From Western Deserts to Carolina Swamps: A Civil War Soldier's Journals and Letters Home

8: Savannah, Georgia, December 15, 1864–January 26, 1865

153 CHAPTER EIGHT Savannah, Georgia, December 15, 1864–January 26, 1865 S avannah was the oldest as well as the largest city in Georgia in 1860, with a population of 22,292, about twothirds of whom were free white citizens and one-third slaves. The community lay on a bluff surrounded by tidewater marshes and rice fields crossed by swamp-bordered creeks and rivers. Roads and railroads radiated from the urban area along five narrow causeways. In the decade before the Civil War, commerce and agriculture combined to make Savannah an enormously wealthy community. The railroads carried more than four million bales of cotton from the interiors of Georgia and South Carolina to ships waiting at Savannah’s wharves, including 500,000 bales in 1860 alone. The surrounding country produced almost 26 million pounds of rice in 1860; more than the rest of Georgia combined. Southern yellow pine by the millions of board feet also left Savannah as timber and sawn lumber. Flour and rice mills, several foundries, sawmills, cotton presses, and other industries contributed to the wealth of the town.1 The Civil War ended all of this, with the Union occupation of Port Royal and Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, only thirty miles distant, followed by the bombardment and capture of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River. This virtually blocked access by the sea after the spring of 1862. Sherman’s advance in December 1864 cut off approaches to the city by road and railroad, save the Union plank road to Hardeeville in South Carolina, which he thought lay beyond his immediate reach.2 Grant, as commander-in-chief, originally intended to send Sherman andhisarmybyshiptoVirginiatofinishRobertE.Lee.Bymid-December, 154 Chapter eight Grant had rethought this and in a letter of December 16 the army’s chief of staff told Sherman “that this whole matter of your future action should be left to your discretion.”3 Sherman had already begun placing rifled siege guns where they could bombard the center of Savannah. On December 17, he demanded the surrender of the city under threat of the “harshest measures” if he had to resort to an assault. The Confederate commander, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, refused the demand; he already had authority to save his troops and material rather than sacrifice all in a drawn-out resistance.4 Map 8. Savannah, Georgia, and environs, December 1864–January 1865. Courtesy of author. Savannah, Georgia 155 Even before the loss of Fort McAllister at the southern end of Savannah’s defenses, preparations to evacuate Hardee’s command were underway. Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard arrived and directed the construction of a series of pontoon bridges across the Savannah River, using plantation rice-flats, to allow a withdrawal into South Carolina. When Hardee telegraphed Beauregard for more help, the general returned to push the work to completion on the 19th. Sherman had no way of knowing what Beauregard and Hardee were up to when he made his demands.5 Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum, commanding Sherman’s Left Wing with the 14th and 20th Corps, could have thwarted the whole escape plan. He proposed on the night of December 15 to cross an entire corps to the South Carolina bank of the Savannah River, threaten the enemy’s flank, seal off that side of the city, and be in a position to shell every part of it. Sherman, however, had an attack of the hesitations. As late as December 20, while Sherman was out with the fleet or at Hilton Head, Slocum was told that there were no new orders. Only a thin line of pickets and a screen of cavalry lay between him and the Union Causeway, the single remaining escape route. That day, Sherman’s heavy guns carried shot and shell to all parts of the enemy’s works.6 On the night of December 20–21, Hardee led his troops across the Savannah River and escaped along the Union Causeway to Hardeeville, South Carolina. Beauregard’s aide, Col. Alexander Chisolm, wrote in later years that “This was one of the neatest achievements of the war.”7 Figure 26. Pontoon bridge on the Savannah River, which the Rebels crossed during the evacuation of Savannah on the morning of December 21, 1864. W. T. Crane sketch, reproduced from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 1865, in collections of the Library of Congress (negative LC-USZ62–31274...