Feb. 8, 1820 - Feb. 14, 1891

  
     
   
     

Sherman's March To The Sea



Gen. SHERMAN's army is making rapid progress in its great march through Georgia. Our advices are as late as Sunday last, at which time it was in the geographical centre of the State. The news of this morning will be found both important and exciting -- though the excitement in the North can by no means approach the tremendous commotion it is producing in Georgia, and throughout the length and breadth of the whole Southern Confederacy.

From the various items of intelligence that have reached us within the week and up to this hour, mainly through rebel mediums, we are enabled to fix definitely two or three points which were for some time in doubt, to deduce some general results, and to draw some few inferences.

1. In the first place, as to the direction of SHERMAN's march. When the fact of a movement was originally announced to the public, it was a subject of distracting dispute, whither it was to tend. Speculators and journalists differed as widely and as variously as possible. The whole Confederacy lay before them where to choose their place of rest, with no guide but their own fancy. SHERMAN was marching upon Lynchburgh, in Virginia, to cooperate with GRANT on the James; he was marching upon Mobile, on the Gulf of Mexico; he was retreating into Tennessee; was moving upon HOOD's rear; was advancing into South or North Carolina; was striking for Pensacola. But the actual fact has turned out to be as foreshadowed in the Times of the 10th instant, that SHERMAN is marching through the State of Georgia to a base on the Atlantic coast.

2. SHERMAN is marching in two great columns, each of them two corps in strength, with cavalry -- one column (HOWARD) striking southward for Macon, and the other (SLOCUM) eastward for Augusta -- the whole of the four corps, it is supposed, to form a junction at Augusta, and thence advance to the sea.

3. By Sunday last, HOWARD's column had got as far as or beyond Macon, though it is not fixed that the place itself was taken. His advance had reached Gordon, sixty miles east of Macon, on the Savannah Railroad, and at the junction of the railroad to Milledgeville. This point is one hundred and forty-one miles from Savannah, and ninety miles from Augusta. The main body was reported only twenty-three miles from Milledgeville, and the Legislature of Georgia had adjourned and left with precipitation. The other column (SLOCUM) had made about an equal distance along the railroad from Atlanta to Augusta. In other words, both columns had got about half way on their march to Augusta in six days, (14th to 20th.) SHERMAN's "Orders for the March" requires each of the columns to start habitually at 7 o'clock in the morning, and to make about fifteen miles per day. We judge that the six days' march to Macon was almost precisely up to orders.

4. In this hundred miles' march through the most densely populated section of Georgia, SHERMAN met with no serious obstruction from the rebels. COBB and his militia have popped up once or twice in the rebel newspapers, and it is not impossible that they took refuge in Macon, which is strongly fortified, and made such a show of defence, as to stop our forces, if not to cause them to pass by the place. Macon itself, indeed, may not have been, taken in HOWARD's line of March, as his troops passed to the northeast of it in the movement toward Milledgeville. Deserters from LEE's army, however, who came into our lines at City Point yesterday, report its occupation by our troops.

5. The march of our army seems to have been spread over a wide extent of country. According to the rebel reports, which are doubtless authentic, SHERMAN's two columns have already traversed eighteen of the most populous and wealthy counties in Central Georgia, viz.: Clay, Fayette, Fulton, De Kalb, Walton, Newton, Jasper, Morgan, Putnam, Jones, Butts, Henry, Spalding, Pike, Bibb, Twiggs and Baldwin; and either his infantry or cavalry have visited the following towns: Decatur, Jackson, Griffin, Forsyth, Monticello, Hillsboro, Covington, McDonough, Social Circle, and others. At a dozen different points he has touched both railroads, and the width of the strip of country over which his army moves is not less than seventy five miles covering both the railroad to Augusta and that to Savannah. Thus far, then, the march, in whatever aspect viewed, has been a success. The compact columns have marched to time, and resistlessly. The rebels seem to be in despair of stopping our army. BEAUREGARD has issued a highfalutin proclamation, announcing that he is flying to Georgia's relief; but more sober rebels than he are calling on the elements, the negroes, and all possible and impossible powers and weaknesses, to aid them. The whole Confederacy is evidently in a panic; and there is no doubt that JEFF. DAVIS will do all that is possible to thwart or overthrow SHERMAN during the last half of his extraordinary march. That they have not succeeded in doing anything from last Sunday until now, is evident enough from the fact that they have not informed us of it.


My Source: Book: The New York Times Complete Civil War 1861 - 1864