ing brief note to President Lincoln, announcing this happy termination of the campaign: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." The number of pieces of artillery captured, as subsequently ascertained by actual inspection and count, was one hundred and sixty-seven. Thus, as the result of this great campaign, was gained the possession of what had from the outset been its chief object. Its present value was mainly as a base for future operations. The army marched over three hundred miles in twenty-four days, directly through the heart of Georgia, and reached the sea with its subsistence trains almost unbroken. In the entire command, five officers and fifty-eight men were killed, thirteen officers and two hundred and thirty-two men wounded, and one officer and two hundred and fifty-eight men missing; making a total list of casualties of but nineteen commissioned officers and five hundred and forty-eight enlisted men, or five hundred and sixty-seven of all ranks. Seventy-seven officers, and twelve hundred and sixty-one men of the Confederate army, or thirteen hundred and thirty-eight in all, were made prisoners. Ten thousand negroes left the plantations of their former masters and accompanied the column when it reached Savannah, without taking note of thousands more who joined the army, but from various causes had to leave it at different points. Over twenty thousand bales of cotton were burned, besides the twenty-five thousand captured at Savannah. Thirteen thousand head of beef-cattle, nine million five hundred thousand pounds of corn, and ten million five hundred thousand of fodder, were taken from the country and issued to the troops and animals. The men lived mainly on the sheep hogs, turkeys, geese, chickens, sweet potatoes, and rice, gathered by the foragers from the plantations along the route of each day's march. Sixty thousand men, taking merely of the surplus which fell in their way as they marched rapidly on the main roads, subsisted for three weeks in the very country where the Union prisoners at Andersonville were starved to death or idiotcy. Five thousand horses and four thousand mules were impressed for the cavalry and trains. Three hundred and twenty miles of railway were destroyed, and the last remaining links of communication between the Confederate armies in Virginia and the West effectually severed, by burning every tie, twisting every rail while heated red-hot over the flaming piles of ties, and laying in ruin every depot, engine-house, repairshop, water-tank, and turn-table. From the time that the army left Atlanta, until its arrival before Savannah, not one word of intelligence was received by the Government or people, except through the Confederate newspapers, of its whereabouts, movements, or fate; and it was not until Sherman had emerged from the region lying between Augusta and Macon, and reached Millen, that the authorities and the press of the Confederacy were able to make up their minds as to the direction of his march. Marching in four columns, on a front of thirty miles, each column masked in all directions by clouds of skirmishers, Sherman was enabled to continue till the last to menace so many points, each in such force that it was impossible for the enemy to decide whether Augusta, Macon, or Savannah were his immediate objective; the Gulf or the Atlantic his destination; the Flint, the Oconee, the Ogeechee, or the Savannah his route; or what his ulterior design. Immediately upon receipt of Sherman's laconic message, President Lincoln replied :— "EXECUTIVE MANSION, "MY DEAR GENERAL SHERMAN : "Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift,-the capture of Savannah. 'When you were about to leave Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling you were the better judge, and remembering that nothing risked nothing gained,' I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours, for I believe none of us went further than to acquiesce. And taking the work of General Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success. "Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages, but in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing forces of the whole--Hood's army-it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. "But what next? I suppose it will be safe if I leave General Grant and yourself to decide. "Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army, officers and men. "Yours very truly, "A. LINCOLN." In concluding his official report, Sherman thus speaks of the services rendered by his subordinate commanders, and of the character of his army : "Generals Howard and Slocum are gentlemen of singular capacity and intelligence, thorough soldiers and patriots, working day and night, not for themselves, but for their country and their men. General Kilpatrick, who commanded the cavalry of this army, has handled it with spirit and dash to my entire satisfaction, and kept a superior force of the enemy's cavalry from even approaching our infantry columns or wagon-trains. All the division and brigade commanders merit my personal and official thanks, and I shall spare no efforts to secure them commissions equal to the rank they have exercised so well. "As to the rank and file, they seem so full of confidence in themselves, that I doubt if they want a compliment from me; but I must do them the justice to say that, whether called on to fight, to march, to wade streams, to make roads, clear out obstructions, build bridges, make 'corduroy,' or tear up railroads, they have done it with alacrity and a degree of cheerfulness unsurpassed. A little loose in foraging, they 'did some things they ought not to have done,' yet on the whole they have supplied the wants of the army with as little violence as could be expected, and as little loss as I calculated. Some of these foraging parties had encounters with the enemy which would, in ordinary times, rank as respectable battles. "The behavior of our troops in Savannah has been so manly, so quiet, so perfect, that I take it as the best evidence of discipline and true courage. Never was a hostile city, filled with women and children, occupied by a large army with less disorder, or more system, order, and good government. The same general and generous spirit of confidence and good feeling pervades the army which it has ever afforded me especial pleasure to report on former occasions." CHAPTER XXIV. THE END OF HOOD. In order fully to comprehend how it was possible for a campaign so vast in its magnitude, so decisive in its results, to be conducted to a successful termination with only nominal opposition, it is necessary to recur to the position of Hood's army, which we left at Florence in the early part of November, confronted by the Union army under Thomas, then concentrated at Pulaski, under the immediate command of Major-General Schofield. It will be remembered that, in view of the numerical inferiority of his army, comprising the Fourth and Twentythird Corps, Hatch's division, and Croxton's and Capron's brigades of cavalry, amounting to less than thirty thousand men of all arms, General Thomas had decided to maintain a defensive attitude, until the arrival of A. J. Smith with two divisions of the Sixteenth Corps from Missouri and the remnant of dismounted cavalry should enable him to assume the offensive, with equal strength, against Hood's forces, consisting of the three old corps of the Confederate army of the Tennessee, under Lee, Stewart, and Cheatham, estimated at thirty thousand strong, and Forrest's cavalry, supposed to number twelve thousand. In preparation for his great invasion of Middle Tennessee, with the declared intention of remaining there, Hood had caused the Mobile and Ohio railway to be repaired, and occupied Corinth, so that his supplies could now be brought from Selma and Montgomery by rail to that point, and thence to Cherokee Station, on the Memphis and Charleston railway. |