Evacuation of Savannah

In the fall of 1864, a very exciting canvass for the election of President of the Republic occurred. President Lincoln had been nominated by the Republicans, with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee for Vice-President. The Democrats nominated General George B. McClellan of the army for President, and George H. Pendleton of Ohio for Vice-President. The sentiments of the Peace-Faction prevailed among the adherents of McClellan and Pendleton, and they had the support of all the sympathizers with the Confederates, in the free-labor States. The consequence was that only one of these States (New Jersey) gave them the electoral vote, and Lincoln and Johnson, supported by the loyal people, were chosen by an unprecedented majority.

We left General Sherman and his army at Savannah. After resting for about a month, they began a rapid march through South Carolina, in widely separated columns, and so distracted the Confederates that they did not concentrate a large body of troops anywhere. Incessant rains flooded the country, and the swamp-lands were overflowed; but Sherman pressed forward toward Columbia, the capital of the State, and captured it on the 17th of February, 1865. This disaster caused the Confederates to evacuate Charleston. Hardee and his troops fled into North Carolina and joined the forces there, commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. Colored troops entered the abandoned city and put out the fires which the Confederates had kindled when they fled. A few weeks afterward, on the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Sumter four years before, Major Anderson, with his own hand, raised over the ruins of that fortress the identical Union flag which he had carried away from it in April, 1861.

Through the carelessness or folly of General Wade Hampton, who commanded the rear-guard at the evacuation of Columbus, the city was set on fire and a large part of it was laid in ashes. Sherman soon passed on to Fayetteville, in North Carolina, which place he reached on the 12th of March, leaving behind him a blackened path of desolation, forty miles in width. Most of the fighting on that march was done by the cavalry of Kilpatrick and Wheeler. From Fayetteville Sherman communicated with General Schofield, who was in command on the coast; and finding Johnston in front of him with forty thousand troops, he rested his army a few days.

At near the close of 1864, when Sherman was approaching the sea from Atlanta, a destructive raid through northern Mississippi was made by General Grierson with twenty-five hundred well-mounted men. He left Memphis on the 21st of December, and pushed forward to the Mobile and Ohio Railway, which he struck at Tupelo and destroyed all the way to Okolona, burning Confederate stores and alarming the whole country. After a successful contest at Okolona, Grierson went westward, distracting his foes by feints. He struck the Mississippi Central Railroad at Winona Station, and after several skirmishes he made his way to Vicksburg with trophies consisting of five hundred prisoners, eight hundred beeves, and a thousand liberated slaves. During this raid Grierson destroyed ninety-five railway cars, three hundred wagons, and thirty full warehouses.

It was late in 1864 when an attempt was made to close the port of Wilmington by the capture of Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The expedition sent against that post was composed of a powerful fleet of war-vessels commanded by Admiral D. D. Porter, and land troops under the immediate command of General Godfrey Weitzel, accompanied by General B. F. Butler, who was in charge of the department whence the troops were taken. The attempt (December 25, 1864) was unsuccessful; but another made in February following, by the same fleet, and land troops led by General Alfred H. Terry, resulted in the capture of the fort and garrison on the 15th of that month. Terry was then joined by Schofield, who, being the senior officer, took the chief command. The fleet destroyed two Anglo-Confederate cruisers lying in the Cape Fear River, and the National army entered Wilmington as victors on the 22d of February.

Sherman's rest at Fayetteville lasted only three days. Then he moved his army forward in another distracting march that puzzled his antagonists. On the 16th of March, while moving eastward toward Goldsboro', his troops fought twenty thousand Confederates under General Hardee, at Averysboro', and defeated them. Two days afterward, a part of the army under General Slocum were attacked by the whole of Johnston's forces, near Bentonville. The conflict was terrible. Sherman's army had been surprised, and nothing but the most desperate efforts saved it from destruction. It received six distinct assaults by the combined forces of Hoke, Hardee and Cheatham, under the immediate command of General Johnston himself. The conflict ended at twilight. It had been conducted chiefly by General Jefferson C. Davis, of the Fourteenth Army Corps. Had the battle been lost by the Nationals, the results might have been most disastrous to the Union cause. Sherman's army might have been annihilated; so, also, might Grant's, at Petersburg, and the struggle would have been prolonged. It was won by the army of the Republic, and its enemies retreated hastily toward Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. Sherman was joined by Schofield and Terry at Goldsboro', when he hastened to City Point on the James River, by water, and there consulted the President and General Grant about future operations. He was back to his army three days after he left it.