The Armies at Marietta: Hood and Seymour

Late in October, Sherman prepared for his famous march from Atlanta to the sea. To General Thomas he assigned the absolute command of a large portion of his army, cut loose from all communications with the North, and on the morning of the 14th of November, marched from Atlanta with sixty-five thousand men, in two columns, commanded respectively by Generals Howard and Slocum, preceded by General Kilpatrick with five thousand cavalry. The army subsisted off the country, wherein they found ample supplies. They also met with very little opposition in its march of thirty-six days through the heart of Georgia. It was a military promenade, requiring very little military skill in the performance, and as little personal prowess. Finally, as the Nationals approached the Atlantic seaboard, they attacked and captured Fort McAllister, on the Ogeechee River. That was on the 13th of December; and four days afterward, the army being before Savannah, Sherman demanded its surrender. Hardee was there with fifteen thousand men, and on the 20th (December, 1864), they evacuated the city and fled to Charleston. On the following day, Sherman entered the city in triumph. By his march through Georgia, he had discovered that the Confederacy was a mere shell in that region. Here we will leave him, and consider events elsewhere.

Early in 1864, intimations came from Florida that its citizens desired reunion with the National Government, but were hindered by Confederate troops there, led by General Finnegan. General Gillmore, then holding Charleston tightly in his grasp, sent General Truman Seymour to assist the Floridians. At the head of six thousand troops, Seymour went up the St. John's River, drove the Confederates from Jacksonville, and pursued them into the interior. In the heart of a cypress swamp at Olustee Station, on a railway that crossed the Peninsula, Seymour encountered Finnegan strongly posted. A sharp battle occurred on the 20th of February (1864), when the Nationals were repulsed and retreated to Jacksonville, destroying Confederate stores valued at $1,000,000. At about the same time, Admiral Bailey destroyed Confederate salt-works on the coast of Florida, valued at $3,000,000.

In the spring of 1864, some stirring events occurred on the coasts of North Carolina, the most notable of which was the capture of Plymouth (April 17), near the mouth of the Roanoke River, with sixteen hundred National troops, by the Confederate General Hoke. The Union troops were commanded by General Wessels. Hoke was assisted by the Albemarle, a powerful "ram." This vessel well-guarded those waters for several months, when, on the night of the 27th of October, it was destroyed with a torpedo by Lieutenant Cushing of the National navy. The night was intensely dark. Cushing, with thirteen men, went into Plymouth harbor in a boat, with a torpedo, and made for the "ram" through a barricade of logs. When they were within twenty yards of the "ram," they were discovered; but in the face of a terrible shower of bullets, they thrust the torpedo under the Albemarle, and it exploded with fatal effect. At that moment, a bolt from the "ram" went crashing through Cushing's boat. He and his men leaped into the water; but only himself and another escaped death from bullets and drowning, and were saved on a cutter that accompanied the torpedo boat. After that the war in that region consisted chiefly of skirmishes between detachments of the two armies. Gillmore's guns kept watch and ward over Charleston, while he and some of his troops, as we have observed, went to the James River.

General Hood, according to Sherman's expectations, pushed across the Tennessee River, near Florence, preceded by Forrest and his cavalry, who raided in lower Tennessee for some time, eluding National troops sent against him. He co-operated with Hood's army after its passage of the river, late in October; and at Johnsville, on the Tennessee, he destroyed National stores valued at $1,500,000. Hood had been reinforced by General Taylor, from Louisiana, and pushed vigorously on toward Nashville with fifty thousand troops. General Thomas was at that place with twenty thousand troops; and he had as many more under his command scattered over Tennessee and northern Alabama, in active service against the invading army.

General Schofield, who had advanced to the Duck River, first encountered Hood, and fell back gradually to Franklin, where he took a stand on the 30th of November, and cast up intrenchments. His chief care had been to impede the march of the invaders, and to cover his train until it should reach Nashville. Hood came up in the afternoon of that day and a desperate battle was fought, which raged until near midnight. At the first onset, the Confederates drove the Nationals from their works and captured all their guns; but in a gallant counter-charge, all that the latter had lost were recovered, with ten battle-flags and three hundred captive insurgents as tophies of victory. Hood had lost one-sixth of his available force in the struggle. Schofield retreated to Nashville, with all his guns, closely pursued by Hood, who invested that post with forty thousand men at the beginning of December.