Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction Allen Guelzo (novels to read .txt) 📖

This was, obviously, an outrageously risky proposition, and both Grant and Lincoln objected that such a march would string out Sherman’s already lengthy supply lines to even more vulnerable lengths. Also, they pointed out, Sherman made no mention of what might happen if Hood and the Army of Tennessee decided to imitate Bragg’s maneuver of 1862 and swing an end run around Sherman back up into Tennessee. Sherman’s reply was the essence of military daring: he did not propose to use a supply line. He was going to conduct a large-scale infantry version of one of Forrest’s raids. Like Forrest, he would strip his army down to the bare essentials and encourage his men to forage off the Georgia countryside for whatever else they needed until they struck the coast. “I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!” Sherman assured Grant. “We have on hand over 8,000 cattle and 3,000,000 [rations of] bread,” and for anything else, “we can forage in the interior of the State.” As for Hood, Sherman did not particularly care what the southern general did. Sherman would detach 60,000 men under George Thomas to return and hold Tennessee, but he would keep the rest of his army (nearly 62,000 men) on the road to Savannah come what may. “Damn him,” Sherman snarled at the mention of Hood. “If he’ll go to the Ohio River, I’ll give him rations. Let him go north. My business is down south.”60

Grant mulled the proposition over, and on October 13 persuaded Lincoln to approve it. One month later Sherman marched out of Atlanta, his bands playing “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” and one-third of the city of Atlanta going up in flames behind him. Moving in four immense columns, Sherman swept aside the feeble resistance of the Georgia militia and burned a swath fifty miles wide across the state. He instructed his men to “forage liberally on the country during the march,” an order they obeyed with gusto. “This is probably the most gigantic pleasure expedition ever planned,” exclaimed one Illinois captain. “We had a gay old campaign,” wrote another soldier. “Destroyed all we could not eat… burned their cotton & gins spilled their sorghum, burned & twisted their R[ail] roads and raised Hell generally.” On December 10 Sherman turned up outside Savannah, and on December 21 the Confederate defenders evacuated the city before Sherman could trap them inside. “I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah,” Sherman telegraphed Lincoln, “with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” 61

Along the way, Sherman’s men confiscated nearly 7,000 mules and horses, 13,000 cattle, 10.4 million pounds of grain, and 10.7 million pounds of animal fodder. All told, Sherman estimated that his march to the sea cost the Confederacy all “the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah,” plus “the sweet potatoes, cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry, and… ten thousand horses and mules, as well as a countless number of their slaves.” On a rough estimate, that set “the damage done to the State of Georgia and its military resources at one hundred millions of dollars; at least twenty millions of which has inured to our advantage, and the remainder is simple waste and destruction.” Sherman admitted that “this may seem a hard species of warfare.” But it would concentrate Southern minds wonderfully, and bring “the sad realities of war home to those who have been directly or indirectly instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities.”62

Meanwhile, just as Sherman had expected, Hood took the Army of Tennessee off on a diversionary campaign through northern Mississippi and up into Tennessee, hoping to compel Sherman to break off his march and follow him back out of Georgia. “Unless the Army could be heavily reinforced,” Hood reasoned, “there was, in the present emergency, but one plan to be adopted: by manoeuvres to draw Sherman back into the mountains, then beat him in battle, and at least regain our lost territory.” Contrary to Sherman’s expectations, Hood’s opportunities for causing serious damage in Tennessee were far greater than had been expected. For one thing, Hood had Forrest’s cavalry with him, and that was danger enough on its own terms; for another, George Thomas, who was supposed to be covering Tennessee on Sherman’s behalf, was slow to get the infantry Sherman had left him concentrated in one place. If Hood moved fast enough, it was entirely possible that he could isolate parts of Thomas’ command while they were still on the roads back to Nashville, and annihilate them by pieces.63

However, Hood’s 39,000 men were pitifully unequipped for a November campaign. Hood himself was too much of a physical wreck from his wounds, and the opium and alcohol he took as a cure for pain, to seize the opportunities thrown into his path. On November 30, at Franklin, Tennessee, Hood caught up with part of the force Thomas was supposed to be using to watch him, and attempted to overwhelm it by throwing his men at the Yankees in a daylong frontal assault. All those tactics did was leave Hood with 6,300 casualties, including twelve of his general officers and fifty-five regimental commanders, while the Federals slipped away north to join Thomas at Nashville. 64

Unwilling to admit defeat, Hood advanced on Nashville, where Thomas had concentrated his 60,000 men, and tried to besiege it. Grant was frantic to see Hood destroyed, and warned Thomas, “If you delay attack longer the mortifying spectacle will be witnessed of a rebel army moving for the Ohio River. … I am in hopes of receiving a dispatch from you to-day announcing that you have moved.” However, Thomas would not be hurried, even by Ulysses S. Grant. “They treat me as if I were a boy and incapable of planning a campaign,” complained the normally unflappable Thomas. “If they