Southern Storm (69 page)

Sometimes directives to
prepare
for an assault were corrupted in transmission into orders to
launch
an assault. One such instance this day was recollected by a soldier in the 147th Pennsylvania: “Our Division was drawn up in line of battle and arrangements were made to carry the enemy’s works in our front by a night attack. The night was cold, dark and dreary, and as we were not allowed to build fires to keep warm, for fear of arousing the suspicions of the enemy, and as may readily be conceived, we suffered considerably. At about 12 o’clock midnight the order was countermanded and the men were allowed to break ranks and retire for the night well pleased with the turn affairs had taken.”

There was more action on Argyle Island as Confederates on the South Carolina side of the river made it clear that they didn’t appreci
ate the Yankee squatters. During the night Colonel Carmen had hauled Captain Charles E. Winegar’s Battery I, 1st New York Light Artillery, from the Georgia mainland to reposition it on the island. The gunners whose enthusiastic barrage had disabled the
Resolute
were equal to the task of suppressing the Rebel horse artillery that had been harassing the work details.

Even as the two sides were exchanging their mini-broadsides, Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams, commanding the Twentieth Corps, met with Carmen and, as the colonel recollected, “informed me that Sherman had heard from Grant; that all was uncertainty at headquarters, and that for the present I make no effort to cross, and meanwhile to examine further up the island for an additional crossing, as he thought more men would be sent over.” Later, about 9:00
P.M
., Carmen received fresh orders. He was authorized to cross just two regiments to the South Carolina shore at dawn to establish a beachhead. The brigade commander was cautioned not to advance farther into the country than was consistent with establishing a prudent defensive line.

The aggressive officer, knowing that employing just two regiments would be enough merely to stir up a hornet’s nest of trouble, strongly suspected he would have to commit his entire brigade before the little foray was over. He had already sought a blank check to reinforce any party he put over, and while he had not received specific approval, neither had he been told that he couldn’t do so. Even before the operation began, Carmen had decided that unless otherwise directed, he would assume he had the necessary authority to reinforce the two regiments. Major General Sherman may have hesitated to directly challenge Rebel forces north of Savannah, but Colonel Carmen was proceeding with no such qualms. What it would do to Sherman’s developing plans remained to be seen.

In Savannah, the Confederate high command was focused on getting out of town. “Active, urgent preparations for the evacuation were instantly begun,” said a Beauregard aide. “It was now but a question of a few days.” For once, Beauregard’s anger had gotten some results. Work on the all-important pontoon bridge between Savannah and the South Carolina shore was being “prosecuted with…vigor,” said his aide-de-camp. As part of the planning, Beauregard today completed a
memo indicating where the various parts of Savannah’s garrison were to report once they had left the city. Also given their life-or-death instructions were the ships of the Savannah River Squadron. The shallow-draft wooden gunboats were to try to break out upriver to Augusta; the deeper-drawing ironclad
Savannah
was to seek the open sea; and the nearly immobile ironclad
Georgia
was to be scuttled. A number of warships still under construction were to be burned to prevent their capture.

Even though he already knew the answer, General Beauregard addressed an appeal to Richmond for more troops, suggesting they be detached from General Robert E. Lee’s army for service with him. Specifically requested were the divisions of major generals Robert F. Hoke and Bushrod R. Johnson, both of which contained a large proportion of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina regiments. Beauregard’s request was forwarded to Lee, who promptly threw the matter back into the lap of Jefferson Davis with the ultimatum: “If Hoke and Johnson are sent south it will necessitate the abandonment of Richmond with the present opposing force.” There the matter ended.

Amazingly, only a few leaks about the ongoing planning reached the rank and file. A Confederate marine posted near the Little Ogeechee River wrote after the fact: “Of our weakness I was fully sensible and was convinced all along that should Sherman with his disciplined and hardened troops storm us, he could carry our works, yet the idea of evacuation had not entered my head, for we had been told that Genl. Hardee had decided to hold the City [at] all hazards. So when I was informed privately by a friend…[on December 18], even [before] some of our higher officers dreamed of it, that the place was to be abandoned, I could not realize it.” A military telegrapher working in the city, in a letter written this day, acknowledged that Savannah’s only hope was a miracle. “Our works are very strong,” wrote Thomas Carolin Clay, “but pray we may look to the Almighty & not trust to our weak arms of flesh.”

M
ONDAY
, D
ECEMBER
19, 1864

Sherman’s growing impatience to take Savannah, his nagging frustration over Foster’s inability to close the back door, and the inevitable
delays in communicating with the North now led the General to a fateful decision. As he had yet to receive Grant’s December 18 note, he was still operating under the assumption that he would be personally taking the bulk of his army to Virginia. Sherman very much wanted Savannah in his pocket before then; believing that the only way he could motivate Foster was to confront him, the General decided to visit the timorous subordinate at his Hilton Head Island headquarters.

Before departing, Sherman dictated identical messages to major generals Howard and Slocum, advising them of his absence and instructing them “to push the preparations for attacking Savannah with all possible speed, but to await orders for the attack.” Not specifically addressed was his earlier approval to Slocum’s request to push a brigade across Argyle Island into South Carolina, “seemingly threatening in flank the movement of troops attempting to escape from Savannah.” Either it slipped Sherman’s mind or else he did not consider such an action sufficiently provocative to trigger a Savannah evacuation; otherwise he would have either called it off or refrained from visiting Foster until the enemy’s reaction was known.

Sherman reached King’s Bridge with his party at midday, just in time to prevent a major disruption to the all-important supply system. It required approximately 1,600 men to handle the security as well as manage the unloading and transfer of goods from boats to wagons sent by the various commands. Since December 16 these duties had been performed by Colonel Benjamin F. Potts’s brigade (Seventeenth Corps), but when Sherman arrived at King’s Bridge he was told by the acting provost marshal that Major General Blair had recalled Potts’s troops, sending only two regiments (600 men) to replace them. Sherman was very annoyed. After ordering the two regiments back whence they came, he told Potts not to go anywhere. He fired off notes to Howard and Slocum, apprising them of the problem and directing them to detail one regiment (approximately 350 men) with 50 black pioneers from each corps to handle the workload at King’s Bridge. Only when this body of men was fully assembled could Potts be released.

(Sherman’s actions and orders ignited a tempest in a teapot, as it took time for the instructions to make their way through the wing commanders to their subordinate corps commanders. Before matters
were straightened out, Major General Blair had ordered Colonel Potts arrested for failing to obey orders to join him, and the commissary of subsistence had figuratively crossed swords with Blair by refusing to release Potts’s men from their duties.)

Sherman boarded an army tug at King’s Bridge, then headed down the Ogeechee. He was anxious to contact Rear Admiral Dahlgren, who was scouting the Vernon River, planning the joint operation against its defensive batteries that he had discussed with Sherman during their meeting. When Sherman’s tug finally located the
Harvest Moon
toward evening, the General came aboard. Dahlgren now learned that the combined army-navy push (Howard was to supply some troops) was canceled (a “great disappointment” to the rear admiral); but more importantly, he was informed of Grant’s intention to transfer most of Sherman’s army to Virginia. Dahlgren agreed to transport Sherman to Hilton Head for his personal meeting with Foster, a journey that the rear admiral estimated would take until dawn.

The destruction of the Savannah and Gulf Railroad remained on the daily agenda. “Still taring up the rode,” scribbled a diarist in the 83rd Indiana, while others in the division set down their tools and “loaded the [wagon] train with corn & potatoes.” Southward, Mower’s division of the Seventeenth Corps finally arrived at its designated zone. “Moved out on the rail road and tore up track all day,” recorded a member of the 64th Illinois. Liberty County’s ordeal continued, as the soldier added: “Got lots of flour and meal.” The Fourteenth Corps brigade that had been scouring the county as well made the turn for home today, “our teams all loaded,” according to a Minnesota man. Their only complaint was that they had to “drink the water along the side of the road, which is nearly black as tar.”

Now that supply vessels were arriving at King’s Bridge, someone had the idea to fill them with contrabands for the return trip to Hilton Head, where Northern abolitionists had set up a model African-American community. For several days the blacks had been shunted into staging camps near King’s Bridge. A soldier assigned to watch over one encampment never forgot how the escaped slaves “would sing hymns, pray and preach and hold out till nearly midnight, unless we ordered them to stop.” Others enjoyed “plantation dances and frolics.” The white soldiers found their “amusements…quite interesting.”

The Fourteenth Corps staff officer, Major John A. Connolly (still
drafting a note for newspaper publication regarding the incident he’d heard about Ebenezer Creek), watched with interest as the first contingent of blacks slated for transport were marched down to the departure wharf. “It was a strange spectacle to see those negroes of all ages, sizes, and both sexes, with their bundles on their heads and in their hands trudging along, they knew not whither, but willing to blindly follow the direction given to them by our officers.” Once the procession reached King’s Bridge, other Federal officers went among them, observed an Ohio guard, “and the men and boys, able bodied, are taken out to work for the government.”

Up and down the siege lines preparations went ahead for the upcoming Savannah assault. In the Second Division, Twentieth Corps, there was a staff conference today “with view to the adoption of a plan for storming the enemy’s works.” Orders were issued to other commands to “make thorough reconnaissances of the grounds in their front; [and to] examine the approaches of the enemy’s works which give the greatest promise of successful assault.” In one such expedition, a detachment from the 7th Iowa used a small boat to ease up to the Rebel lines along Salt Creek. They found that “the opposite shore was low and marshy in many places, waist deep in mud,” ruling out this avenue of approach. In returning to their supports, the reconnaissance party was spotted by Rebel artillerymen who “threw their shells among us, pretty lively for a while, but without doing us any injury,” wrote a relieved Iowan.

Along with all this focused activity, typical siege operations continued as if nothing else were happening. An Iowa soldier noted that there was “some heavy cannonading and brisk skirmishing all along the lines.” “We lay within 100 yds of their forts under constant fire and they don’t hurt anybody,” boasted a Michigan man this day, “only chop off trees with their shots. Our pursuits go on the same as if no enemy within 50 miles except when shells come down too close, everybody is out of sight into their holes like so many gophers.”

Fate yet played an unpredictable hand. In the sector held by the First Brigade, Third Division, Seventeenth Corps, Major John M. Price of the 12th Wisconsin had just been promoted from captain, relieving him of all duties on the picket line. Nevertheless, he insisted on one final tour of duty, partly in order to examine an area being considered for a possible attack. According to Brigadier General Manning F. Force,
who looked into the matter, Price, returning from his scout, approached a two-man picket post “upon one of the thread-like narrow dikes, [when] they took him for a rebel and challenged. He answered ‘a friend’ and kept advancing taking them for our men. As he came near they said something which he did not hear. He then observed one going around as if to get behind him, supposed he had come upon rebels, turned to run off and was shot.” Price died the next day. “He was a fine officer in both appearance and soldierly qualities,” mourned a comrade, “and was much beloved by all the men of the regiment.”

The stakes were being dramatically raised this day on Argyle Island. At dawn and pursuant to orders, Colonel Ezra Carmen landed the 3rd Wisconsin followed by the 2nd Massachusetts onto the South Carolina shore at Izard’s Plantation, near where a Rebel horse battery had been driven off by Captain Winegar on December 18. Incredibly, the Confederates had not picketed the place, so the Wisconsin boys splashed ashore “without opposition,” as one of them stated. Behind them the 2nd Massachusetts piled onto the riverbank, also without trouble. “If they had had their guns where they were yesterday they could have knocked Hail Columbia out of us,” observed a Bay State officer.

Skirmishers took up the advance, followed by the rest of the two regiments. “The rebs made but little opposition,” said a Wisconsin officer. Colonel Carmen was about to stick his neck way out. Soon after the two regiments cleared the landing area, he signaled for the 13th New Jersey to come across as well, an action that he fully realized “exceeded…[my] instructions.” The New Jersey soldiers began changing banks at 7:00
A.M
. “It was known that the only avenue of escape left to Hardee, was across the river in our front,” said one, “and it was intended, if possible, to cut them off.” Confederate reaction may have been slow to develop, but develop it did. Beginning around 11:00
A.M
., “the contest became severe and stubborn,” reported Carmen, as his men began meeting more and more of Major General Wheeler’s troopers supported by local militia. Nevertheless, by noon Carmen had advanced his line nearly two miles inland.