Sherman, Railroad General

Jesse C. Burt lives in Nashville, and he earned his Ph.D. in 1950 with a study of the N.C. ô- St. L. Railway , successor of the NirC. This is his eleventh published article in a historical journal dealing with the Tennessee railroad. Sherman, Railroad General JESSE C. BURT on a hot and sultry day in July, 1864, a group of Confederate soldiers lay in the shade of a tree in North Georgia. They had a fine and interesting view of General Sherman's camps about Big Shanty, and a good view of the Western and Atlantic Railroad's tracks. One soldier had a piece of sensational news. He said, "Well, the Yanks will have to git up and git now, for I heard General Johnston himself say that General Wheeler had blown up the tunnel, and that the Yanks would have to retreat, because they could get no more rations." Another rebel, who must have been more versed in the lively subject of William Tecumseh Sherman, snorted in that vast disgust for which foot soldiers have ever been without equal "Oh hell! Don't you know that old Sherman carries a duplicate tunnel along?"1 The Johnny Reb did not exaggerate too much. It is difficult to find in history a general who capitalized upon the opportunities afforded by railroads in die style of Sherman. Before, during, and after, the Civil War, Sherman's extraordinary intellect was stimulated by the possibilities of the Iron Horse. His support of the Union Pacific was a decisive factor in causing it to be constructed. As early as 1849, Sherman took an interest in a railroad that would follow a route through the Sierra Nevadas, and which would link the Pacific with the Atlantic. In 1855 while working as a banker in San Francisco, Sherman was vice-president of the Central Pacific Railroad company. On the eve of the Civil War, his mind definitely was excited by the discussions of the railroad that was to become the mighty Union Pacific.2 1 William T. Sherman, Memoirs (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1892), II, p. 151. ' Lloyd Lewis, Sherman, Fighting Prophet ( New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1932), pp. 108-09. 45 46JESSEC. BURT Without "the railroad," Sherman insisted after the Civil War, the great Atlanta Campaign "would simply have been impossible."3 British writers have stressed the part played by railroads in Sherman's military success. Such commentators as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart and Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred H. Burne maintain that Sherman made such expert use of the railroad that he turned his command into probably the best equipped and supplied army in the Union.* But it is distinctly possible that Sherman, the railroad general, is not nearly so well known as Sherman, the railroad wrecker. On March 18, 1864, Sherman succeeded U. S. Grant in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, with his headquarters at Nashville , capital of Tennessee, and the main Federal supply depot of the west.5 Soon Grant was to march against R. E. Lee and Richmond. Sherman 's part in the grand strategy was stated by himself: "... I am to knock Jos. Johnston, and to do as much damage to the resources of the enemy as possible."8 Sherman had scant time to prepare for the Atlanta Campaign — perhaps thirty days to supply an army of 100,000 men and 35,000 animals. The magnitude of the task was almost paralyzing, at first; "more difficult than to fight," Sherman wrote his father-in-law in regard to the build-up for the big push into what he called "the terrible door of death."7 Three railroads would count in the Campaign and they were: the Louisville and Nashville, the Nashville and Chattanooga, the Western and Atlantic (Chattanooga to Atlanta). These lines connected so as to make a single railroad from Louisville to Atlanta. While the L&N and N&C provided General Sherman with the direct route, the Memphis and Charleston from Decatur, Alabama, to Stevenson, Alabama, was used in conjunction with the Nashville and Decatur as a relief line to the direct N&C. In addition, the long-projected Nashville and Northwestern, which before the war had been built from Nashville to Kingston...