Life in Dixie during the War, 1861-1862-1863-1864-1865

July 14, to General J. E. Smith, at Allatoona: “If you entertain a bare suspicion against any family, send it North. Any loafer or suspicious person seen at any time should be imprisoned and sent off. If guerrillas trouble the road or wires they should be shot without mercy.”

September 8, to General Webster after the capture of Atlanta: “Don’t let any citizens come to Atlanta; not one. I won’t allow trade or manufactures of any kind, but you will remove all the present population, and make Atlanta a pure military town.” To General Halleck he writes: “I am not willing to have Atlanta encumbered by the families of our enemies.” Of this wholesale depopulation, General Hood complained, by flag of truce, as cruel and contrary to the usages of civilized nations and customs of war, receiving this courteous and gentlemanly reply (September 12): “I think I understand the laws of civilized nations and the ‘customs of war;’ but, if at a loss at any time, I know where to seek for information to refresh my memory.” General Hood made the correspondence, or part of it, public, on which fact, General Sherman remarks to General Halleck: “Of course, he is welcome, for the more he arouses the indignation of the Southern masses, the bigger will be the pill of bitterness they will have to swallow.”

About the middle of September, General Sherman, being still in Atlanta, endeavored to open private communication with Governor Brown and Vice-President Stephens, whom he knew to be at variance with the administration at Richmond on certain points of public policy. Mr. Stephens refused to reply to a verbal message, but wrote to Mr. King, the intermediary, that if the general would say that there was any prospect of their agreeing upon “terms to be submitted to the action of their respective governments,” he would, as requested, visit him at Atlanta. The motives urged by Mr. King were General Sherman’s extreme desire for peace, and to hit upon “some plan of terminating this fratricidal war without the further effusion of blood.” But in General Sherman’s despatch of September 14, to Mr. Lincoln, referring to these attempted negotiations, the humanitarian point of view is scarcely so prominent. He says: “It would be a magnificent stroke of policy if I could, without surrendering a foot of ground or principle, arouse the latent enmity to Davis.”

On October 20, he writes to General Thomas from Summerville, giving an idea of his plan of operations: “Out of the forces now here and at Atlanta, I propose to organize an efficient army of 60,000 to 65,000 men, with which I propose to destroy Macon, Augusta, and it may be, Savannah and Charleston. By this I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.”

Despatch of October 22, to General Grant: “I am now perfecting arrangements to put into Tennessee a force able to hold the line of the Tennessee, while I break up the railroad in front of Dalton, including the city of Atlanta, and push into Georgia and break up all its railroads and depots, capture its horses and negroes, make desolation everywhere; destroy the factories at Macon, Milledgeville and Augusta, and bring up with 60,000 men on the seashore about Savannah and Charleston.”

To General Thomas, from Kingston, November 2: “Last night we burned Rome, and in two more days will burn Atlanta” (which he was then occupying).

December 5: “Blair can burn the bridges and culverts and burn enough barns to mark the progress of his head of columns.”

December 18, to General Grant, from near Savannah: “With Savannah in our possession, at some future time, if not now, we can punish South Carolina as she deserves, and as thousands of people in Georgia hope we will do. I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, north and south, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina, to devastate that State in the manner we have done in Georgia.”

A little before this he announces to Secretary Stanton that he knows what the people of the South are fighting for. What do our readers suppose? To ravage the North with sword and fire, and crush them under their heel? Surely it must be some such delusion that inspires this ferocity of hatred, unmitigated by even a word of compassion. He may speak for himself: “Jefferson Davis has succeeded perfectly in inspiring his people with the truth that liberty and government are worth fighting for.” This was their unpardonable crime.

December 22, to General Grant: “If you can hold Lee, I could go on and smash South Carolina all to pieces.”

On the 18th General Halleck writes: “Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by some accident the place may be destroyed; and if a little salt should be sown upon its site, it may prevent the growth of future crops of nullification and secession.” To this General Sherman replies, December 24: “This war differs from European wars in this particular – we are not only fighting hostile armies, but hostile people; and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don’t think salt will be necessary. When I move, the Fifteenth corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their position will naturally throw them into Charleston first; and, if you have studied the history of that corps, you will have remarked that they generally do their work up pretty well. The truth is, the whole army is burning with insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate, but she deserves all that seems in store for her.

“I look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston, and I doubt if we shall spare the public buildings there as we did at Milledgeville.”

And now we look with interest for the despatches that would settle the vexed question as to whether Sherman or his officers, acting under his orders, burned Columbia on the 17th of February. Unfortunately, a paternal government, not thinking it good that the truth should be known, has suppressed all the despatches between the 16th and the 21st, and every other allusion to the transaction.

On the 23d, he writes to General Kilpatrick: “Let the whole people know the war is now against them, because their armies flee before us and do not defend their country or frontier as they should. It is pretty nonsense for Wheeler and Beauregard and such vain heroes to talk of our warring against women and children and prevent us reaching their homes.”

If, therefore, an army defending their country can prevent invaders from reaching their homes and families, the latter have a right to that protection; but if the invaders can break through and reach these homes, these are justified in destroying women and children. Certainly this is a great advance on the doctrine and practice of the dark ages. Another extraordinary moral consequence flows from this insufficiency of defence: “If the enemy fails to defend his country, we may rightfully appropriate what we want.” Here, now, is a nice question of martial law or casuistry, solved with the simplicity of an ancient Roman. In other words, when in the enemy’s country, the army shall be strictly careful not to seize, capture or appropriate to military or private uses, any property – that it cannot get.

“They (the Southern people) have lost all title to property, and can lose nothing not already forfeited.”

What, nothing? Not merely the houses we had built, the lands we had tilled, the churches we worshipped in – had we forfeited the right to drink of the streams, to behold the sun, to breathe the free air of heaven? What unheard of, what inconceivable crime had we committed that thus closed every gate of mercy and compassion against us, and provoked an utterance which has but one parallel – the death warrant signed by Philip II. against all Netherlanders? General Sherman has himself told us what it was: We had dared to act on the “truth that liberty and government are worth fighting for.”

On March 15, he writes to General Gillmore, advising him to draw forces from Charleston and Savannah (both then in Federal hands) to destroy a railroad, etc. “As to the garrisons of those places I don’t feel disposed to be over-generous, and should not hesitate to burn Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington, or either of them, if the garrisons were needed.”

Such are some of the results of our gleanings in this field. Is it any wonder that after reading them we fervently echo General Sherman’s devout aspiration: “I do wish the fine race of men that people the United States should rule and determine the future destiny of America.”

SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA

(Reprinted by Permission of the Illustrator Company. From the April, 1896, Number of “The Illustrator.” Copyrighted. All Rights Reserved.)

It is a proud thing for Americans to feel that there is little to bring the blush of shame to their cheeks in the contemplation of their country’s history. It is a glorious thing for our young manhood to know that the annals of their race tell of the earnest and upward progress of a people, Christian from the first, toward an ever higher civilization. It is well to reflect that when the ruthless hand of war has turned American citizenship from the paths of peace it could do little more than array strong man against sturdy foeman in an honest battle for principle, and that outrage and pillage in our broad domain have been the almost undisputed heritage of the Aborigines.

Enduring with patient fortitude the raids of savage foes upon our early frontiers, meeting the armed invasion of foreign hosts with a resistance vigorous but manly, pressing our own victorious arms to the very citadel of our Mexican neighbors without spoliation or rapine, it is sad to realize that it remained for an internecine conflict, where brother stood against brother, for an invasion by an army void of pretext of reprisal or revenge, to write upon American warfare the stigma of vandalism, rapacity and theft.

The movement from Atlanta to Savannah, which figured in history as “The March to the Sea,” was, from the standpoint of the tactician, no great achievement; it involved no more than the passage of an invincible army across some three hundred miles of country, where it could gather supplies upon its way, to effect a junction with its naval allies at a practically defenceless city. It was peculiarly lacking in the daring which is customarily ascribed to it, for it was made, practically, without resistance and along a route where no considerable force of the enemy could have been encountered. It was not a venture in the dark with a conclusion to be determined by circumstances; for the authorities at Washington were fully advised of its author’s purpose, and Gen. Sherman was assured that he would meet a formidable fleet at Savannah before he undertook it. It was no more nor less than the yielding, by this most typical barbarian conqueror of the Nineteenth century, to the spirit of pillage and excess which distinguished his prototypes in the days of the Goths and Vandals, when the homes and firesides of their enemies were at their mercy. It was a campaign remarkable only for the revival of military methods abandoned since Attila the Hun. It was, nevertheless, as carefully planned as it was ruthlessly executed. It was no sudden impulse which laid the torch to every roof-tree upon the invading army’s path. It was no spirit of retaliation for vigorous but ineffective resistance which goaded these conquerors to excess, for out of 62,204 men who began the march but 103 lost their lives before they reached Savannah. It was simply the grasping of the amplest opportunity by a man who glories in looting and destruction, and to whom human misery was a subject for jest.

At the outset let us understand that General Sherman, through all that portion of his career which began with the destruction of Atlanta, was acting upon a plan and a theory devised and adopted weeks before; that his own actions and that of his army were in no sense impulsive, but in every way controlled by premeditation, and that our authority for such a conclusion lies in the repeated statements of the General himself.

With the brutal frankness which was one of his characteristics, he wrote on September 4th, 1864, in a letter to General Halleck, which he reproduces in his autobiography: “If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking.” “I knew, of course,” he says, “that such a measure would be strongly criticized, but made up my mind to do it with the absolute certainty of its justness, and that time would sanction its wisdom. I knew that the people of the South would read in this measure two important conclusions; one that we were in earnest, and the other that if they were sincere in their common and popular clamor ‘to die in the last ditch,’ the opportunity would soon come.”

The cold-blooded candor of this statement leaves little doubt of the temperature of the well-springs which fed that organ of General Sherman corresponding to the heart of an ordinary man; but if evidence were wanting of his absolute unconcern for the sufferings of others when his own plans might be interfered with to the slightest degree, it might be found in his answer to General Hood’s proposition for an exchange of prisoners. “Some of these prisoners,” he says, “had already escaped and got in, and had described the pitiable condition of the remainder.” He had at that time about two thousand Confederate prisoners available for exchange. “These I offered to exchange for Stoneman, Buell, and such of my own army as would make up the equivalent; but I would not exchange for his prisoners generally, because I knew these would have to be sent to their own regiments away from my army, whereas all we could give him could at once be put to duty in his immediate army.” No possible suffering which his unfortunate companions in arms could be forced to bear by reason of the Confederates’ lack of supplies with which to feed and clothe them, could induce him to exchange for men who would not strengthen his own immediate army!

Geneseric, the Vandal, is said to have been “cruel to blood thirstiness, cunning, unscrupulous and grasping; but he possessed great military talents and his manner of life was austere.” Let the impartial reader of history say how nearly the barbarian who marched to the sea in the nineteenth century, approached to his prototype of the fifth century. One is not surprised, therefore, to find this man writing to General Hood on September 7th, 1864, that he “deemed it to the interest of the United States that the citizens now residing in Atlanta should remove.”

In the midst of a region desolated by war, their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, in the army hundreds of miles away, it was “deemed to be in the interest of the United States” that the helpless women and children of Atlanta should be driven from their homes to find such shelter as God gives the ravens and the beasts of the wood. It was a course that wrung from General Hood these forceful words of reply:

“Permit me to say that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war. In the name of God and humanity I protest, believing that you will find you are expelling from their homes and firesides the wives and children of a brave people.” To this burning arraignment General Sherman could find no better answer than argument concerning the right of States to secede. But it was followed on September 11th by an appeal from the mayor and councilmen of Atlanta which would have touched a heart of stone. It was humble, it was earnest, it was pitiful. It provoked these words in reply: “I have your letter of the 11th in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have an interest.”

The same unalterable resolution must have dominated Geneseric, the Vandal, when he prepared for his fourteen days sacking of Rome. The vandal of the fifth century had at least the pretext of reprisal for his actions; the vandal of the nineteenth century could find no better plea for his barbarity than that it might wring the hearts of absent men until they would sacrifice principle and honor for the relief of their loved ones.

President Davis says: “Since Alva’s atrocious cruelties to the non-combatant population of the low countries in the sixteenth century, the history of war records no instance of such barbarous cruelty as this order designed to perpetrate. It involved the immediate expulsion from their homes and only means of subsistence of thousands of unoffending women and children, whose husbands and fathers were either in the army, in Northern prisons, or had died in battle.”

At the time appointed the women and children were expelled from their houses, and, before they were passed within our lines, complaint was generally made that the Federal officers and men who were sent to guard them had robbed them of the few articles of value they had been permitted to take from their homes. The cowardly dishonesty of the men appointed to carry out this order, was in perfect harmony with the temper and the spirit of the order.

It was on the 12th day of November, 1864, that “The March to the Sea” began. Hood’s army had been followed to Tennessee, and Sherman’s forces had destroyed the railroad during their return trip to Atlanta. They were now ready to abandon the ruins of the Gate City for fresher and more lucrative fields of havoc. It is fair to General Sherman to say that his plans and intentions had been fully communicated to the authorities at Washington, and that they met with the thorough approbation of General Halleck, then Chief of Staff.

General Halleck will be remembered as the hero who won immortal fame before Corinth. With an immensely superior force he so thoroughly entrenched himself before that city that he not only held his position during General Beauregard’s occupancy of the town, but retained it for several days after the Confederate evacuation. He retired from active service after this, his only piece of campaigning, to act in an advisory capacity at Washington, and it was he who wrote these encouraging words to Sherman at Atlanta: “The course which you have pursued in removing rebel families from Atlanta, and in the exchange of prisoners, is fully approved by the War Department… Let the disloyal families thus stripped go to their husbands, fathers, and natural protectors in the rebel ranks… I would destroy every mill and factory within reach, which I did not want for my own use… I have endeavored to impress these views upon our commanders for the last two years. You are almost the only one who has properly applied them.” These words of encouragement fell upon willing ears. No one knew better than Sherman how to read the sentiments between those lines; he understood the motives which moved their doughty author as thoroughly as when later the same hand gathered courage to advise him in plain unvarnished words to wipe the city of Charleston off the face of the earth, and sow her site with salt. The valiant Chief of Staff, who urged on campaigns from a point sufficiently to the rear, had found at last a man who would carry out his instructions, and the war upon women and children was about to begin.

General Halleck was not the sole confidant of General Sherman’s plan. Less than a month before the memorable march was undertaken, he telegraphed to General Grant: “I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out for Milledgeville, Millen and Savannah. Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their military resources. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!”

Sir Walter Raleigh conceived and attempted to execute the plan of exterminating the Irish race, and colonizing their lands from England. The Sultan of Turkey is about to carry out a similar policy with his Armenians.

The difference between these other exterminators and Sherman, is that they expected to be met at the doors of the homes they intended to destroy by men capable of offering resistance, while the American General knew he would have to do with women and children alone.

He evidently met with some expostulation from General Grant, for he afterwards telegraphed him that he would “infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and the country from Chattanooga and Atlanta, including the latter city, send back all wounded and unserviceable men, and with the effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea.”

Receiving no answer to this latter dispatch, he did not hesitate to execute the campaign as he had planned it, and in his own language proceeded to “make the interior of Georgia feel the weight of war.”

Sherman and his staff rode out of the Gate City at 7 o’clock in the morning of the 16th. “Behind us,” he says, “lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Some band, by accident, struck up the anthem of ‘John Brown’s soul goes marching on’. The men caught up the strain, and never before or since have I heard the chorus of ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah!’ done with more spirit or in better harmony of time and place.” To the credit of the slandered soul of that other marauder, let us say, that John Brown’s lawless warfare was upon men alone, and that booty formed no part of his incentive.

Knowing that no effective resistance was to be expected, Sherman so scattered his columns that the sixty-mile “swath” which it was his purpose to devastate, was covered by them with ease. In order that the work might be thoroughly and effectively done, a sufficient number of men were detailed for that branch of military service peculiar to Sherman’s army, and known as “bummers.”

“These interesting individuals always,” says the General, “arose before day and preceded the army on its march.” “Although this foraging was attended with great danger and hard work, there seemed to be a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be detailed on such a party.” “No doubt,” he adds with that same blunt frankness, “many acts of pillage, robbery and violence were committed by these parties of foragers usually called ‘bummers’; for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary.” But these playful fellows, in spite of such indiscretions, were never more to the General than an exhibition of that charming humor invariably apparent in him in the presence of human suffering.

We may gather an idea of them from the following description given by a correspondent of the New York Herald, who accompanied the army: “Any man who has seen the object that the name applies to will acknowledge that it was admirably selected. Fancy a ragged man, bleached by the smoke of many a pine-knot fire, mounted on a scraggy mule without a saddle, with a gun, a knap-sack, a butcher-knife and a plug hat, stealing his way through the pine forests far out in the flanks of a column, keen on the scent of rebels, or bacon, or silver spoons, or coin, or anything valuable, and you have him in your mind. Think how you would admire him if you were a lone woman, with a family of small children, far from help, when he blandly inquired where you kept your valuables! Think how you would smile when he pried open your chests with his bayonet, or knocked to pieces your tables, pianos and chairs, tore your bed clothing into three-inch strips and scattered them about the yard. The ‘bummers’ say it takes too much time to use keys. Color is no protection from the rough raiders. They go through a negro cabin in search of diamonds and gold watches with just as much freedom and vivacity as they ‘loot’ the dwelling of a wealthy planter. They appear to be possessed of a spirit of ‘pure cussedness.’ One incident, illustrative of many, will suffice. A bummer stepped into a house and inquired for sorghum. The lady of the house presented a jug, which he said was too heavy, so he merely filled his canteen. Then taking a huge wad of tobacco from his mouth he thrust it into the jug. The lady inquired, in wonder, why he spoiled that which he did not want. ‘Oh, some feller’ll come along and taste that sorghum and think you’ve poisoned him, then he’ll burn your d – d old house.’ There are hundreds of these mounted men with the column, and they go everywhere. Some of them are loaded down with silverware, gold coin, and other valuables. I hazard nothing in saying three fifths (in value) of the personal property of the country we have passed through was taken by Sherman’s army.”