Waynesboro' Branch connecting Augusta with Millen. Incalculable damage had been done. It only remained to move down to the Atlantic, and crown the campaign in the capture of Savannah.

From Millen, then, on the 2d of December, the Yankee army swung southerly down on the final stage of its journey to Savannah, in half a dozen columns, moving over as many different roads for the sake of convenience and speed. The Confederate forces, massed at Augusta, were left hopelessly in Sherman's rear. The army was protected on either flank by a large river, and cavalry formed the vanguard and rear-guard. Its mission, as a curtain for the concealment of infantry operations, had now been accomplished. The country traversed was covered with pine forests, cut up by numerous creeks, and intersected by wide stretches of swamps; and further on the coastwise, swamps and the low rice-fields became the prevalent character of the region.

So far General Sherman's march had been almost without opposition. It had had one or two small conflicts with Wheeler's cavalry; and some few militiamen and conscripts, hastily assembled and badly organized, were easily brushed from his path. Ten miles from Savannah, where his left wing struck the Charleston Railroad, he encountered Confederate skirmishers posted in a swamp near by, which indicated the presence of the Confederate forces under Hardee for the first time.

THE FALL OF SAVANNAH.

On the 10th of December, Sherman lay in line of battle, confronting the outer works of Savannah, about five miles distant from the city. It was easy for him to see that his first task was to open communication with the fleet.

That part of the coast of Georgia, at the mouth of the Savannah, is of that amphibious character which marks so much of the Southern coast in general-the ravelled and unfinished ends of nature's web, where sea and land join. The ocean breaks in between Great Wassaw and Ossabaw Islands, forming Ossabaw Sound, and into this estuary flow the Great and Little Ogeechee and the Vernon rivers. The land, or rather

the marsh on each side of the Ogeechee, was almost à fleur d'eau, certainly hardly rising a foot above the level of the river, while at times it is entirely submerged. For miles and miles on every hand there was nothing to be seen but these low and level islands and islets, covered with reeds and rank grasses, save where a lustier vegetation had pushed up in occasional clumps of trees called "hummocks."

About six miles from the mouth of Ossabaw Sound, near where the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad crosses the Ogeechee, the river jets out into a promontory named Point Genesis, covered by one of these hummocks of more than ordinary size. Behind this, hidden from the river, lay Fort McAllister, an earthwork of considerable strength, erected by the Confederates early in the war. Its batteries completely commanded the river.

On the 12th of December, Hazen's division of the Fifteenth Corps was selected for the important work of carrying Fort McAllister. At half-past four o'clock of the 13th, the division went forward to the assault, another division supporting it, over an open space of more than five hundred yards. The Yankees rushed on at the double-quick. The fort was approached and stormed from all sides. Resistance was useless, as by a singular improvidence the fort was garrisoned by not more than two or three hundred Confederates; and there is no doubt that General Hardee had been surprised by the quickness and decision of the enemy.

Sherman himself had ordered the assault, and witnessed the execution of the order from the top of a house not far distant; and as soon as he saw the men on the parapets, he exclaimed to his staff, "The fort is ours! Order me a boat-I am going down to the fleet."

The possession of Fort McAllister opened Ossabaw Sound, effected communication with Dahlgren's fleet, and made the capture of Savannah, where Hardee had allowed himself to be shut up with fifteen thousand men, but a question of time. In fact Sherman had now invested the city on all but the eastern side. His right held King's Bridge, far in the rear of Savannah, and controlled the Ogeechee, whence his lines stretched across the Savannah River, his left being about three miles above the city. He had cut off all the railroad supplies of

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Savannah. On the south, he had struck the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad, which formerly had transported large supplies of cattle and provisions from Florida to Savannah. The railroads from Augusta and Macon were thoroughly broken. Foster's batteries had gotten within shelling distance of the Charleston Railroad, and prevented the passage of trains. It only remained to move regularly upon the city by systematic approaches. It could not hope for outside succor of any kind; Sherman's prompt seizure of Fort McAllister having prevented reinforcements down the Charleston road, and cut off General G. W. Smith, who, with several thousand Confederates, was on the other side of the Ogeechee.

From the 10th to the 16th of December heavy artillery firing and skirmishing went on all along the lines, but no regular engagement occurred. On the 16th, Sherman formally demanded the surrender of the city from its commander, Hardee, who declined next day to accede to the demand. Sherman instantly hurried more heavy siege-guns upon his lines, and on the 20th was prepared to bombard the city and assault its works. But Hardee had already taken the alarm. Finding that only the eastern exit was open to him, and that on that Sherman was already cannonading, and soon might capture it by assault, Hardee resolved to evacuate Savannah. On the afternoon of the 20th, his iron-clads and batteries opened a tremendous fire, lasting into the night, and, under cover of the demonstration, the Confederate general crossed his fifteen thousand men and his large force of negro laborers upon a pontoon bridge, laid below his rear batteries, to the South Carolina side, and marched them off towards Charleston on the Union causeway. The night was exceedingly favorable for such a movement, it being very dark, with a west wind blowing. Next morning, at break of day, the pickets of Geary's division crept forward, advanced still farther, and went over the works; and Geary himself, marching into Savannah, received, on the morning of the 21st December, 1864, its formal surrender at the hands of its mayor. The troops were gone. The navy-yard, two ironclads, many smaller vessels, and a vast amount of ammunition, ordnance stores, and supplies had been destroyed before the evacuation, but all the rest of the uninjured city fell into the hands of the Yankees.

Sherman sent a characteristic dispatch to Washington. He wrote to President Lincoln: "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."

And so ended Sherman's famous march to the sea-an exploit which Yankee newspapers declared had not been excelled since William of Normandy crossed the English Channel and burned his boats on the shore; and since Hernando Cortez plunged into Mexico, on the most astounding of expeditions, and stranded his ships at Vera Cruz. But Sherman himself had a much juster and more modest estimation of his exploit. On receiving the congratulations of the President and also of his personal friends, on account of his success, and seeing himself greatly praised in the public journals at home and abroad, he wrote: "I am now a great favorite because I have been successful; but if Thomas had not whipped Hood at Nashville, six hundred miles away, my plans would have failed, and I would have been denounced the world over." In his special congratulatory orders, he said: "The armies serving in Georgia and Tennessee, as well as the local garrisons of Decatur, Bridgeport, Chattanooga, and Murfreesboro', are alike entitled to the common honor, and each regiment may inscribe on its colors at pleasure the words 'Savannah' or 'Nashville.'"

The fall of Savannah was the occasion, whether duly or not, of great despondency in the South. The single disaster was not very considerable; but the march through Georgia that had led to it had afforded a painful exhibition of the decay of the spirit of the Confederates, and the moral effect of this exhibition was far worse than any disaster the South had ever yet suffered in the field. It suggested a general review of the situation of the Confederacy; the people commenced to calculate the cost and sacrifices of the war, and to estimate the terrible depletion that had taken place in the armies of the Confederacy during the campaign of 1864.

That depletion had ensued from various causes. The Yankees had encouraged desertion to an extent never known before, and they had managed to keep in captivity nearly every prisoner they had taken west of the Mississippi since the battle of Ger- . tysburg. The history of Yankee finesse in this matter deserves

a distinct place in the records of the war, and may properly be reviewed here at the close of the year 1864.

It

THE EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS, ETC.

may be truly and emphatically said that on no subject had the enemy shown such bad faith as on that of the exchange of prisoners. During the year 1864, the Confederate authorities had, at different times, put forth every exertion to obtain an exchange of prisoners; but such exertion to this end was met by some new pretence of the Yankees, who had resolved to avoid a general exchange, and to coin a certain advantage out of the sufferings of their own men in Southern prisons.

The Confederate authorities had at first insisted upon the release of all prisoners, the excess to be on parole. The enemy refused to comply with this plain requirement of the cartel, and demanded, when a delivery of prisoners was made, an equal number in return. Seeing a persistent purpose on the part of the Yankee Government to violate its agreement, our anthorities, moved by the sufferings of the brave men who were so unjustly held in the Northern prisons, determined to abate their just demands. On the 10th of August, 1864, Colonel Ould, the Confederate commissioner, offered to exchange the prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents, officer for officer and man for man. Although this offer was substantially what had often been proposed by the Yankee authorities, and would have left in their hands whatever excess of prisoners they might have had, yet it was not accepted.

Another pretence put forth by the Yankees for declining a general exchange of prisoners was, that the Confederates had refused to include in the cartel negro soldiers. This was a misrepresentation. The extent of the claim of the Confederates on this point was simply that they would not return to the enemy recaptured slaves; for to do this the Confederate Government would stultify itself, ignore the law of its social system, and be a party to an outrage on the rights of property in its own citizens.

But this proper position of the Confederate authorities involved the disposition of only a few hundred persons; and it is