta, Georgia,
where it was well known we had our principal powder-mill, many
important factories and shops, and large stores of army supplies; but
on the 11th it was found that he was moving north to Orangeburg, on
the road from Branchville to Columbia, the latter city being the
objective point of his march. Early on the morning of the 16th the
head of his columns reached the Congaree opposite Columbia. The
bridge over that stream had been burned by our retreating troops, but
a pontoon bridge, built by the enemy under cover of strong
detachments who had crossed higher up at Saluda Factory, enabled the
main body to pass the river and enter the city on the morning of the
17th, the Confederate troops having previously evacuated it. On the
same day the Mayor formally surrendered the city to Colonel Stone,
commanding a brigade of the Fifteenth Corps, and claimed for its
citizens the protection which the laws of civilized war always accord
to non-combatants. In infamous disregard not only of the established
rules of war, but of the common dictates of humanity, the defenseless
city was burned to the ground, after the dwelling-houses had been
robbed of everything of value, and their helpless inmates subjected
to outrage and insult of a character too base to be described.
Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue; therefore General
Sherman has endeavored to escape the reproaches for the burning of
Columbia by attributing it to General Hampton's order to burn the
cotton in the city, that it might not fall into the hands of the
enemy. General Hampton has proved circumstantially that General
Sherman's statement is untrue, and, though in any controversy to
which General Hampton may be a party, no corroborative evidence is
necessary to substantiate his assertion of a fact coming within his
personal observation, hundreds of unimpeachable witnesses have
testified that the burning of Columbia was the deliberate act of the
Federal soldiery, and that it was certainly permitted, if not
ordered, by the commanding General. The following letter of General
Hampton will to those who know him be conclusive:
"WILD WOODS, MISSISSIPPI, _April 21, 1866._
"To Hon. REVERDY JOHNSON, _United States Senate._
"SIR: A few days ago I saw in the published proceedings of Congress
that a petition from Benjamin Kawles, of Columbia, South Carolina,
asking for compensation for the destruction of his house by tho
Federal army, in February, 1865, had been presented to the Senate,
accompanied by a letter from Major-General Sherman. In this letter
General Sherman uses the following language: 'The citizens of
Columbia set fire to thousands of bales of cotton rolled out into the
streets, and which were burning before we entered Columbia; I,
myself, was in the city as early as nine o'clock, and I saw these
fires, and knew that efforts were made to extinguish them, but a high
and strong wind prevented. I gave no orders for the burning of your
city, but, on the contrary, the conflagration resulted from the great
imprudence of cutting the cotton bales, whereby the contents were
spread to the wind, so that it became an impossibility to arrest the
fire. I saw in your Columbia newspaper the printed order of General
Wade Hampton, that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton
should thus be burned, and, from what I saw myself, I have no
hesitation in saying that he was the cause of the destruction of your
city.'
"This charge, made against me by General Sherman, having been brought
before the Senate of the United States, I am naturally most
solicitous to vindicate myself before the same tribunal. But my State
has no representative in that body. Those who should be her
constitutional representatives there are debarred the right of
entrance into those halls. There are none who have the right to speak
for the South; none to participate in the legislation which governs
her; none to impose the taxes she is called upon to pay, and none to
vindicate her sons from misrepresentation, injustice, or slander.
Under these circumstances, I appeal to you, in the confident hope you
will use every effort to see that justice is done in this matter.
"I deny, emphatically, that any cotton was fired in Columbia by my
order. I deny that the citizens 'set fire to thousands of bales
rolled out into the streets.' I deny that any cotton was on fire when
the Federal troops entered the city. I most respectfully ask of
Congress to appoint a committee, charged with the duty of
ascertaining and reporting all the facts connected with the
destruction of Columbia, and thus fixing upon the proper author of
that enormous crime the infamy he richly deserves. I am willing to
submit the case to any honest tribunal. Before any such I pledge
myself to prove that I gave a positive order, by direction of General
Beauregard, that no cotton should be fired; that not one bale was on
fire when General Sherman's troops took possession of the city; that
he promised protection to the city, and that, in spite of his solemn
promise, he burned the city to the ground, deliberately,
systematically, and atrociously. I, therefore, most earnestly request
that Congress may take prompt and efficient measures to investigate
this matter fully. Not only is this due to themselves and to the
reputation of the United States army, but also to justice and to
truth. Trusting that you will pardon me for troubling you, I am, very
respectfully, your obedient servant,
"WADE HAMPTON."
Were this the only instance of such barbarity perpetrated by General
Sherman's army, his effort to escape the responsibility might be more
successful, because more plausible; but when the eulogists of his
exploits note exultingly that "wide-spreading columns of smoke rose
wherever the army went," when it is incontrovertibly true that the
line of his march could be traced by the burning dwelling-houses and
by the wail of women and children pitilessly left to die from
starvation and exposure in the depth of winter, his plea of "not
guilty" in the case of the city of Columbia can not free him from the
reprobation which outraged humanity must attach to an act of cruelty
which only finds a parallel in the barbarous excesses of
Wallenstein's army in the Thirty Years' War, and which, even at that
period of the world's civilization, sullied the fame of that
otherwise great soldier.
In consequence of General Sherman's movements, it was considered
advisable to evacuate Charleston (February 17th), that General
Hardee's command might become available for service in the field; and
thus that noble city and its fortresses, which the combined military
and naval forces of the United States, during an eighteen months'
siege, had failed to reduce, and which will stand for ever as
imperishable monuments of the skill and fortitude of their defenders,
were, on February 21st, without resistance, occupied by the Federal
forces under General Q. A. Gillmore.
Fort Sumter, though it now presented the appearance of a ruin, was
really better proof against bombardment than when first subjected to
fire. The upper tier of masonry, from severe battering, had fallen on
the outer wall, and shot and shell served only to solidify and add
harder material to the mass. Over its rampart the Confederate flag
defiantly floated until the city of Charleston was evacuated.
Every effort that our circumstances permitted was immediately and
thenceforward made to collect troops for the defense of North
Carolina. General Hood's army, the troops under command of General D.
H. Hill at Augusta, General Hardee's force, a few thousand men under
General Bragg, and the cavalry commands of Generals Hampton and
Wheeler, constituted our entire available strength to oppose
Sherman's advance. These were collected as rapidly as our broken
communications and the difficulty of gathering and transporting
supplies would permit.
After the fall of Columbia, General Beauregard, commanding the
military department, retreated toward North Carolina. The Army of
Tennessee (Hood's) was moving from the west to make a junction with
the troops retiring from South Carolina. The two forces, if united
with Hardee's command, then moving in the same direction, would, it
was hoped, be able to make effective resistance to Sherman's advance.
In any event it was needful that they should be kept in such relation
to Lee's army as to make a junction with it practicable. In this
state of affairs I was informed that General Beauregard, after his
troops had entered North Carolina, had decided to march to the
eastern part of that State. This would leave the road to Charlotte
open to Sherman's pursuing column, which, interposing, would prevent
the troops coming from the west from joining Beauregard, enable him
to destroy our force in detail by the joint action of his own army
and that of Schofield, commanding the district of Wilmington. The
anxiety created by this condition of affairs caused me, after full
correspondence with General Lee, to suggest to him to give his views
to General Beauregard, and I sent to General Beauregard's
headquarters the chief-engineer, General J. F. Gilmer, he being
possessed fully of my opinions and wishes. General Beauregard
modified his proposed movements so as to keep his forces on the left
of the enemy's line of march until the troops coming from Hood's army
could make a junction. These were the veteran commands of Stevenson,
Cheatham, and Stewart. Lieutenant-General S. D. Lee, though he had
not entirely recovered from a wound received in the Tennessee
campaign, was at Augusta, Georgia, collecting the fragments of Hood's
army to follow the troops previously mentioned. They had not moved
together, and the first-named division had reached Beauregard's army
in South Carolina.
Though it contained an implied compliment, General Lee was not a
little disturbed by occasional applications made to have troops
detached from his army to reënforce others. The last instance had
been a call from General Beauregard for reënforcements from the Army
of Virginia. He had always been attentive, and ready as far as he
could, to meet the wants of other commands of our army, but at this
time those who knew his condition could not suppose he had any men to
spare; yet the fact of thinking so was a compliment to his success in
resisting the large army which was assailing his small one. There had
always been entire co-intelligence and accord between General Lee and
myself, but the Congress about this time thought his power would be
increased by giving him the nominal dignity of general-in-chief,
under which he resumed, as far as he could, the general charge of
armies from which, at his urgent solicitation, I had relieved him
after he took command, in the field, of the Army of Northern Virginia.
A few days subsequent to the events in North Carolina to which
reference has been made, General Lee proposed to me that General J.
E. Johnston should be put in command of the troops in North Carolina.
He still had the confidence in that officer which I had once felt,
but which his campaigns in Mississippi and Georgia had impaired. With
the understanding that General Lee was himself to supervise and
control the operations, I assented to the assignment. General
Johnston, on the 23d of February, at Charlotte, North Carolina,
relieved General Beauregard and assumed command. General Lee's first
instructions to General Johnston were to "concentrate all available
forces and drive back Sherman." The first part of the instructions was
well executed; the last part of it was more desirable than practicable,
though the brief recital made herein of the events of the campaign
claimed the credit due to a vigorous effort.
General Johnston's force, according to his estimate, when he took
command, amounted to about sixteen thousand infantry and artillery,
and four thousand cavalry; if to this be added the portion of the
Army of Tennessee, about twenty-five hundred men, under command of
General Stephen D, Lee, which afterward joined the army at
Smithfield, North Carolina, and that of General Bragg's command at
Goldsboro, which amounted to about eight thousand, the aggregate
would be about thirty thousand five hundred men of all arms.
After leaving Columbia, the course of the Federal army through
Winnsboro, across the Catawba at Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, and
Peay's Ferry, and in the direction of Cheraw on the Great Pedee,
indicated that it would attempt to cross the Cape Fear River at
Fayetteville, North Carolina--a town sixty miles south of Raleigh,
and of special importance, as containing an arsenal, several
Government shops, and a large portion of the machinery which had been
removed from Harper's Ferry--and effect a junction at that point
with General Schofield's command, then known to be at Wilmington. Up
to this time, while no encounter of any magnitude had taken place,
the enemy's progress had been much impeded by the Confederate
cavalry, and the robbery of private citizens by gangs of armed
banditti, called "foraging parties," was in a large measure
prevented. The right of an army to forage as it advances through an
enemy's country is not questioned. But the right to forage, to
collect food for men and horses, does not mean the right to rob
household furniture, plate, trinkets, and every conceivable species
of private property, and to burn whatever could not be carried away,
together with the dwellings. General Sherman complained that some of
these "foragers," who were caught in the commission of the
above-named offenses, and had added thereto the greater crime of
assaulting women, had been summarily dealt with by some of those
whose wives and daughters they had outraged, and whose homes they had
made desolate; and he informed General Hampton that in retaliation he
had ordered a number of Confederate prisoners of war to be put to
death. To arrest this brutality General Hampton promptly informed him
that, "for every soldier of mine murdered by you, I shall have
executed at once two of yours, giving in all cases preference to any
officers who may be in our hands," and adding, with a view to check
the inhuman system of burning the houses of those citizens whom they
had robbed, that he had ordered his men "to shoot down all of your
men who are caught burning houses." [117] This notice and the
knowledge that General Hampton would keep his word, produced, it is
believed, a very salutary effect, and thereafter the fear of
punishment wrought a reform which the dictates of honor and humanity
had been powerless to effect.
The historian of Sherman's "Great March," in his illustrated
narrative of that expedition, describes both with pen and pencil the
manner in which "with untiring zeal the soldiers hunted for concealed
treasures. . . . Wherever the army halted," he writes, "almost every
inch of ground in the vicinity of the dwellings was poked by ramrods,
pierced with sabers, or upturned with spades," searching for
"valuable personal effects, plate, jewelry, and other rich goods, as
well as articles of food, such as hams, sugar, flour, etc. . . . It
was comical," adds the chronicler, "to see a group of these
red-bearded, barefooted, ragged veterans punching the unoffending
earth in an apparently idiotic but certainly most energetic way. If
they 'struck a vein,' a spade was instantly put into requisition, and
the coveted wealth was speedily unearthed. Nothing escaped the
observation of these sharp-witted soldiers. A woman standing upon the
porch of a house, apparently watching their proceedings, instantly
became an object of suspicion, and she was watched until some
movement betrayed a place of concealment. The fresh earth recently
thrown up, a bed of flowers just set out, the slightest indication of
a change in appearance or position, all attracted the gaze of these
military agriculturists. It was all fair spoil of war, and the search
made one of the excitements of the march." [118] The author of the
work from which the foregoing is an extract was an aide-de-camp on
the staff of General Sherman. The playful manner in which he
describes these habitual acts of plunder of "plate, jewelry and other
rich goods" from private and undefended dwellings shows that not
only was such conduct not forbidden by the military authorities, but
that it was permitted and applauded, that it was practiced "wherever
the army halted" under the eye of the staff-officers of the General
commanding, and was looked upon as one of the pleasurable
"excitements of the march." Indeed, so agreeable was the impression
made by these scenes of robbery of women's "rich goods" that he has
adorned his narrative with a full-page illustration, exhibiting a
plantation home surrounded by soldiers engaged, as this staff-officer
humorously terms it, in "treasure-seeking," while the lady of the
house--its only apparent occupant--stands upon the veranda, with
hands uplifted, beseeching them not to steal the watch and chain
which they are taking out of a vessel which they have just dug up.
That the foreign mercenaries, of which the Federal army was largely
composed, should have been guilty of such disgraceful conduct, when
free from the observation of their officers, is conceivable; but it
is difficult to imagine that, in the nineteenth century, such acts as
are described above could be committed habitually, in view of the
officer of highest rank in the army of a civilized country, and not
merely pass unpunished or unrebuked, but be recorded with conspicuous
approval in the pages of a military history.
The advance of the enemy's columns across the Catawba, Lynch's Creek,
and the Pedee, at Cheraw, though retarded as much as possible by the
vigilant skill of our cavalry under Generals Hampton, Butler, and
Wheeler, was steady and continuous. General Johnston's hope that,
from the enemy's order of moving by wings, sometimes a day's march
from each other, he could find an opportunity to strike one of their
columns in the passage of the Cape Fear River, when the other was not
in supporting distance, was unhappily disappointed.
On March 6th, near Kinston, General Bragg with a reënforcement of
less than two thousand men attacked and routed three divisions of the
enemy under Major-General Cox, capturing fifteen hundred prisoners
and three field-pieces, and inflicting heavy loss in killed and
wounded. This success, though inspiring, was on too small a scale to
produce important results. During the march from the Catawba to the
Cape Fear several brilliant cavalry affairs took place, in which our
troops displayed their wonted energy and dash. Among these the most
conspicuous were General Butler's at Mount Elon, where he defeated a
detachment sent to tear up the railroad at Florence; General
Wheeler's attack and repulse of the left flank of the enemy at
Hornesboro, March 4th; a similar exploit by the same officer at
Rockingham on the 7th; the attack and defeat by General Hampton of a
detachment on the 8th; the surprise and capture of General
Kilpatrick's camp by General Hampton on the morning of the 10th,
driving the enemy into an adjoining swamp, and taking possession of
his artillery and wagon-train, and the complete rout of a large
Federal party by General Hampton with an inferior force at
Fayetteville on the 11th.
As it was doubtful whether General Sherman's advance from
Fayetteville would be directed to Goldsboro or Raleigh, General
Johnston took position with a portion of his command at Smithfield,
which is nearly equidistant from each of those places, leaving
General Hardee to follow the road from Fayetteville to Raleigh, which
for several miles is also the direct road from Fayetteville to
Smithfield, and posted one division of his cavalry on the Raleigh
road, and another on that to Goldsboro. On the 16th of March General
Hardee was attacked by two corps of the enemy, a few miles south of
Averysboro, a place nearly half-way between Fayetteville and Raleigh.
Falling back a few hundred yards to a stronger position, he easily
repelled the repeated attacks of these two corps during the day, and,
learning in the evening that the enemy's corps were moving to turn
his left, he withdrew in the night toward Smithfield.
Early in the morning of the 18th General Johnston obtained definite
information that General Sherman was marching on Goldsboro, the right
wing of his army being about a day's march distant from the left.
General Johnston took immediate steps to attack the head of the left
wing on the morning of the 19th, and ordered the troops at Smithfield
and General Hardee's command to march at once to Bentonville and take
position between that village and the road on which the enemy was
advancing. An error as to the relative distance which our troops and
those of the enemy would have to move, exaggerating the distance
between the roads on which the enemy was advancing and diminishing
the distance that our troops would have to march, caused the failure
to concentrate our troops in time to attack the enemy's left wing
while in column; but, when General Hardee's troops reached
Bentonville in the morning, the attack was commenced. The battle
lasted through the greater part of the day, resulting in the enemy's
being driven from two lines of intrenchments, and his taking shelter
in a dense wood, where it was impracticable for our troops to
preserve their line of battle or to employ the combined strength of
the three arms. On the 20th the two wings of the Federal army,
numbering, as estimated by General Johnston, upward of seventy
thousand, came together and repeatedly attacked a division of our
force (Hoke's) which occupied an intrenched position parallel to the
road to Averysboro; but every attack was handsomely repulsed. On the
next day (21st) an attempt by the enemy to reach Bentonville in the
rear of our center, and thus cut off our only route of retreat, was
gallantly defeated by an impetuous and skillful attack, led by
Generals Hardee and Hampton, on the front and both flanks of the
enemy's column, by which he was compelled to retreat as rapidly as he
had advanced. In this attack. General Hardee's only son, a noble boy,
charging gallantly with the Eighth Texas Cavalry, fell mortally
wounded. On the night of the 21st our troops were withdrawn across
Mill Creek, and in the evening of the 22d bivouacked near Smithfield.
On the 23d the forces of General Sherman and those of General
Schofield were united at Goldsboro, where they remained inactive for
upward of two weeks.
On the 9th of April the Confederate forces took up the line of march
to Raleigh, and reached that city early in the afternoon of the same
day closely followed by the Federal army.