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CHAPTER XXIX.

SHERMAN'S S MARCH.

T must be remembered that the siege of Petersburg,

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and the care of the vast army which encircled it, was but one item in the multitudinous occupations of Gen. Grant. The military operations of all the Union armies were conducted by him. In Missouri, in Louisiana, in Tennessee, in Georgia, large armies were marching, halting, fighting, as he gave orders. The oversight of either one was enough to tax the mind and energy of any one man.

When the despatches were read by Gen. Grant which announced that Hood, leaving Georgia, had crossed the Tennessee, and was marching on Nashville, he said, "If I commanded both armies, I should not alter the route which Hood is pursuing." *

Gen. Hood was an impulsive man; and the object of his movements was not clear to either Generals Grant or Sherman, perhaps not clear to his own mind. He doubtless thought he should find much more comfortable quarters in the hotels at Nashville than in his camp.

"I was with Napoleon at Boulogne," said Talleyrand, "when he learned that Gen. Mack was at Ulm. If it were mine to place him,' said he, putting his finger on the map at Ulm, 'I would place him there.' In a few hours, the camp was broken up, and the whole army was on the route to Ulm."

Grant could now bring Sherman's army to Petersburg by the ordinary routes, or by a long sweep to the sea, and then up the Atlantic coast to some point south of Richmond. A march to the sea was determined on, resembling, on a gigantic scale, the march of Sheridan through the Valley of the Shenandoah.

Atlanta had been captured; and Gen. Sherman ordered its complete evacuation as a military post.

The mayor and city council remonstrated vehemently. Gen. Sherman's reply enters admirably and with no waste of words into the philosophy of the Rebellion. It was a wholesome preaching they were not accustomed to hear. In the course of his letter, he said, "The only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home is to stop this war ; which can alone be done by admitting that it began in error, and is perpetuated in pride. We do not want your negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your land, or any thing you have; but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have; and, if it involve the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it."

Atlanta on the 15th of November was a city without inhabitants. Its houses were empty, its population had gone. Flowers were blooming in the gardens; but solitude reigned over the doomed city. That night the heavens reflected a sea of fire, the sky was one broad sheet of lurid flames. Buildings covering an area of two hundred acres were burning. The immense warehouses where the munitions of war for the destruction of Union men had been stored were destroyed. The founderies where rebel cannon and shot and shell had

been forged and cast were in ruins. Terrible retribution had come to this city, which had sent forth the instruments of death to so many thousands of loyal

men.

Most of Sherman's army had started on its great march. A Massachusetts regiment was the last to leave; and, fitly enough, its band was playing, by the light of the burning city, "John Brown's soul goes marching on.”

For twenty-four days, the army disappeared from Northern view into the very heart of the Rebellion. About sixty-five thousand men swept over the country in a track fifty miles wide, and advanced from ten to twenty miles a day. Of these about five thousand were cavalry, under Gen. Kilpatrick, who moved in front and on each flank. The army was organized in two grand divisions; one under Gen. Howard, the other under Gen. Slocum. Each of these had two corps under Generals Logan, Blair, Davis, and Williams. Accompanying the train were 3,500 wagons and 35,000 horses. 1,328 prisoners and 167 guns were taken. Our whole loss in killed was 63 men, and 245 wounded. 5,000 horses and 4,000 mules were appropriated for army service. 20,000 bales of cotton were burned, and 25,000 captured at Savannah. 13,000 head of cattle, 10,000,000 pounds of corn, 1,217,527 rations of meat, 919,000 of bread, 483,000 of coffee, 581,534 of sugar, 1,146,500 of soap, 137,000 of salt, and 10,000,000 of fodder, were taken. This was in addition to the rice and sweet-potatoes, with which the army supplied itself bountifully every day. Fourteen thousand negroes resigned their connection with "the

peculiar institution," and followed the army in its march.

All railroads, dépôts, mills, founderies, factories, arsenals, machine-shops, were destroyed, and every thing laid in ruins which could aid the Rebellion. The damage in the State of Georgia alone was estimated at a hundred million dollars.

This teeming abundance was found in a country where thousands of Northern soldiers had been deliberately put to death by the lingering tortures of starvation; rebel officers, in some instances, looking at the poor beings as they actually gnawed the flesh from their arms in their dying agonies.

Charleston was evacuated; Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, captured; and, April 13, the army had moved north, and occupied Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina.

It was a just judgment which led the armed hosts of the Union, bearing the national ensign, through South Carolina, which had commenced the war, and brought this avenging punishment upon herself. "Woe unto

the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

Soon after Gen. Sherman began his march, Gen. Grant sent out two expeditions to prevent a concentration of troops against him, one from Vicksburg to the Big Black River, which destroyed railroads, bridges, and military stores; and the other from Baton Rouge, threatening the safety of Mobile.

The march of Sherman was a means of education to the South much needed. It brought the war to the

homes of the authors of secession; it showed the people, that, notwithstanding all their leaders had told them to the contrary, there was a North, there was a United-States Government, with the will and power to make itself obeyed.

It also afforded valuable instruction to the men of the Northern army: it showed to them with terrible plainness the poverty, the ignorance, and the arro gance created by slavery.

A member of Gen. Sherman's staff met with an original character in Georgia, a shrewd old fellow, who expressed his views on reconstruction in the following pithy and forcible manner: "It'll take the help of Divine Providence, a heap of rain, and a deal of elbowgrease, to fix things up again.'

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Gen. Grant was among the first to commend Gen. Sherman's services, and give to them the most generous appreciation. He forwarded a subscription of five hundred dollars to some friends of Gen. Sherman in Columbus, O., who were intending to present him with a testimonial of gratitude and regard; commending the general in highest terms as "a good and great man."

In his official report, he says, "Gen. Sherman's movement from Chattanooga to Atlanta was prompt, skilful, and brilliant. The history of his flank movements and battles during that memorable campaign will ever be read with an interest unsurpassed by any thing in history." Gen. Grant never evinced toward any one who co-operated with him the spirit of envy or disparagement, which belongs to a little nature.

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Atlanta, the heart of the Rebellion, had fallen it now remained for Grant to take Richmond, its head.

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