The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi

15 The Last Campaigns

268 15 } The Last Campaigns fter receiving authorization to march through North Carolina and South Carolina on January 2, 1865, General William T. Sherman prepared for a move that would be far more difficult and complex than his march across Georgia. He playfully informed his wife that he intended to “dive again beneath the Surface to turn up again in Some mysterious place.” Sherman admitted that Robert E. Lee would probably “not let me walk over the track without making me sustain some loss,” but he had a clear idea of what he intended to do and how he meant to do it. “We will be along soon,” he wrote David D. Porter, “and the braggart Carolinians will find in our Western boys a different kind of metal.”1 Keeping sixty thousand men supplied as they marched across the Carolinas was Sherman’s biggest worry. He gambled that they could find enough food along the way until the army reached Goldsboro, North Carolina, where it could make contact with a rail system to bring in supplies from coastal shipping. Grant planned to funnel all the provisions he could to meet Sherman’s command. He even contemplated shipping these troops from any port held by Union forces the rest of the way to Petersburg, though the lieutenant general preferred that Sherman march all the way to the rear of Lee’s position. Sherman planned to “gradually close in” on Lee, “cutting all communications ” much as he had treated Hood at Atlanta. He even offered to send a good division or corps commander to replace Major General Benjamin F. Butler at the head of the Army of the James, which was cooperating with the Army of the Potomac along the Petersburg lines. He had several “new and fresh men, able to handle large armies.” As for John Bell Hood, Grant assumed that, after the defeat at Nashville, the Army of Tennessee would be shifted to the Carolinas to oppose Sherman. This was “just where we want him to go,” Grant informed Henry Halleck.2 Unlike Sherman’s departure from Atlanta, the start of the Carolinas campaign involved a difficult movement across the Savannah River, with Henry W. Slocum and Oliver O. Howard moving their commands in different directions. Sherman left Savannah in charge A The Last Campaigns 269 of John Foster and took his staff on a steamer headed for Beaufort, South Carolina, on January 21. Howard shifted the Seventeenth Corps from Savannah to Beaufort by February 10, using only a handful of available boats. From Beaufort, Frank Blair marched his Seventeenth Corps twenty-­ five miles to Pocotaligo, where a Confederate fort had secured control of the vital Charleston and Savannah Railroad since early in the war. The Federals occupied the fort without opposition. Meanwhile, Slocum crossed the Savannah River at Sister’s Ferry, encountering land mines planted by the Confederates. Though rain delayed all movements, Sherman was able to reunite his command along the railroad linking Charleston with Augusta by mid-­ February. The Federals tore up fifty miles of track while accumulating food in the region, then advanced north toward Orangeburg to hit the rail line linking Charleston with Columbia.3 The weather and terrain became a worse enemy than the Confederates, at least during the early part of the Carolinas campaign. Twentieth Corps commander Alpheus Williams referred to the “devilish nature of the country,” with rivers that ran in “six to ten channels with the worst entangled swamps between, often three miles wide.” Small Confederate forces dug in on the opposite side of these streams, and “it took a good deal of skirmishing in water waist-­ deep to get them out.” Between the crossings of each river lay roads that stretched across sandy, soft ground. With several days of winter rains, Marching through the Carolinas. This sketch illustrates the difficulties encountered as Sherman’s large army group struggled through the lowlands of South Carolina in winter. (Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 4:681) 270 The Last Campaigns these roads seemed to lose their bottom. “Corduroy would sink, again and again,” Williams continued. “But we became expert road-­ makers, first piling on all the fence rails and then cutting the young pines.” A member of Williams ’s corps reported that his feet seemed to weigh fifty pounds each from accumulated mud and water after crossing the wide lowland of one river.4 Although many Federals had a desire...