Life in Dixie during the War Part 31

The movement from Atlanta to Savannah, which figured in history as "The March to the Sea," was, from the standpoint of the tactician, no great achievement; it involved no more than the pa.s.sage of an invincible army across some three hundred miles of country, where it could gather supplies upon its way, to effect a junction with its naval allies at a practically defenceless city. It was peculiarly lacking in the daring which is customarily ascribed to it, for it was made, practically, without resistance and along a route where no considerable force of the enemy could have been encountered. It was not a venture in the dark with a conclusion to be determined by circ.u.mstances; for the authorities at Washington were fully advised of its author's purpose, and Gen. Sherman was a.s.sured that he would meet a formidable fleet at Savannah before he undertook it. It was no more nor less than the yielding, by this most typical barbarian conqueror of the Nineteenth century, to the spirit of pillage and excess which distinguished his prototypes in the days of the Goths and Vandals, when the homes and firesides of their enemies were at their mercy. It was a campaign remarkable only for the revival of military methods abandoned since Attila the Hun. It was, nevertheless, as carefully planned as it was ruthlessly executed. It was no sudden impulse which laid the torch to every roof-tree upon the invading army's path. It was no spirit of retaliation for vigorous but ineffective resistance which goaded these conquerors to excess, for out of 62,204 men who began the march but 103 lost their lives before they reached Savannah. It was simply the grasping of the amplest opportunity by a man who glories in looting and destruction, and to whom human misery was a subject for jest.

At the outset let us understand that General Sherman, through all that portion of his career which began with the destruction of Atlanta, was acting upon a plan and a theory devised and adopted weeks before; that his own actions and that of his army were in no sense impulsive, but in every way controlled by premeditation, and that our authority for such a conclusion lies in the repeated statements of the General himself.

With the brutal frankness which was one of his characteristics, he wrote on September 4th, 1864, in a letter to General Halleck, which he reproduces in his autobiography: "If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking." "I knew, of course," he says, "that such a measure would be strongly criticized, but made up my mind to do it with the absolute certainty of its justness, and that time would sanction its wisdom. I knew that the people of the South would read in this measure two important conclusions; one that we were in earnest, and the other that if they were sincere in their common and popular clamor 'to die in the last ditch,' the opportunity would soon come."

The cold-blooded candor of this statement leaves little doubt of the temperature of the well-springs which fed that organ of General Sherman corresponding to the heart of an ordinary man; but if evidence were wanting of his absolute unconcern for the sufferings of others when his own plans might be interfered with to the slightest degree, it might be found in his answer to General Hood's proposition for an exchange of prisoners. "Some of these prisoners," he says, "had already escaped and got in, and had described the pitiable condition of the remainder." He had at that time about two thousand Confederate prisoners available for exchange. "These I offered to exchange for Stoneman, Buell, and such of my own army as would make up the equivalent; but I would not exchange for his prisoners generally, because I knew these would have to be sent to their own regiments away from my army, whereas all we could give him could at once be put to duty in his immediate army." No possible suffering which his unfortunate companions in arms could be forced to bear by reason of the Confederates' lack of supplies with which to feed and clothe them, could induce him to exchange for men who would not strengthen his own immediate army!

Geneseric, the Vandal, is said to have been "cruel to blood thirstiness, cunning, unscrupulous and grasping; but he possessed great military talents and his manner of life was austere." Let the impartial reader of history say how nearly the barbarian who marched to the sea in the nineteenth century, approached to his prototype of the fifth century. One is not surprised, therefore, to find this man writing to General Hood on September 7th, 1864, that he "deemed it to the interest of the United States that the citizens now residing in Atlanta should remove."

In the midst of a region desolated by war, their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, in the army hundreds of miles away, it was "deemed to be in the interest of the United States" that the helpless women and children of Atlanta should be driven from their homes to find such shelter as G.o.d gives the ravens and the beasts of the wood. It was a course that wrung from General Hood these forceful words of reply:

"Permit me to say that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war. In the name of G.o.d and humanity I protest, believing that you will find you are expelling from their homes and firesides the wives and children of a brave people." To this burning arraignment General Sherman could find no better answer than argument concerning the right of States to secede. But it was followed on September 11th by an appeal from the mayor and councilmen of Atlanta which would have touched a heart of stone. It was humble, it was earnest, it was pitiful. It provoked these words in reply: "I have your letter of the 11th in the nature of a pet.i.tion to revoke my orders removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have an interest."

The same unalterable resolution must have dominated Geneseric, the Vandal, when he prepared for his fourteen days sacking of Rome. The vandal of the fifth century had at least the pretext of reprisal for his actions; the vandal of the nineteenth century could find no better plea for his barbarity than that it might wring the hearts of absent men until they would sacrifice principle and honor for the relief of their loved ones.

President Davis says: "Since Alva's atrocious cruelties to the non-combatant population of the low countries in the sixteenth century, the history of war records no instance of such barbarous cruelty as this order designed to perpetrate. It involved the immediate expulsion from their homes and only means of subsistence of thousands of unoffending women and children, whose husbands and fathers were either in the army, in Northern prisons, or had died in battle."

At the time appointed the women and children were expelled from their houses, and, before they were pa.s.sed within our lines, complaint was generally made that the Federal officers and men who were sent to guard them had robbed them of the few articles of value they had been permitted to take from their homes. The cowardly dishonesty of the men appointed to carry out this order, was in perfect harmony with the temper and the spirit of the order.

It was on the 12th day of November, 1864, that "The March to the Sea"

began. Hood's army had been followed to Tennessee, and Sherman's forces had destroyed the railroad during their return trip to Atlanta. They were now ready to abandon the ruins of the Gate City for fresher and more lucrative fields of havoc. It is fair to General Sherman to say that his plans and intentions had been fully communicated to the authorities at Washington, and that they met with the thorough approbation of General Halleck, then Chief of Staff.

General Halleck will be remembered as the hero who won immortal fame before Corinth. With an immensely superior force he so thoroughly entrenched himself before that city that he not only held his position during General Beauregard's occupancy of the town, but retained it for several days after the Confederate evacuation. He retired from active service after this, his only piece of campaigning, to act in an advisory capacity at Washington, and it was he who wrote these encouraging words to Sherman at Atlanta: "The course which you have pursued in removing rebel families from Atlanta, and in the exchange of prisoners, is fully approved by the War Department.... Let the disloyal families thus stripped go to their husbands, fathers, and natural protectors in the rebel ranks.... I would destroy every mill and factory within reach, which I did not want for my own use.... I have endeavored to impress these views upon our commanders for the last two years. _You are almost the only one who has properly applied them._" These words of encouragement fell upon willing ears. No one knew better than Sherman how to read the sentiments between those lines; he understood the motives which moved their doughty author as thoroughly as when later the same hand gathered courage to advise him in plain unvarnished words to wipe the city of Charleston off the face of the earth, and sow her site with salt. The valiant Chief of Staff, who urged on campaigns from a point sufficiently to the rear, had found at last a man who would carry out his instructions, and the war upon women and children was about to begin.

General Halleck was not the sole confidant of General Sherman's plan. Less than a month before the memorable march was undertaken, he telegraphed to General Grant: "I propose that we break up the railroad from Chattanooga forward, and that we strike out for Milledgeville, Millen and Savannah.

Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless for us to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their military resources. I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!"

Sir Walter Raleigh conceived and attempted to execute the plan of exterminating the Irish race, and colonizing their lands from England. The Sultan of Turkey is about to carry out a similar policy with his Armenians.

The difference between these other exterminators and Sherman, is that they expected to be met at the doors of the homes they intended to destroy by men capable of offering resistance, while the American General knew he would have to do with women and children alone.

He evidently met with some expostulation from General Grant, for he afterwards telegraphed him that he would "infinitely prefer to make a wreck of the road and the country from Chattanooga and Atlanta, including the latter city, send back all wounded and unserviceable men, and with the effective army move through Georgia, smashing things to the sea."

Receiving no answer to this latter dispatch, he did not hesitate to execute the campaign as he had planned it, and in his own language proceeded to "make the interior of Georgia feel the weight of war."

Sherman and his staff rode out of the Gate City at 7 o'clock in the morning of the 16th. "Behind us," he says, "lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Some band, by accident, struck up the anthem of 'John Brown's soul goes marching on'. The men caught up the strain, and never before or since have I heard the chorus of 'Glory, glory, hallelujah!' done with more spirit or in better harmony of time and place." To the credit of the slandered soul of that other marauder, let us say, that John Brown's lawless warfare was upon men alone, and that booty formed no part of his incentive.

Knowing that no effective resistance was to be expected, Sherman so scattered his columns that the sixty-mile "swath" which it was his purpose to devastate, was covered by them with ease. In order that the work might be thoroughly and effectively done, a sufficient number of men were detailed for that branch of military service peculiar to Sherman's army, and known as "b.u.mmers."

"These interesting individuals always," says the General, "arose before day and preceded the army on its march." "Although this foraging was attended with great danger and hard work, there seemed to be a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be detailed on such a party." "No doubt," he adds with that same blunt frankness, "many acts of pillage, robbery and violence were committed by these parties of foragers usually called 'b.u.mmers'; for I have since heard of jewelry taken from women, and the plunder of articles that never reached the commissary." But these playful fellows, in spite of such indiscretions, were never more to the General than an exhibition of that charming humor invariably apparent in him in the presence of human suffering.

We may gather an idea of them from the following description given by a correspondent of the New York Herald, who accompanied the army: "Any man who has seen the object that the name applies to will acknowledge that it was admirably selected. Fancy a ragged man, bleached by the smoke of many a pine-knot fire, mounted on a scraggy mule without a saddle, with a gun, a knap-sack, a butcher-knife and a plug hat, stealing his way through the pine forests far out in the flanks of a column, keen on the scent of rebels, or bacon, or silver spoons, or coin, or anything valuable, and you have him in your mind. Think how you would admire him if you were a lone woman, with a family of small children, far from help, when he blandly inquired where you kept your valuables! Think how you would smile when he pried open your chests with his bayonet, or knocked to pieces your tables, pianos and chairs, tore your bed clothing into three-inch strips and scattered them about the yard. The 'b.u.mmers' say it takes too much time to use keys. Color is no protection from the rough raiders. They go through a negro cabin in search of diamonds and gold watches with just as much freedom and vivacity as they 'loot' the dwelling of a wealthy planter.

They appear to be possessed of a spirit of 'pure cussedness.' One incident, ill.u.s.trative of many, will suffice. A b.u.mmer stepped into a house and inquired for sorghum. The lady of the house presented a jug, which he said was too heavy, so he merely filled his canteen. Then taking a huge wad of tobacco from his mouth he thrust it into the jug. The lady inquired, in wonder, why he spoiled that which he did not want. 'Oh, some feller'll come along and taste that sorghum and think you've poisoned him, then he'll burn your d----d old house.' There are hundreds of these mounted men with the column, and they go everywhere. Some of them are loaded down with silverware, gold coin, and other valuables. I hazard nothing in saying three fifths (in value) of the personal property of the country we have pa.s.sed through was taken by Sherman's army."

In an address delivered before the a.s.sociation of the Maryland Line, Senator Zeb Vance, of North Carolina, has laid the vigorous touch of his characteristic English upon the void until it stands out in barbarous bold relief, so far beyond the pencil of the present writer that he best serves his readers by quoting: "With reference to his famous and infamous march, I wish to say that I hope I am too much of a man to complain of the natural and inevitable hardships, or even cruelties of war; but of the manner in which this army treated the peaceful and defenseless inhabitants in the reach of his columns, all civilization should complain.

"There are always stragglers and desperadoes following in the wake of an army, who do some damage to and inflict some outrages upon helpless citizens, in spite of all efforts of commanding officers to restrain and punish; but when a General organizes a corps of thieves and plunderers as a part of his invading army, and licenses beforehand their outrages, he and all who countenance, aid or abet, invite the execration of mankind.

This peculiar arm of military service, it is charged and believed, was inst.i.tuted by General Sherman in his invasion of the Southern States.

Certain it is that the operations of his 'b.u.mmer Corps' were as regular and as unrebuked, if not as much commended for efficiency, as any other division of his army, and their atrocities are often justified or excused, on the ground that 'such is war.'

"In his own official report of his operations in Georgia, he says: 'We consumed the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah, also the sweet potatoes, hogs, sheep and poultry, and carried off more than ten thousand horses and mules. I estimate the damage done to Georgia at one-hundred million dollars, at least twenty million of which inured to our benefit, and the remainder was simply waste and destruction!'... The 'remainder' delicately alluded to, that is say damage done the unresisting inhabitants to over and above the seizing of necessary army supplies, consisted in private houses burned, stock shot down and left to rot, bed clothes, money, watches, spoons, plate and ladies' jewelry stolen, etc., etc. A lane of desolation sixty miles wide through the heart of three great states, marked by more burnings and destructions than ever followed in the wake of the widest cyclone that ever laid forest low! And all done, not to support an invading army, but for 'pure waste and destruction'; to punish the crime of rebellion, not in the persons of those who had brought these about, but of peaceful non-combatants, the tillers of the soil, the women and the children, the aged and feeble, and the poor slaves! A silver spoon was evidence of disloyalty, a ring on a lady's finger was a sure proof of sympathy with rebellion, whilst a gold watch was _prima facie_ evidence of the most d.a.m.nable guilt on the part of the wearer. These obnoxious earmarks of treason must be seized and confiscated for private use--for 'such is war!' If these failed, and they sometimes did, torture of the inhabitants was freely employed to force disclosure. Sometimes with n.o.ble rage at their disappointment, the victims were left dead, as a warning to all others who should dare hide a jewel or a family trinket from the cupidity of a soldier of the Union. No doubt the stern necessity for such things caused great pain to those who inflicted, but the Union must be restored, and how could that be done whilst a felonious gold watch or a treasonable spoon was suffered to remain in the land, giving aid and comfort to rebellion? For 'such is war.' Are such things war indeed? Let us see. Eighty-four years before that time, there was a war, in that same country; it was a rebellion, too, and an English n.o.bleman led the troops of Great Britain through that same region, over much of the same route, in his efforts to subdue that rebellion. The people through whose land he marched were bitterly hostile, they shot his foraging parties, his sentinels and stragglers, they fired upon him from every wood.

"He and his troops had every motive to hate and punish those rebellious and hostile people. It so happens that the original order-book of Lord Cornwallis is in possession of the North Carolina Historical Society. I have seen and read it. Let us make a few extracts and see what he considered war, and what he thought to be the duty of a civilized soldier towards non-combatants and the helpless:

"'CAMP NEAR BEATTY'S FORD, January 28, 1781.

"'Lord Cornwallis has so often expressed the zeal and good will of the army that he has not the slightest doubt that the officers and soldiers will most cheerfully submit to the ill conveniences that must naturally attend war, so remote from water carriage and the magazines of the army.

The supply of rum for a time will be absolutely impossible, and that of meal very uncertain. It is needless to point out to the officers the necessity of preserving the strictest discipline, and of preventing the oppressed people from suffering violence by the hands from whom they are taught to look for protection.'

"Now, General Sherman was fighting, as he said, for the sole purpose of restoring the Union, and for making the people of the rebellious States look to the United States alone for protection; does any act or order of his anywhere indicate a similar desire of protecting the people from suffering at the hands of those whose duty it was to protect them? Again:

"'HEADQUARTERS, LANSLER'S PLANTATION, February 2, 1781.

"'Lord Cornwallis is highly displeased that several houses have been set on fire to-day during the march--a disgrace to the army--and he will punish with the utmost severity any person or persons who shall be found guilty of committing so disgraceful an outrage. His lordship requests the commanding officers of the corps will endeavor to find the persons who set fire to the houses to-day.'

"Now think of the march of Sherman's army which could be discovered a great way off by the smoke of homesteads by day and the lurid glare of flames by night, from Atlanta to Savannah, from Columbia to Fayetteville, and suppose that such an order as this had been issued by its commanding officers and rigidly executed, would not the mortality have been quite equal to that of a great battle?

"Arriving in Fayetteville on the 10th of January, 1865, he not only burned the a.r.s.enal, one of the finest in the United States, which perhaps he might properly have done, but also burned five private dwelling houses near by; he burned the princ.i.p.al printing offices, that of the old 'Fayetteville Observer;' he burned the old Bank of North Carolina, eleven large warehouses, five cotton mills and quite a number of private dwellings in other parts of the town, whilst in the suburbs almost a clean sweep was made; in one locality nine houses were burned. Universally houses were gutted before they were burned, and after everything portable was secured the furniture was ruthlessly destroyed, pianos on which perhaps rebel tunes had been played--'Dixie' or 'My Maryland'--disloyal bureaus, traitorous tables and chairs were cut to pieces with axes, and frequently, after all this damage, fire was applied and all consumed.

Carriages and vehicles of all kinds were wantonly destroyed or burned; instances could be given of old men who had the shoes taken from their feet, the hats from their heads and clothes from their persons; and their wives and children subjected to like treatment. In one instance, as the marauders left they shot down a dozen cattle belonging to an old man, and then left their carca.s.ses lying in the yard. Think of that, and then remember the grievance of the Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who came in all seriousness to complain to General Longstreet in the Gettysburg campaign, of the outrage which some of his ferocious rebels had committed upon them _by_ '_milking their cows_.' On one occasion, at Fayetteville, four gentlemen were hung up by the neck until nearly dead to force them to disclose where their valuables were hidden, and one of them was shot to death. Again:

"'HEADQUARTERS DOBBINS HOUSE, February 17, 1781.

"'Lord Cornwallis is very sorry to be obliged to call the attention of the officers of the army to the repeated orders against plundering, and he a.s.sures the officers that if their duty to their King and country, and their feelings for humanity are not sufficient to force their obedience to them, he must, however reluctantly, make use of such powers as the military laws have placed in his hands.... It is expected that Captains will exert themselves to keep good order and to prevent plundering. Any officer _who looks on with indifference and does not do his utmost to prevent shameful marauding, will be considered in a more criminal light than the persons who commit these scandalous crimes_, which must bring disgrace and ruin on his Majesty's service. All foraging parties will give receipts for supplies taken by them.'

"Now, taking it for granted that Lord Cornwallis, a distinguished soldier and a gentleman, is an authority on the rights of war, could there be found any where a more d.a.m.natory comment upon the practices of General Sherman and his army? Again:

"'HEADQUARTERS, FREELANDS, February 28, 1781.

"'Memorandum:--A watch found by the regiment of Bose. The owner may have it from the adjutant of the regiment upon proving property.' Another:

"'SMITH'S PLANTATION, March 1, 1781.

"'Brigade Orders. A woman having been robbed of a watch, a black silk handkerchief, a gallon of peach brandy and a shirt, and as, by the description, by a soldier of the guards, the camp and every man's kit is to be immediately searched for the same by the officers of the Brigade.'

"Are there any poets in the audience, or other persons in whom the imaginative faculty has been largely cultivated? If so, let me beg him to do me the favor of conceiving, if he can, and make manifest to me, the idea of a notice of a lost watch being given, in general orders, by William Tec.u.mseh Sherman, and the offer to return it on proof of property by the rebel owner! Let him imagine, if he can, the searching of every man's kit in the army for a stolen watch, a shirt, a black silk handkerchief and a gallon of peach brandy! Sherman says 'such is war.' I venture to say that up to the period when that 'great march' taught us the contrary, no humane general or civilized people in Christendom believed _that_ '_such was_ war.' Has civilization gone backward since Lord Cornwallis' day? Have arson and vulgar theft been enn.o.bled into heroic virtues? If so, when and by whom? Has the art of discovering a poor man's hidden treasure by fraud or torture been elevated into the strategy which wins a campaign? If so, when and by whom?

"No, it will not do to slur over these things by a vague reference to the inevitable cruelties of war. The time is fast coming when the conduct of that campaign will be looked upon in the light of real humanity, and investigated in the real historic spirit which evolves truth; and all the partisan songs which have been sung, or orations which subservient orators have spoken about that great march to the sea; and all the caricatures of Southern leaders which the bitterness of a diseased sectional sentiment has inspired; and all the glamour of a great success, shall not avail to restrain the inexorable, the illuminating pen of history. Truth, like charity, never faileth. Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but when the truth, which is perfect, has come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

"Now let us contrast General Sherman with his greatest foe; likewise the greatest, the most humane general of modern times, and see whether he regarded the pitiless destruction of the substance of women and children and inoffensive inhabitants a legitimate war:

"'HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VA., June 27, 1863.

"'General Order No. 73. The commanding general has observed with marked satisfaction the conduct of troops on this march. There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of this army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of an enemy than in our own. The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenceless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our country.... It will be remembered that we make war only upon armed men.

R. E. LEE, General.'

"The humanity and Christian spirit of this order was such as to challenge the admiration of foreign nations. The 'London Times' commented upon it, and its American correspondent said: 'The greatest surprise has been expressed to me by officers from the Austrian, Prussian and English armies, each of which has representatives here, that volunteer troops, provoked by nearly twenty-seven months of unparalleled ruthlessness and wantonness, of which their country has been the scene, should be under such control, and willing to act in harmony with the long-suffering and forbearance of President Davis and General Lee.'