SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA

'Sherman's March to the Sea' is the name commonly given to the 'Savannah Campaign', conducted in late 1864 by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army during the American Civil War. The campaign began with General Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 15 1864, and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 22.

Contents

Background and orders for the march

Opposing forces

March

Aftermath

See also

References

Notes

External links

Background and orders for the march

Sherman's March to the Sea followed his successful Atlanta Campaign of May to September 1864. He and U.S. Army commander Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken. Sherman therefore applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is often also referred to as total war. The recent reelection of President Abraham Lincoln ensured that short-term political pressure would not be applied to restrain these tactics.
A second objective of the campaign was more traditional. Grant's armies in Virginia continued to be in a stalemate against Robert E. Lee's army, besieged in Petersburg, Virginia. By moving in Lee's rear, performing a massive turning movement against him, Sherman could possibly increase pressure on Lee, allowing Grant the opportunity to break through, or at least keep Southern reinforcements away from Virginia.
The campaign was designed to be similar to Grant's innovative and successful Vicksburg Campaign, in that Sherman's armies would reduce their need for traditional supply lines by "living off the land" after their 20 days of rations were consumed. Foragers, known as "bummers", would provide food seized from local farms for the Army while they destroyed the railroads and the manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure of the state. The twisted and broken railroad rails that the troops wrapped around tree trunks and left behind became known as "Sherman's neckties". Since the army would be out of touch with the North throughout the campaign, Sherman gave explicit orders regarding the conduct of the campaign:

Opposing forces

Sherman, commanding the Military Division of the Mississippi, did not employ his entire army group in the campaign. Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood was threatening Sherman's supply line from Chattanooga, and Sherman detached two armies under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas to deal with Hood in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign. For the Savannah Campaign, Sherman's remaining force of 62,000 men (55,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 2,000 artillerymen, manning 64 guns) was divided into two columns for the march:

★ The right wing was the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, consisting of two corps:

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★ XV Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus, with the divisions of Brig. Gens. Charles R. Woods, William B. Hazen, John E. Smith, and John M. Corse.

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★ XVII Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Frank Blair, Jr., with the divisions of Maj. Gen. Joseph A. Mower and Brig. Gens. Mortimer D. Leggett and Giles A. Smith.

★ The left wing was the Army of Georgia, commanded by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum, also with two corps:

★
★ XIV Corps, commanded by Brig. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, with the divisions of Brig. Gens. William P. Carlin, James D. Morgan, and Absalom Baird.

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★ XX Corps, commanded by Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams, with the divisions of Brig. Gens. Nathaniel J. Jackson, John W. Geary, and William T. Ward.

★ A cavalry division under Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick operated in support of the two wings.
The Confederate opposition from Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee's Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida was meager. Hood had taken the bulk of forces in Georgia on his campaign to Tennessee. There were about 13,000 men remaining at Lovejoy's Station, south of Atlanta. Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith's Georgia militia had about 3,050 soldiers, some of them boys and elderly men. The Cavalry Corps of Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler, reinforced by a brigade under Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson, had approximately 10,000 troopers. During the campaign, the Confederate War Department brought in additional men from Florida and the Carolinas, but they never were able to increase their effective force beyond 13,000.

March

The 300 mile march began on November 15 1864. Sherman recounted in his memoirs the scene when he left at 7 a.m. the following day:
Sherman's personal escort on the march was the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, a unit made up entirely of Southerners who remained loyal to the Union.

The two wings of the army attempted to confuse and deceive the enemy about their destinations; the Confederates could not tell from the initial movements whether Sherman would march on Macon, Augusta, or Savannah. Howard's wing, led by Kilpatrick's cavalry, marched south along the railroad to Lovejoy's Station, which caused the defenders there to conduct a fighting retreat to Macon. The cavalry captured two Confederate guns at Lovejoy's Station, and then two more and 50 prisoners at Bear Creek Station. Howard's infantry marched through Jonesboro to Gordon, southwest of the state capital, Milledgeville. Slocum's wing, accompanied by Sherman, moved to the east, in the direction of Augusta. They destroyed the bridge across the Oconee River and then turned south.^[1]
The state legislature called for Georgians to "Die freemen rather than live [as] slaves" and fled the capital. Hardee arrived from his headquarters at Savannah and realized that that city, not Macon, was Sherman's target. He ordered the Confederate cavalry under Wheeler to harass the Federal rear and flanks while the militiamen under Smith hurried eastward to protect the seaport city. On November 23, Sherman's staff held a mock legislative session in the state capitol, jokingly voting Georgia back into the Union and playing cards.
The first real resistance was felt by Howard's right wing at the Battle of Griswoldville on November 22. Wheeler's cavalry struck Kilpatrick's, killing three and capturing 18. The infantry brigade of Brig. Gen. Charles C. Walcutt arrived to stabilize the defense, and the division of Georgia militia launched several hours of badly coordinated attacks, eventually retreating with about 1,100 casualties (of which about 600 were prisoners), versus the Union's 100.

Several small actions followed. Wheeler and some infantry struck in a rearguard action at Ball's Ferry on November 24 and November 25. While Howard's wing was delayed near Ball's Bluff, the 1st Alabama Cavalry (a Federal regiment) engaged Confederate pickets. Overnight, Union engineers constructed a bridge two miles (3 km) away from the bluff across the Oconee River, and 200 soldiers crossed to flank the Confederate position. On November 25 and November 26 at Sandersville, Wheeler struck at Slocum's advance guard. Kilpatrick was ordered to make a feint toward Augusta before destroying the railroad bridge at Brier Creek and moving to liberate the Camp Lawton prisoner of war camp at Millen. Kilpatrick slipped by the defensive line that Wheeler had placed near Brier Creek, but on the night of November 26 Wheeler attacked and drove the 8th Indiana and 2nd Kentucky Cavalry away from their camps at Sylvan Grove. Kilpatrick abandoned his plans to destroy the railroad bridge and he also learned that the prisoners had been moved from Camp Lawton, so he rejoined the army at Louisville. At the Battle of Buck Head Creek on November 28, Kilpatrick was surprised and nearly captured, but the 5th Ohio Cavalry halted Wheeler's advance, and Wheeler was later stopped decisively by Union barricades at Reynolds's Plantation. On December 4, Kilpatrick's cavalry routed Wheeler's at the Battle of Waynesborough.
More Union troops entered the campaign from an unlikely direction. Maj. Gen. John G. Foster dispatched 5,500 men and 10 guns under Brig. Gen. John P. Hatch from Hilton Head, hoping to assist Sherman's arrival near Savannah by securing the Charleston Railroad. At the Battle of Honey Hill on November 30, Hatch fought a vigorous battle against G.W. Smith's 1,400 Georgia militiamen, three miles (5 km) south of Grahamville Station, South Carolina. Smith's militia fought off the Union attacks, and Hatch withdrew after suffering about 650 casualties, versus Smith's 50.
Sherman's armies reached the outskirts of Savannah on December 10 but found that Hardee had entrenched 10,000 men in good positions, and his soldiers had flooded the surrounding rice fields, leaving only narrow causeways available to approach the city. Sherman was blocked from linking up with the U.S. Navy as he had planned, so he dispatched cavalry to Fort McAllister, guarding the Ogeechee River, in hopes of unblocking his route and obtaining supplies awaiting him on the Navy ships. On December 13, William B. Hazen's division of Howard's army stormed the fort in the Battle of Fort McAllister and captured it within 15 minutes. Some of the 134 Union casualties were caused by torpedoes, a name for crude land mines that were used only rarely in the war.
Now that Sherman had connected to the Navy fleet under Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, he was able to obtain the supplies and siege artillery he required to invest Savannah. On December 17, he sent a message to Hardee in the city:
Hardee decided not to surrender but to escape. On December 20, he led his men across the Savannah River on a pontoon bridge hastily constructed of rice flats. Sherman's men, led by Geary's division of the XX Corps, occupied the city the next day.

Aftermath

Sherman telegraphed to President Lincoln, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." On December 26, the president replied in a letter:
From Savannah, Sherman marched north in the spring through the Carolinas, intending to complete his turning movement and combine his armies with Grant's against Robert E. Lee. After a successful two-month campaign, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his forces to Sherman in North Carolina on April 26 1865.
Sherman's scorched earth policies have always been highly controversial, and Sherman's memory has long been reviled by many natives of Georgia, but slaves, many of whom left their plantations to follow his armies, welcomed him as a liberator. Sherman did not view himself in this same light. He was less concerned with the liberation of the slaves than with the well-being of his men and the overall success of his campaign. The March to the Sea is considered by many military historians to have demonstrated Sherman's superb command of military strategies, and his commitment to destroying the Confederacy's ability to wage further war may well have hastened the end of the conflict.

See also

★ Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15

★ Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 120

★ Western Theater of the American Civil War

★ Collective punishment

★ ''Sherman's March'' (2007, documentary)

References

★ Eicher, David J., ''The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War'', Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.

★ McPherson, James M., ''Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)'', Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-503863-0.

★ Nevin, David, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, ''Sherman's March: Atlanta to the Sea'', Time-Life Books, 1986, ISBN 0-8094-4812-2.

★ Sherman, William T., ''Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman'', 2nd ed., D. Appleton & Co., 1913 (1889). Reprinted by the Library of America, 1990, ISBN 0-940450-65-8.

★ U.S. War Department, ''The War of the Rebellion'': ''a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies'', U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.

★ National Park Service battle descriptions for the Savannah Campaign

Notes

1. Nevin, p. 48.

External links

★ Harper's History: March to your momma


★ New Georgia Encyclopedia article on the March

★ Clark, Frank Oliver, Article on Sherman's March to the Sea

★ Photographic views of Sherman's campaign, from negatives taken in the field, by Geo. N. Barnard, official photographer of the military div. of the Mississippi. Published/Created: New York, Press of Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1866. (searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)