SHERMAN'S "MARCH TO THE SEA"
Upon reaching this decision, which had the approval both of General
Grant and of the War Department, Sherman's first thought was to equip
Thomas for the task of dealing successfully with Hood. He detached
strong army corps from his own force and sent them to Thomas's
reinforcement. He ordered the prompt abandonment of all unimportant
posts held in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama,
sending their garrisons to Nashville or Chattanooga, still further to
strengthen his lieutenant for independent resistance. He asked Grant to
send to Thomas also all the recruits that had been gathering at various
points in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. In these
ways he secured for Thomas a total force much stronger than Hood's, and
knowing Thomas's capacity he felt himself entirely justified in leaving
the defense of the Tennessee strongholds to that general with orders to
follow Hood whithersoever he should go and in the end destroy him.
Then Sherman completed the work of destruction which Hood had begun
upon the railway line between Atlanta and Chattanooga. By way of
stripping himself for action he sent to the North every sick man, every
wounded man and every other man in his army whom he deemed less than
perfectly fit for the arduous work now to be undertaken and when that
was done he utterly destroyed all that remained of the railroad.
He stripped his army of all baggage that could in any wise be dispensed
with, but organized perhaps the greatest wagon train that any army
had ever carried with it, for the transportation of food supplies
and ammunition. His was now an army without a base and without
communications. It was his purpose to subsist his men upon such
supplies as he could take from the country through which he intended to
march, but for the sake of perfect security he planned to carry fully
ten days' rations with him at all times, or quite enough to feed his
army on short rations for three or four weeks in the event of necessity.
Now that Hood had gone northward, Sherman knew that he had no enemy in
his pathway except an insignificant cavalry force, and that he might
march whithersoever he pleased without fear of serious molestation or
opposition. With ten days' full rations in his wagon train and with the
country to live upon there was simply no possibility of harm coming to
him or his army.
He hoped that one or other of the expeditions planned by Grant against
the southern Atlantic coast might reduce the defenses of Savannah and
capture that city before his arrival there. If not, he had force enough
to take the town himself, or, failing that, to capture Charleston or
Mobile or Wilmington, in any case establishing a new base for himself
on the sea.
Many years later, at the Authors Club in New York, in the presence
of the writer of these volumes, some one mentioned this operation to
General Sherman, speaking of it as "The March to the Sea." Thereupon
General Sherman turned to the writer and said--as nearly as a good
memory can report--
Just see how poets glorify things! That march was nothing more
than a change of base,--an operation perfectly familiar to
every educated soldier. But a poet got hold of it, nicknamed
it "Sherman's March to the Sea," and gave it a totally new
significance to the popular mind. Let me explain. At Atlanta I was
in the midst of the enemy's country. My nearest base of supplies
was Chattanooga--a hundred miles away. That place was itself liable
to siege, and it lay the width of two states away from my real and
ultimate source of supplies on the Ohio. The enemy might cut it off
at any time and even if he failed to do that, I could not defend
the hundred miles of single track railroad that connected it with
Atlanta. At Atlanta my army was in the air. Its communications were
likely to be cut at any moment. Obviously, I must either retire
northward from that place, or I must move southward in search of
a new base of supplies. As there was no force south of me capable
of resisting my advance in that direction, I decided to march
toward the south, thus securing a new base for my self within
easy sea communication with sources of supply at the north, and
at the same time cutting the Confederacy in two again and, more
important still, demonstrating the nearly complete collapse of the
Confederate power of resistance. So I decided to make the march and
change my base. That is all there was of it. But the poet got hold
of it--and so instead of a "military change of base," it has become
the "March to the Sea."[7]
[7] This report of General Sherman's words was written out
while memory was fresh, submitted to General Sherman and
approved by him as correct.--Author.
Sherman's first plan with respect to Atlanta had been to make a great
military fortress of the place. To that end, as we already know, he had
issued his decree of depopulation. Now that he had decided to abandon
the town he destroyed it by fire.
His plan of march through Georgia was to move in four columns upon
parallel roads, throwing out foragers in every direction to seize upon
every ounce of food supplies that still remained in the country, to
burn all mills, to capture all live stock, to seize upon all grain and
to strip the region bare even of poultry and vegetables. It was to cut
a swath of utter desolation through Georgia--a swath sixty miles wide
and nearly three hundred miles long--in every square mile of which he
should "make a solitude and call it peace."
The desolating march began on the fifteenth of November, Atlanta being
left in ashes and smoldering ruins. Under Sherman's marching orders,
houses were not to be entered by the soldiers--but those orders were
freely disregarded. Only corps commanders were privileged to burn
mills, cotton gins and the like; but there were matches in every pocket
and they were used with little if any respect for orders which nobody
regarded seriously as commands intended to be obeyed. The orders
included a provision that wherever the inhabitants should "manifest
local hostility, army commanders should order and enforce a devastation
more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility."
Under such orders the progress of the army was marked at every step
by devastation and desolation. General Sherman always contended that
he did not intend it to be so, but to a victorious and practically
unopposed army, moving through an enemy's country, such orders as
those that General Sherman issued could not be expected to result in
anything less than the utmost possible destruction. In express terms,
his orders authorized the cavalry and artillery to "appropriate freely
and without limit," the "horses, mules, wagons, etc., belonging to
the inhabitants," and soldiers were authorized to "gather turnips,
potatoes, and other vegetables and to drive in stock in sight of their
camp." It was suggested in the orders that "in all foraging the parties
engaged will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion
for their maintenance." But as to what constituted such "reasonable
portion" of the property of non-combatants thus to be plundered of
their substance, every foraging party was left to be sole judge. No
instructions were given for the enforcement of this saving clause of
the orders by any authority and in fact it was never enforced.
Sherman's army, moving in four columns over a track sixty miles wide,
simply seized upon everything that it found, destroying what it could
not use, and there followed it a corps of utterly irresponsible camp
followers--plain, simple thieves and robbers--who completed the
devastation by taking or wantonly destroying whatever the foraging
parties had overlooked or spared.
The hideousness of war was never better illustrated than in Sherman's
march to the sea. Its wantonness was never more conspicuously shown
forth, than in a military operation which had absolutely nothing of
glory in it, inasmuch as it involved no battle, no possible risk of
encounter with any force, and no enterprise more daring than raids
upon barnyards and turnip patches. An army of more than sixty-two
thousand men and sixty-five guns, perfectly equipped and utterly
unopposed by any force that could even pretend to give battle to it,
moved over a space of nearly three hundred miles, making war only upon
non-combatants and leaving a blackened path of desolation behind. It
fought no battles--for the reason that there was no army anywhere
to fight. It engaged in no strategy--for the reason that there was
no enemy to maneuver against. It encountered no more risk than does
a picnic excursion in time of profound peace. Yet at every foot of
its progress it wrought such havoc among a helpless people as even
grim-visaged war might well blush to own.
It was entirely proper that General Sherman should march his army to
the sea by way of changing its base and demonstrating the incapacity
of the Confederate country for further resistance. It was entirely
proper that on such a march he should draw upon the country for the
means of subsisting his army. But all this might have been done by a
man of Sherman's commanding ability, armed with such resources as he
had under his hand without inflicting anything of hardship upon the
helpless people whose homes he rendered desolate and from whose mouths
he snatched away the little that was left to them of food.
After an exceedingly slow march of nearly thirty days, Sherman's army
in perfect condition reached the defenses of Savannah on the thirteenth
of December. Easily sweeping over Fort McAllister Sherman established
communication with the blockading fleet and the "March to the Sea" was
finished. On the morning of the twenty-first his troops marched into
Savannah, which the Confederates had evacuated.