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By Root 1936 0

Sherman would lead them there. This lean, red-bearded, passionate general had come to see himself as an instrument of justice. He could justify brutality in terms of morality; he had a clouded but authentic vision of what America someday would be, and he saw himself and his army as the instruments by which punishment would descend on the unfaithful. An army surgeon who had seen much of him in Savannah wrote that Sherman “differs from most men by being more plain. He dresses plainly, talks plainly, fights plainly, and reaches results so plainly that after they are reached they look as simple as setting an egg on end, which all could do after seeing Columbus do it.” What Sherman saw now — saw with terrible clarity, saw it as the private soldiers in his army saw it — was that to break everything loose in South Carolina was to crush the Confederacy’s last hope to fragments. He led his army north from Savannah shortly after the first of the new year with “the settled determination of each individual to let the people know there was war in the land.”1

This was not the picnic hike that had prevailed in Georgia. To go north across the lowlands, Sherman had to cross a flat swampy country crossed by many rivers, most of which were in flood. Joe Johnston, that canny little soldier who was at last being restored to command (now that there was nothing much for a Confederate to command, now that the last hope was evaporating like the mist from damp fields under the morning sun), believed that no army could cross this land in winter with any success. From afar Johnston watched Sherman’s progress, unbelieving; and when he saw Sherman’s army bridging rivers, building roads across swamps, and wading through flooded backwaters, making just as much time as it had made on the dry roads of Georgia, he wrote that “I made up my mind that there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar.”2

Johnston was right, in a way. This was not actually an army: it was just a collection of western pioneers on the march — men with axes who could cut down a forest and corduroy a road without breaking step, men who would flounder for miles through floodwaters armpit-deep, making nothing of it except for casual high-private remarks to the effect that “Uncle Billy seems to have struck this river end-ways.” They plowed across the bottom lands as if they were on parade; they built bridges, cut roads, marched in ice-cold water as if they were on dry ground, casually burned towns and looted plantations and set fire to pine forests just for the fun of seeing the big trees burn — and came up north, mile after endless mile, carrying the future on their shoulders without realizing it laughing and frolicking and making a devastation to mark their passage, An Indiana soldier remarked that the men set fire to so much that “some days the sun was almost entirely obscured by the smoke of the consuming buildings, cotton gins, etc.” When deep mud bogged down everything that went on wheels, whole regiments were detailed to take hold of drag ropes and haul wagons and guns out of the mire. It was said that when a staff officer complimented one such detail for its effective work a corporal spoke up in reply: “Yes, we got the mules and wagons out, but we lost a driver and a damn good whip down in that hole.”3

Mile by mile the army moved north. Every evening the mounted foragers would come in to camp, trailed by hundreds of wagons, buggies, and carriages which they had seized at different plantations and had loaded with foodstuffs; in the morning, when the army moved on, these would be set on fire and abandoned, symbols of the offhand hatred which the rank and file nourished for the state where secession had been born. Going through the town of McPhersonville, Ohio soldiers realized that every house in the place was burning, reflected that “this state was largely responsible for the rebellion,” and thoughtfully noted: “Our line of march throughout this state was marked by smoke in the day and the glare of fire by night.” All along this line of march few buildings