Southern Storm (33 page)

Sherman wished the Twentieth Corps to reach Sandersville this day, but the delays at the burned bridges, compounded by the late-afternoon scrap, meant that for the first time his schedule had been upset by enemy action rather than natural obstacles. Major Hitchcock recognized that something had changed in the overall military equation. “From this on we shall be impeded and harassed and have skirmishing every day,” he silently prophesied.

While the foragers up front had gotten their noses bloodied, those operating to the sides and rear of the Twentieth Corps did quite well. “Forage plenty and men and animals faring sumptuously,” crowed an Indiana soldier. “We are now in ‘Peanut land’ and we not only had
them by the peck but by the bushels.” “Among the variety of plunder which the boys have found at the farm houses in this vicinity were gamecocks, which have been brought into camp and distributed in great abundance,” contributed a Connecticut man, “and there is a cock fight at the cook’s fire in almost every company this evening.”

Now that the Fourteenth Corps held the extreme left flank of Sherman’s movement, its foragers were more exposed to armed bands operating just a short distance from the main road. “The rebel bushwhackers shot several foragers to-day,” noted a record keeper in the 34th Illinois. “The foragers from the Brigade were attacked by about 100 rebel cavalry and driven back,” observed a member of the 104th Illinois, “leaving 8 or 10 men wounded or missing.” Yet, somehow, the determined Yankees managed to cope. “We get meat fresh and salt, Sorghum, Honey, Sweet Potatoes, and meal,” proclaimed a Michigan man. “The camp is full of provisions.” When a picket for the 86th Illinois was taken to task for killing a hog while on duty, he contested the charge. “The d——d old rebel wouldn’t give the countersign,” he protested to his captain. “So we…brought him down.”

Incidents with children dominated this day’s record of soldier-civilian encounters, some of them heart-wrenching. One Michigan forager encountered a “little girl [who] said she wanted a postage stamp to send her co[u]sin a letter. He was a prisoner.” Two black children were brought to a brigade headquarters, as their mother “had left them and gone,” no one knew where. An Illinois soldier visited a nearby house, where he found a woman with several youngsters, one of whom “kept up a continual crying for something to eat.” The Yankee did what he could, even though he “had but one hard cracker to give them.”

Sherman and his staff had their own close encounter with the locals. After crossing Buffalo Creek and waiting for the skirmish to end, they stopped at a house whose matron whined so much that Sherman chose to tent in the field this night. Not long after the camp had been set up, the General enjoyed a serenade from a regimental band. The only intrusion of work occurred when the aide sent by Major General Howard, his brother Charles, appeared to update Sherman on the Right Wing’s progress.

Well to the north and east of this tranquil scene, Kilpatrick’s column reached the Ogeechee River at a point known as the Ogeechee Shoals. Scouts from the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry surprised a Rebel picket posted
at the crossing, capturing most of them, including a dozen horses, which were welcome as many of Kilpatrick’s were jaded and sore. It had been an uncharacteristically quiet day for the troopers, who, encountering few of the enemy, had enjoyed good foraging. However, once at the shoals there was work to be done. “Here we destroyed a large cotton factory, mill and other buildings,” wrote a member of the 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry. In the house being used as operational headquarters, Kilpatrick allowed a member of his staff to scrawl a sentiment on the wall. The graffiti read: “May all the names engraved here / in the golden book appear.” Kilpatrick signed it, as did members of his staff.

As the Left Wing infantry settled in for the night, full security was implemented. “The 1st and 3rd Divisions camp in line of battle semi-circle,” wrote a gunner in the Twentieth Corps. Officers were admonished “to have your picketing most thoroughly and carefully performed—pickets thrown well out.” One of those pickets was an Ohio private named John W. Houtz, who did his duty while he kept his diary up-to-date. “I got on a post by a swamp and a cold chilly place it is these frosty evenings,” he scribbled, adding that he “heard cannonading on our right [which] appears to be on the railroad.”

This morning saw two of Jefferson Davis’s key generals positioned on the front line against Sherman. In Augusta, General Braxton Bragg took charge of the city’s defenses. Bragg was damaged goods. Once the great hope for Confederate aspirations in Kentucky and Tennessee, he delivered a major victory at Chickamauga, only to lose all the laurels and his command two months later when he was routed outside Chattanooga. His abrasive character created more fissures than bonds among western theater commanders, and only the president’s reluctance to retire West Point professionals kept Bragg on the active list. For a while the general served as the president’s military adviser, but when trouble loomed on the North Carolina coast in October 1864, Davis sent Bragg there. Now the president wanted his experience in Augusta.

The threat posed by Sherman’s army loomed large enough in Davis’s calculations that he broke his own rule by allowing Bragg to bring with him some regular Confederate States units assigned to defend the
North Carolina coast near Cape Fear. He also suspended a law restricting the use of militia reserves to their own states, so that there would be nothing to hinder South Carolina units from coming into Georgia or vice versa. Bragg himself had recently pointed out to South Carolina’s governor that the two states were joined at the hip. “If Georgia is saved South Carolina cannot be lost,” he informed the politician. “If Georgia be lost South Carolina cannot be saved.”

Protective earthwork construction was accelerated, using a labor force made up of impressed slaves and Union prisoners who had volunteered to receive better treatment. At least one resident was less than thrilled with the galvanized Confederates, whom he described as “a great nuisance in this neighborhood. They steal, visit negro quarters and tamper with slaves, & in one instance committed robbery.” The city’s largest circulation newspaper did its part to boost morale with an editorial exhorting all citizens, “Now is the time, if ever, to defend their homes, their families and their all against future invasions and devastation.”

Another town paper reported that the all-important Confederate Powder Works had been dismantled and relocated out of danger. Incredibly, especially for anyone who chanced by the massive twenty-six-building complex stretching for two miles along the Augusta Canal, the story was true. With Sherman’s threat looming, the man responsible for operating the complex—Colonel George Washington Rains—had ordered the facility’s critical machinery, supplies, and inventory packed onto trains for shipment to a safer location. Even with the Confederacy’s transportation resources stretched to the limit, the importance of the powder works was such that its relocation was given the highest priority.

Bragg at once set to work examining scouting reports and poring over maps. His initial assessment was that while one enemy wing was being blocked by Wayne at the Oconee, the other had crossed the river at Milledgeville and “seems to be tending south.” Later in the day, when news of Sherman’s crossing at Buffalo Creek was confirmed and he learned of the clash outside Sandersville, Bragg recognized that Federal movements on November 26 “will determine whether he designs attacking here or on Savannah.”

Savannah’s chief defender, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee, arrived at Tennille Station on the Central of Georgia Railroad around
1:00
A.M
. Here, also known as Station No. 13, the general was little more than three miles south of Sandersville and a dozen from the Oconee River Bridge. Morning reports suggested that Confederate forces were holding their own; enemy columns were still being blocked by Major General Wayne before and below the railroad bridge, while the destruction of the Buffalo Creek crossings promised to delay if not halt enemy movements in that quarter. Hardee ordered up munitions and rations from Savannah, though he prudently had them cached at Davisboro (thirteen miles east) and Millen (even farther toward the coast). Although this is not explicit in the official records, Hardee seems to have convinced Major General Wayne to pay more attention to the fighting at Ball’s Ferry, since, at 11:00
A.M
., the increasingly stressed militia officer dispatched reinforcements there.

Having made his moves, Hardee now waited to see what the enemy would do next.

Right Wing

Throughout the day the Fifteenth and Seventeenth corps concentrated at Ball’s Ferry. The Federals were learning that the profusion of pine forests throughout the region represented a very mixed blessing. In a long entry for this day’s events, a garrulous Illinois soldier wrote that a “thick haze of black pine smoke” settled like a fog over the morning encampments, producing a “somber film that envelops the skin,” so darkening everyone’s complexions that “you could scarcely distinguish them from the dusky African.” Soap now headed the want lists as a “very necessary article of forage.”

“Countermarched at 4
A.M
.,” scrawled a weary Seventeenth Corps soldier. “Long and tedious march.” Per Major General Howard’s orders, Major General Blair’s men were disengaging from the railroad bridge and looping around toward Ball’s Ferry. This brought them onto the routes already being used by the Fifteenth Corps, which had gotten there first. As a consequence, recorded a brigadier under Blair, his men “had to cut two roads [through the woods], one for wheels, one for men, much of the way had to be corduroyed in swamp.” The snaky route followed by the Seventeenth Corps brought it alongside a stretch of Central of Georgia Railroad tracks which hadn’t yet been touched.
That wouldn’t do, so, reported one infantryman, they “had to tare up Rail road in the evening.” About four miles of track were wrecked in this manner.

Getting his troops across the Oconee at Ball’s Ferry looked impossible to Major General Peter J. Osterhaus. The terrain was so unforgiving that he could only squeeze forward two regiments—the 57th Ohio and 116th Illinois—and those in a widely dispersed skirmishing formation. They at once engaged the enemy forces dug in on the opposite bank, who replied with an impressive volume of musket and cannon fire. It would cost a lot of lives, and even then Osterhaus wasn’t certain he could force his way across in the face of such determined opposition.

The worried officer made his way back toward Major General Howard’s headquarters to deliver the bad news. Spotting the Right Wing commander dismounted by the side of the road, writing dispatches, Osterhaus rode over. Without getting off his horse, he blurted out: “General Howard, how can we get any further?” Snapping back that this “was no way to talk,” Howard motioned him down. Listening to his subordinate’s assessment, the Right Wing commander realized that Osterhaus had a case of tunnel vision. Everything was focused on crossing at Ball’s Ferry, forgetting that there were other uses for all the men lined up behind those skirmishing along the river. The trick was to utilize that strength to locate the enemy’s weak points, not to try to bull through a strong point.

Howard explained that he wanted Osterhaus to use his numerical superiority to “extend his skirmish line north and south, pressing them in, till they could get sight of the other bank or clearing beyond the river.” It was really very simple. “Deploy your skirmishers more and more till there is no reply,” said Howard, certain that somewhere they would run out of Confederates. The Prussian officer hurried off to carry out the task. Howard would later state, without equivocation, that the “Oconee crossing was the most difficult that we had to encounter.”
*

A few miles west of Howard’s headquarters, the villagers of Irwinton were finding out what it meant to be in the path of Sherman’s
storm. A member of the 81st Ohio recalled their “burning the Court House and other public buildings, and also a lot of cotton.” A soldier in the 12th Illinois described the town as “mostly burned,” while one in the 50th Illinois proclaimed it “now in ruins.” However, what the Federals could take they could also give back. Early in the evening a shanty fire spread to an adjoining two-story residence, prompting nearby Union soldiers to save it. “We…carried out the goods and then knocked the siding off the porch and got the fire out,” recorded an Illinoisan. “We then carried back the goods. There was an old man and young lady and child living in the house.”

It was late in the afternoon when Osterhaus reported to Howard that his constantly extending skirmish line had finally outstretched the Confederate defensive zone at a point two miles north of the ferry. Said Howard: “I then instructed him to send in a brigade with the canvas [pontoon] boats, already put together, and push over the men rapidly into the clearings beyond, then come down the river and take the enemy in the flank.” It turned out that the critical site was closer to the camps of the just arriving Seventeenth Corps, so Major General Blair’s men got the assignment.

Pontoniers from the 1st Missouri Engineers with about thirty infantrymen led by Lieutenant Colonel Kirby of Blair’s staff made their way to the river’s edge, where they learned why the Rebels had not bothered to post a guard. The Oconee narrowed noticeably here into a stretch of rapid-flowing white water, making a pontoon bridge difficult, if not impossible. Finally, one of the Missouri engineers plunged into the swift rapids with a rope tied to his waist. He managed to secure his end to a stout tree on the other bank.

Using this as a guideline, a “flying ferry” was set up to hand-haul across an officer with thirty men. They established a security perimeter that provided cover while the engineers transported an additional 170 soldiers. This armed party then began picking its way through the swamp in the gathering darkness toward the Ball’s Ferry road, hoping to trap the stubborn Confederates against the river.