Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order

Chapter 14: Punishing South Carolina and Ensuring Victory

CHAPTER 14 PUNISHING SOUTH CAROLINA AND ENSURING VICTORY SHERMAN'S MARCH ACROSS GEORGIA was the successful implementation of the use of destruction to produce order. Confederate civilians had experienced firsthand the full implication of continued resistance to Union forces-hard, unflinching war against their property and possessions. Sherman thought the campaign had been well executed; an important military victory had been won with minimal human casualties though substantial property loss. Southern lives had been spared so that a chastened people could quit the Confederacy and rejoin the Union. If they refused, he was ready to inflict further lessons in the Carolinas. Sherman tried to demonstrate the benefits of peace, and Savannah's citizens were surprised and happy at how well he treated them. The City Council passed a Resolution ofThanks for his help in obtaining food. Most people, however, worried, as one South Carolina woman did, that he was "patting them with his cushioned paws, but the claws will soon reappear." But Sherman and his soldiers had no plans to harass the city dwellers; in fact they were impatient to press on. City life was "dull and tame." In the fields and forests on the march, Sherman would escape the Confederate women who were constantly demanding protection for their homes and possessions. In the piney woods, he could avoid the pleas of Northern cotton merchants desperate to protect their profit. He was eager to get back on the move and end this war. I After Grant told him on December 27 that he no longer had to 317 SHERMAN --------------------------*-------------------------sail his troops up to Virginia, Sherman began to move out of Savannah toward Lee's army on the much-preferred overland march. On New Year's Day 1865, in the course of the celebrations, Sherman told O. O. Howard, the commander of his right wing, to move his troops by ship to Beaufort, South Carolina, and then overland to Pocotaligo on the railroad between Charleston and Savannah. Meanwhile, Henry W. Slocum's left wing, accompanied by Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry, was to cross the Savannah River over a causeway and pontoon bridge and establish itself near Coosawhatchie, South Carolina. Howard had some difficulties, but Slocum ran into major problems. The worst rains since 1840 had turned the river into a three-mile-wide lake, and Slocum could not move his wing across until the end ofJanuary. Sherman had to wait impatiently with Howard in Pocotaligo. Noticeably grumpy to all around him, he complained to Admiral Porter: "The weather has been villainous, and all the country is under water, and retards me much. It may be some days yet before I can cast off, as the roads are under water, and my men are not exactly amphibious yet, nor the mules either."2 Sherman organized as much diversion as possible for his movement to keep the enemy off-balance. Thomas in Tennessee organized raids into North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi. The navy made demonstrations along the Atlantic coast, particularly at Charleston. Sherman asked General]. G. Foster, whom he had left in command of Savannah, to do "whatever you may do to aid me along the coast." On January 15, 1865, a combined army-navy force under General Alfred H. Terry and Admiral D. D. Porter took Fort Fisher at the mouth of Cape Fear in North Carolina. Meanwhile, Schofield and the Twenty-third Corps were on their way from Tennessee.3 The army organization had not changed from the march to the sea: two wings consisting of two columns each and a cavalry unit that rode wherever it was needed. On January 2, Sherman told Grant how he planned to use this sixty-thousand-man force. He would have his right wing feint in the direction of Charleston; his left wing would feint toward Augusta. His actual objective would be Columbia. The idea was to confuse the Confederates into protecting Charleston and Augusta, thus leaving the way open to Columbia. "I don't like to boast, but I believe this army has a confidence in itself that makes it almost invincible." Actually the 318 PUNISHING SOUTH CAROLINA AND ENSURING VICTORY --------------------------*-------------------------army remained confident in him. "Wherever he goes this Army will go most willingly and faithfully," one officer said.4 No substantial Confederate forces lay to Sherman's front. The Army of Tennessee, which had opposed him during the Atlanta campaign and had later been crushed by Thomas and...