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.