Southern Storm (32 page)
Authors: Noah Andre Trudeau
The lucky members of the Third Division got to spend the day in Milledgeville. Even though all the Twentieth Corps and most of the Fourteenth had already left, these Yankees had no compunctions about taking anything they deemed “duly confiscated or contraband. As a result the city was pretty well ransacked and things torn up generally.” Still, necessary military routine was not ignored, at least by an officer in the 2nd Minnesota who found himself drilling new recruits who, having joined the regiment at Atlanta, had been marching ever since. “The morning was quite frosty and handling the polished steel of our gun barrels with bare hands was cold business,” he recollected. “Some of the men were gray men. One never had drilled before and some of them had only been on drill a few times.”
A number of small foraging parties that ventured away from the town found the countryside spotted with roving bands of Confederates. One that tangled with about thirty Rebels had to call for help. “Two of our boys were wounded,” noted an officer. “Their wounds will probably prove fatal. One half of the rebel squad were dressed in our overcoats.” Other gunfire, this in town, denoted a tragic incident,
recorded in the annals of the 75th Indiana: “A very unfortunate affair occurred here in the shooting of two negresses (half white) by a member of one of the Regiments of our Brigade, while standing upon the balcony of a house viewing our troops marching through the streets.” The unfortunate individual who fired the shot was held at brigade headquarters until the incident was investigated. “Subsequently it was proven that the shooting was purely accidental, and the man was released.”
Major General William Tecumseh Sherman led his headquarters out of Milledgeville at 10:00
A.M
. Noting that it was Thanksgiving, Major Hitchcock offered a silent prayer: “God hasten the day when we shall all unite, North and South, East and West, in heartfelt thanksgiving for Peace and Victory over these accursed rebel leaders!” In one last piece of necessary business, Sherman called in Dr. R. J. Massey, who ran the city’s biggest hospital, to inform him that he was now responsible for twenty-eight Union soldiers deemed too sick to travel. When Massey asked what Sherman wanted done with them, the General answered: “If they die, give them a decent burial; if they live, send them to Andersonville, of course.” Catching the doctor’s surprised look, Sherman added: “They are prisoners of war, what else can you do? If I had your men I would send them to prison.”
After traveling from Atlanta to Milledgeville in the company of the Fourteenth Corps, Sherman now shifted over to the route of the Twentieth. Before long the command party began overtaking the tramping files. “General Sherman passed our column at 12 M., and was cheered heartily by all the troops,” wrote a Pennsylvanian in the Second Division. A Wisconsin man from the First Division paid more attention to the moment. He wrote: “General Sherman rode along through the division, wearing his slouched, black hat, black cloak with high collar nearly hiding his face, looking neither to the right or left, buried in deep thought, unheeding the remarks of the men, who queried loud enough for him to hear, whether ‘Uncle Billy knows where he is going?’”
“We are now in the regular pine region,” Major Hitchcock observed, “dense growth of pines on all sides, save where cleared.” The volunteer aide, who was taking part in his first military operation, got a bit of a
fright when the staff suddenly came upon the spectacle of a division deploying across a field. “What, they are coming into line!” Sherman exclaimed. A closer examination showed that it was only a midday rest stop. “But for five minutes H.H. expected a fight ‘then and there,’” Hitchcock commented, enjoying the joke on himself. “Knows now how the
expectation
feels.”
Since they had outdistanced the headquarters baggage train, Sherman’s aides found him a house for the night near the west bank of Gumm Creek.
*
The occupants, a woman of sixty-five and her unmarried daughter of thirty-five, were initially frightened, but Sherman calmed them. The older woman’s story had a sad ring to it—husband dead, no boys in the war, the women opposed to it all. Even as they conversed inside with Sherman, practiced foragers swept the outside area clean. “Rascals
borrowed
all her pots and kettles, even tea-kettle,” exclaimed Major Hitchcock. He got a chuckle when the older woman, learning that Sherman’s surgeon was a bachelor, began to advertise her daughter’s good points.
“If one stopped to think over all the losses or estimated all the real anxiety and suffering caused by the
simple march
of an army like this, it would be sad enough,” Hitchcock reflected afterward. “But it’s no use.” He found himself recalling something Sherman had told him only the other day. Said Sherman: “Pierce the
shell
of the C.S.A. and it’s all hollow inside.”
F
RIDAY
, N
OVEMBER
25, 1864
F
our days earlier, while piecing together his defense of the Oconee River Bridge, Confederate major Alfred L. Hartridge realized that his right flank was vulnerable to an enemy force moving toward Sandersville from Milledgeville. To impede such a move, he sent his cavalry (the Ashley Dragoons) to wreck the bridges over Buffalo Creek, a natural choke point. Hartridge’s men returned after carrying out their mission, leaving behind several outposts to watch and report. The importance of this slight action would exceed anything the major might have imagined.
Left Wing
Major General Henry W. Slocum’s Left Wing continued its drive toward Sandersville—the Twentieth Corps now on the inside track, the Fourteenth running outside. Operating on a roughly parallel course well off the left flank of the Fourteenth was Kilpatrick’s cavalry, on a mission without reference to the infantry routes. These troopers were up early, one of them long remembering how the bugles this day “rang out beautifully, clear as bells, first from Division head-quarters, quickly repeated at Brigade head-quarters, and quickly again at the head-quarters of the regiments, and still again at the headquarters of the compa
nies,…and then the fires began to gleam everywhere, like the gas-lights of a great city…. It was a beautiful day, and, with no enemy in front or rear, the command marched rapidly.”
The infantrymen were also stirring. “Morning cold but not so bad as the last four nights,” groused a member of the 102nd Illinois. As the two long columns began twisting their way eastward, the tail end of the Fourteenth Corps pulled out of Milledgeville to follow its compatriots. Bands were playing despite the early hour, leading one Ohio boy to reflect that its citizens “doubtless breathe a sigh of relief as they witness our departure.” There was some unfinished business as the state magazine, emptied of its contents, was dynamited. Another Ohio soldier, in the process of crossing the Oconee, recalled hearing “two explosions.” “Blew up the powder house and burned the bridge across the Oconee,” added a Minnesota soldier, whose memoir highlighted a final act that many in the capital would later find the most reprehensible of Sherman’s brief stopover.
Among those watching the Yankees leave was Anna Maria Green, whose father was superintendent of the Georgia Lunatic Asylum. Hardly had the last Federal soldier disappeared into the woods across the river when the cry went up, “Our cavalry is coming.” A few mounted men brandishing pistols entered the town, announcing themselves as part of Wheeler’s cavalry. Miss Green was one of those whose anger at enduring the enemy occupation was transformed into a fierce Confederate patriotism. “How can they hope to subjugate the South!” she exclaimed to her diary. “The people are firmer than ever before.” Green also recorded the name of the only victim of rape mentioned by name in the annals of Sherman’s march—a certain “Mrs. N.” “Poor woman,” commented Green. “I fear she has been driven crazy.”
*
The Confederate troopers belonged to Brigadier General Samuel W. Ferguson’s brigade of Iverson’s division in Wheeler’s command. They didn’t cut an especially martial figure. One Milledgeville resident described them as “mere boys,” while another thought they were “very ragged and for the most part…bare footed.” Still, they were Confederates after all and welcomed as such. Brigadier General Ferguson was pleasantly surprised to witness how the “women ran out [of their houses] and knelt on the side walks, with hands joined in prayer, and tears streaming down their cheeks, and…these were tears of joy.” The troopers quickly checked the town, then congregated at the river’s edge to stare at the wrecked bridge. Ferguson needed to know where the Yankees had gone, so at his orders, a party of scouts swam their horses across the rain-swollen Oconee to chase after them.
Next the Rebel troopers got down to the business of supplying their needs. A local boy named Willie, mounted on a mule left behind by the Federals atop a nice McClellan saddle he had been given, was asked by a trooper to dismount so he could better admire the boy’s fine animal. Hardly had Willie slid off his mule before the trooper climbed on and, according to a witness, “told him he had [just] swapped mounts.” A property owner just outside the town would later complain to Governor Brown about the “plundering band of horse stealing
ruffians” who had cleaned him out. Given the choice of occupation forces, the citizen would much “prefer to trust to the generosity and justice of the Yankees.”
General Sherman and his staff were in the saddle early. Per his orders, their unwilling host was rewarded with $50 in Confederate notes, to which one officer added $5 in U.S. bills. Major Hitchcock got in the last word during a parting exchange with the young lady of the house, who reproached him for waging war on hapless women. When the good major got her to admit that she would have shamed any man who didn’t enlist in the Confederate cause, he had her. “Then you have done all you could to help the war,” he announced as he departed, “and have not done what you could to prevent it.”
The command party had ridden perhaps ninety minutes when a rider came from ahead, seeking Captain Poe. There was a problem at Buffalo Creek, where the chief engineer’s skills were sorely needed. From the outrider Major Hitchcock learned that the bridge or bridges over the creek had been burned. Already the leading elements were grinding to a halt, while behind them, the other segments of the Twentieth Corps were slowing to a crawl.
The road that the corps was following led through the village of Hebron. An Illinois soldier mentioned that it consisted of “a few houses on each side [of the road] numbering altogether about six is all that can be seen of a town and all there ever was.” To this a New Jersey quartermaster contributed that Hebron had “the usual amount of negro huts and corn cribs.” He also remarked on the number of “very well made cotton gins and presses blazing away, to the right and left of us.”
About three miles east of Hebron, Captain Poe reined his horse in before Buffalo Creek to assess the problem. “This Creek of itself is not to exceed thirty feet wide but the crossing is at a point where it overflows a space of 60 or 70 acres making it necessary for a bridge nearly a quarter of a mile in length,” wrote a later-arriving telegrapher. Actually, the puzzle confronting Poe was more complicated than building a single bridge. “The stream or swamp is here divided into eight channels, which are spanned by as many bridges, varying in length from 30 to 100 feet each,” wrote another officer. “Between these earthen causeways are thrown up.”
Poe’s assessment told the tale. The eighty-foot main bridge, which spanned the central creek channel, was burned beyond repair. The damage to much of the approach bridging was less severe; in most cases, while the planking was gone, the supporting trestles were only partially damaged. The corduroy ramps leading over the fringing swamps had been thoroughly trashed, but were also the easiest to repair. Fortunately, Poe had with him Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Moore plus his section of the 58th Indiana pontoon train, as well as all the willing hands he could muster from nearby regiments.
Security was not a concern thanks to the prompt action of the first unit on the scene. Lieutenant Colonel John B. Le Sage of the 101st Illinois had pushed a detachment to the creek’s east bank, where they chased away a few Rebel videttes. More trouble occurred around noon when several Southern mounted bands threatened the lodgment, but Le Sage’s reinforced perimeter held firm. There just weren’t enough Confederates in the area to cause a serious problem.
Captain Poe kept his unskilled workers busy stabilizing the approach ramps. “The first thing to do was to get logs and rails to throw onto that mud to make it possible for the engineers to get their [pontoon] boats and other material to the river bank,” recollected one of those conscripted foot soldiers. The pontoniers started repairing the secondary trestle bridges “using timber procured from the woods” and laying down planking using balk and chess from their pontoon kits. Once a clear pathway to the central channel was established, three pontoon boats were deployed to stretch the eighty-foot gap. Then the process was repeated on the opposite side.
The men worked in a well-organized fashion; nevertheless, there was a delay of four and a half hours that stacked troops up all the way back to Gumm Creek. “People are silly in destroying those bridges for we generally tear down the nearest house to build them again, and the longer we carry on our march the more time we have to prey on the miscreants,” declared a New Jersey officer. They made the most of the delay in the 29th Ohio. “While waiting here the boys amused themselves in various ways,” wrote a regimental diarist, “some by playing cards, others by betting largely at the ‘chuck luck’ board, while others would get several ‘Darkies’ of both sexes to ‘patting’ and dancing, we have enough of them in our Regiment to get up quite a ‘Cotillion.’”
Major General Sherman passed the time waiting with his staff in a
deserted house west of the creek, listening to two of his officers—Major Hitchcock and Colonel Charles Ewing—debate whether or not they should torch the structure when they depart. The pair were unaware that their boss was listening until he broke into their conversation.
“In war everything is right which prevents anything,” Sherman announced. “If bridges are burned I have a right to burn all houses near it.”
Hitchcock, feeling argumentative, countered that there had to be a link between the home owner and the bridge burners to justify such a course, but Sherman was having none of it. “Well, let him look to his own people,” he shrugged, “if they find that their burning bridges only destroys their own citizens’ houses they’ll stop it.”
Ten miles north from where Sherman’s officers were debating the finer points of military ethics, Kilpatrick’s mounted column was also approaching Buffalo Creek, albeit the stream’s more shallow upper reaches. “Long Bridge, over Buffalo Creek,” according to a reporter traveling with the cavalry officer, “was found destroyed, but by cutting down the bank we crossed by fording.” Kilpatrick’s men would be delayed hardly at all.
In between the cavalry and the Twentieth Corps marched the Fourteenth. Just about the time—2:00
P.M
.—that Captain Poe declared the Buffalo Creek bridges open for Twentieth Corps business, the engineers with the Fourteenth Corps were coming to terms with their crossing challenge. Here the main channel had been spanned by a fifty-foot bridge (burned) approached via trestles (wrecked) running over a stretch of swamp. The 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics got the job of fixing the trestles and corduroying the banks, while the second section of the 58th Indiana tackled the bridge itself. Here the work would last nearly seven hours.
*
Considering the complexity of the task completed under Captain Poe’s direction, the four-and-a-half-hour delay for the Twentieth Corps ranked as a solid engineering achievement, causing but a minor inconvenience for the infantry column. It did save Sandersville from being occupied for another twelve hours since it allowed time for scouting
detachments from Major General Wheeler’s command to establish a loose screen three and a half miles west of the town.
Wheeler had pushed hard toward Augusta after crossing the Oconee near Dublin. He paused with most of his riders at Tennille, where he conferred with Lieutenant General Hardee, but not before sending scouts ahead to Sandersville. This force pounced on groups of mounted outriders, who proved to be foragers eager to be the first into the town. Wheeler’s men promptly attacked, driving the Federals back to their infantry columns, then about three or four miles east of Buffalo Creek.
The infantry was alert for trouble, with skirmishers well forward, and even as their fire brought Wheeler’s troopers to a halt, heavier lines of battle scissored out, perpendicular to either side of the road. Once these had been aligned and steadied, a stronger line of skirmishers pushed ahead. Among them was John Smethurst of the 31st Wisconsin.
“We went double quick through the bush and briers, over fences with our knapsacks on,” he recollected. “It was a good deal like work. We found the Rebels about a mile from the Brigade in line in a strip of woods. We had to advance on them over a large open field. They kept up a steady fire on us but did very poor shooting for not a man of us was hurt. Although the balls came rather close we did not get orders to fire until we were within two hundred yards of them. We could see them plain standing by their horses firing at us. At last the order came to fire. We gave them two or three volleys and then went for them on the run yelling like fury. They could not stay with us any longer so they mounted and left.”