Upon the Altar of the Nation (71 page)

Hoge was exactly right about the North and equally exactly wrong about himself. In fact, the Southern religious papers were no better. The Civil War, which had in many ways become a barroom brawl, extended to the churches on both sides with all trace of Christian forbearance the victim.

B
ad weather delayed Sherman’s movements until February, and would continue to hound him throughout the Carolinas. But his tactical planning and determination overcame all. Wherever he went he terrorized. When Chaplain William Waring, an African American attached to a Michigan regiment stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina, observed Sherman’s army march through, his response was mixed. For sheer intimidation the western soldiers were without peer.

Waring and his fellow soldiers had heard about Sherman’s legendary exploits and expected a clean and sparkling professional army. They had a rude awakening as unkempt and loosely disciplined troops walked in disarray before them. Beneath the outward casualness, however, lay a steely resolve that bespoke death to any who got in their way:

A little time later, Waring spotted some foragers bringing back a wagon loaded with hay and chickens and crowing like a rooster (the signal for chicken tonight). Waring evidenced no problem with the soldiers’ “addictions,” as long as it was directed at rebels. But then a more disturbing sight caught his attention:

Instead of dwelling on the racism, however, Waring returned at the end of his account to where he began: the spectacle of the army itself. Why were they so powerful? His answer: “Armies are disciplined and drilled for the purpose of acquiring the greatest possible amount of destructive power, and whether Sherman’s army shows that it has been taken through the usual course of instruction or not, it possesses that power in a preeminent degree. It seems to have become part of their nature, and it is irksome to them to be restrained, as they are here, among loyal people.”
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While American memory and
Gone With the Wind
preserve the Atlanta campaign as the most dramatic achievement of Sherman’s army, the march to the sea was logistically far more complex and a tribute to Sherman’s organizational genius. Moral genius was another matter. While in Savannah, Sherman authorized the seizure of private property with deliberate sanction for maximal discomfort: “I have adopted in Savannah rules concerning property—severe but just—founded upon the laws of nations and the practice of civilized governments, and am clearly of opinion that we should claim all the belligerent rights over conquered countries, that the people may realize the truth that war is no child’s play.”
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Opposing him was the restored General J. E. Johnston, who was pulled out of retirement by General Lee to direct operations in South Carolina. Serving under Johnston were General Beauregard and General Wade Hampton, who commanded all the cavalry in the state. Johnston was certainly an improvement over Hood, now a thoroughly beaten and bitter man with nothing more than a missing arm and leg to show for his bravery. Ultimately, who was in command mattered not at all; there simply were not enough horses or men to withstand Sherman’s juggernaut.

Sherman retained his two-winged army commanded by his trusted generals, Howard and Slocum. To keep the Confederates off balance, he feinted toward Charleston and Augusta, with Columbia his true target all along. Throughout the complex movements, Sherman absorbed the intoxicating fact that no Confederate force in the Carolinas could challenge him in the field, or even slow him down. Sherman’s main military concern was whether Lee would remain in Virginia as his food supplies in the Carolinas were destroyed, or whether he would seek to break out from Grant’s investment and move south. Repeatedly, Grant assured Sherman that Lee could execute no such move.

No other general in the Civil War duplicated Sherman’s experience in his march to the sea. It truly represented a new chapter in the history of war, at least as far as Americans were concerned. With his commanders ignorant of his whereabouts and the enemy in no position to stop him, he was effectively the reigning deity wherever he went, with no higher accountability to check his martial impulses. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s apt characterization of him as the “war prophet” was becoming literally true. Everything depended on Sherman. A sort of madness enveloped him and his soldiers as they marched into the heart of darkness, destroying without resistance.

Sherman’s only real adversary was the weather, the worst in a decade.
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Day upon day of rain and mud became a far more serious logistical obstacle than the Confederate army as his troops slogged 425 miles in fifty days. Nonetheless, Sherman’s forces displayed a special animus for the Palmetto State, the “seedbed” of the rebellion. Sherman routinely denounced it as the “hellhole of secession.” Restraints that were minimal in Georgia all but disappeared as Sherman’s hardened veterans marched relentlessly forward.

Sherman’s main military target was the railroads, but, with all but no opposition, he made military targets only part of his strategy. The utter psychological destruction of the citizenry also figured large in the plan, and for that to be won, the primary target would be the capital city. By Monday, February 13 Sherman knew that only a token defense existed in Columbia under the command of Wade Hampton.

The Yankees were savoring a go at South Carolina. Sherman was not blind to this, and in a famous aside uttered while the army was still in Georgia, he remarked, “The truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her.” In a typically moralistic and personal statement, he explained that “I”—rather than “we” or “my commander in chief”—“look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston and I doubt if we shall spare her public buildings there as we did at Milledgeville.”
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As the virtual dictator of his army, Sherman now operated free from all moral, no less than military, reviews.

By February 13, Sherman’s forces could see the city and could not resist firing batteries inside the city’s habitations. Though not massive, the bombardment succeeded in terrorizing the population and discouraging snipers from taking potshots at Yankee troops. All day Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday people flocked to the trains in a “contagious panic” to flee Sherman’s uncontested rumbling legions. Among those fleeing was the New Orleans firebrand Benjamin M. Palmer, whose sermons had done so much to promote Confederate independence.
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On February 17 the scanty Confederate forces ran as well, leaving Sherman to accept the mayor’s surrender and enter the city.

 

Already the wind was blowing hard and cotton bales burning, “fired by the rebel cavalry withdrawing from the city that morning.” The city streets teemed with white and black citizens as Sherman assured the mayor that he “had no purpose to injure the private citizens or private property.” As Sherman and Howard came up, the Fifteenth Corps (Sherman’s favorite) marshaled in formation and marched through the town, battle flags whipping in the wind and spirited bands playing “Hail, Columbia” repeatedly. Slaves rushed to the streets, laughing and shouting to the soldiers, “God bless you; I’se free now!” Truly—and nobly—the slaves were indeed freed. Unfortunately, the soldiers had no interest in this aspect of the victory.

Sherman had little to say years later when he wrote his own account of the occupation of Columbia, mindful of the scandal associated with it. Instead, he concentrated solely on self-congratulatory moral stories. One centered on a female friend from his days with the Third Artillery in 1845. In that year, he gave her a book inscribed and signed. When the Yankees came to pillage, she showed the officer the inscription and, Sherman proudly noted, the officer preserved her property intact. In fact, other events and actions were transpiring in Columbia by then, but Sherman chose not to include them. A second anecdote recounted the story of another woman whose home was burning and how Sherman helped to put the fire out: “I mention these specific facts to show that, personally, I had no malice or desire to destroy that city or its inhabitants, as is generally believed at the South.”
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This was indeed news to the Confederates. With minimal restraints, soldiers of the less disciplined Seventeenth Corps overran the Fifteenth Corps and got into the liquor stores. Soon after, they invaded civilian houses for foraging.

During the afternoon soldiers did their best to loot and terrorize citizens, but few reports of physical assaults on white civilians exist. As the wind continued, fires spread throughout the city, especially in the northern section, where the wind blew most directly. Some of the fires occurred accidentally, but others were set deliberately by soldiers moving from house to house, tossing turpentine pots or burning balls of cotton. Freed Union officers from the prisoner-of-war camp at Columbia were especially bent on revenge. Slaves also joined in the rampage, a relatively small measure of retribution for centuries of violent abuse.

When one woman pleaded with Provost Marshal Jeremiah Jenkins to protect her house, Jenkins replied coldly, “The women of the South kept the war alive—and it is only by making them suffer that we can subdue the men.” Another woman got more of the same for saying she would willingly send her sons to die (in fact two had) if it meant defeat for the enemy. The unsurprised Yankee soldier replied harshly, “Yes, damn you women, you are the ones keeping up the war.”
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Suffer the women did, and the elderly, and the children, as they fled their burning houses all along Main Street to the unfinished capital building. As the white citizens panicked and the former slaves plundered, the soldiers continued to drink and cheer the destruction of Columbia. Predictably, the scene descended into bedlam. The historian Charles Royster recounts:

The violence grew so extreme that Sherman was forced to order a roundup of drunken soldiers. In all, 307 were arrested, and in the process, two were killed and thirty more wounded.
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It is true that rapes of white women were rare (they were Americans after all), and military court-martial records reveal several soldiers executed for rape. But black women did not receive the same mercies—in fact, most of the executions were for the rape of black women.
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For obvious reasons, Union commentators gave little attention to the stories of black women being raped, but the facts were plain. While officers complained, they could do little in practice to prevent the violence. Widespread black illiteracy meant that few black women would record their experiences; others were probably too frightened to witness against their triumphant Yankee assailants. Enough accounts survive, however, to confirm the ways in which some white soldiers viewed slave women as “the legitimate prey of lust.”

One white woman privy to the violence described Yankee soldiers who stripped black women and then “spanked them around the room.... They violated all the women servants publicly and left them almost dead, unable to move.”
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Other accounts describe similar outrages. On the morning of February 18, black women’s naked bodies lay on the streets of Columbia “bearing the marks of detestable sex crimes.” One older slave was raped by seven Yankees and, with orders to “finish the bitch,” she was drowned in a nearby ditch.
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The Confederate writer William Gilmore Simms wrote an account of Columbia’s burning. A native of Charleston, Simms fled the approaching armies of the North and traveled with his family to Columbia, only to arrive one week before Sherman’s Yankees. Though exaggerating the subsequent level of destruction, he had a sound ear for the citizens, especially the women. Despite the taunts and threats, few buckled. Simms observed, “When forced to answer, they did so in monosyllables only, or in brief, stern language, avowed their confidence in the cause of their country, the principles and rights for which their brothers and sons fought, and their faith in the ultimate favor and protection of God.”
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Simms also recognized the differences between white and black women: