Southern Storm (57 page)

The encounter of the day was turned in by a detail from the 150th New York, which was ordered toward the Savannah River by its brigade commander, who was hoping for a good haul to replenish depleted supplies. What happened instead was a land-river action, whose only eyewitness account was the brief unpublished report filed by the officer in charge, Captain Henry A. Gildersleeve:

Afterward, one of the captured Southern officers passed through the camp of the 86th Illinois, where he struck up a conversation with a Yankee after learning they both had connections to the town of Buffalo, New York. The Rebel had little good to say about C.S. currency
(terming it “Confederate trash”), and confessed that he was “d——d glad to be captured,” because he “was tired fighting for a country that was already gone to h——l.”

Right Wing

The four constituent parts of the Fifteenth Corps, which had been operating on independent tracks for the past few days, began to merge across the face of Savannah’s southwestern defensive sector. The men of Major General Peter J. Osterhaus’s corps would occupy the extreme right flank of the investment Sherman planned for Savannah.

Those of the command operating this morning along the Canoochee River awoke to a heavy fog. “The weather is cold and a chilly mist is above and around us,” recorded a Minnesota man, “which, rising from the flow water of the swamp and canal, gives a spectral appearance to the long lines of blue-coats.” At numerous points the probing screen ahead of the main columns encountered the city’s hard defensive shell. In a pattern repeated all up and down the line, Rebel cannon let loose at the first sight of the Federal voltigeurs. “We then commenced firing and skirmishing with the enemy,” related a member of the 63rd Illinois. “The balls flew pretty thick but none of our boys were hurt.” One slight exception was a private clipped by a tree branch severed by a cannonball, though the man “was not hurt bad, merely scared.”

This was the sloppy phase of the process of grappling the enemy’s main line of resistance. Units advanced by rough maps and compasses, with scant knowledge of what lay ahead. The men of the 100th Indiana found themselves having to entrench in the middle of a rice field. “Every thing is a black muck,” griped a Hoosier. “We had just got settled when the Captain of a couple of guns which were in the embrasures close at our right told us to lay low. He was going to wake up the Johnnys. He fired both of his guns at a Battery perhaps half a mile away. He woke them up all right. They replied, knocked the muzzle off the gun next to us, the wheel of the other, blew up the caisson standing in the rear of the guns, and threw one shell into the muck in front of us which exploded and covered us with about 20 tons of black mud.”

Even though the main part of the Fifteenth Corps was concentrating in an area bounded on its right by the Little Ogeechee River, several detached units extended Union control as far south as the ruined remains of King’s Bridge. Already Sherman was looking at his maps and realizing that the Ogeechee River represented his best chance for establishing an accessible supply link with the Federal fleet at the stream’s mouth. All that stood in the way was Fort McAllister. The first step toward eliminating that strong point was to restore King’s Bridge to allow troops to cross. So an advance party from Major General Howard’s headquarters, headed by his chief of engineers, Captain Chauncey B. Reese, now stared thoughtfully at the wrecked crossing.

It was a daunting prospect. The stringers and supporting timber were gone; all that remained were the log pilings, stretching like parallel dotted lines to the opposite shore. The distance to be bridged was about 700 feet; with approaches, nearly 1,000. The river here was really an estuary of the Atlantic, with a daily tidal rise of six to eight feet. At low tide the water was fourteen feet deep. While the tools needed were part of the kits carried by the engineers, all the timber would have to be manufactured on site. The final product had to be sturdy enough to carry a full division plus wagons and artillery.

The group with Captain Reese broke up, each member hurrying off to begin the process of measuring, surveying, mapping, and planning. When the bridge was first constructed the schedule had been measured in weeks. Now it would be counted in hours and days.

For their part, each of the three divisions in the Seventeenth Corps pressed hard today against Savannah’s defenses. Likely the first in contact was the Fourth Division, which learned firsthand that many of the city’s seaward-facing heavy-caliber guns had been shifted over to the land side. “The rebels shelled us quite lively, their large 32 and 64 lb shells tearing through the tops of the tall pine trees hurling branches and splinters in all directions,” attested an Iowa soldier. “It was demoralizing but the damage was slight.” Next into the line of fire was the Third Division, one of whose soldiers had a less than fond memory of plowing “pell mell through a big swamp up to my crotch in water.” The typical situation facing the men was described by a Third Division soldier when he wrote: “In our front was a large ricefield partly covered
with water, on the opposite side of which was a slight elevation, on which the enemy were entrenched.” Substitute “swamp” for “ricefield,” and the model fits nearly all.

Major General Sherman was still tagging along with the Seventeenth Corps; now that they were encountering the enemy’s main line of resistance, his curiosity drew him into the combat zone. “He had dismounted,” recalled an Illinois soldier, “and was walking nervously up and down the side of the road, his head bent over on his breast, his hands crossed behind him. He seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and oblivious to the volleys of shell and shot which tore down the road.” “The boys thought that he was exposing himself unnecessarily and wished for the sake of all concerned that ‘the Old Man’ would look a leedle out and seek a safer place,” seconded an Iowan.

All of which would have found no argument with Major Hitchcock, shadowing his restless boss this eventful day. Things had started out without any problems. Headquarters was on the move with Major General Blair’s corps at 8:00
A.M
., but once it became clear that the head of the column was fighting and not marching, Sherman brought everyone to a halt at a frame farmhouse. The women inside appeared more curious than anxious about what was happening around them, even when a field aide station began treating wounded men in their front yard. Hitchcock was taking in the scene, which he would later record in his journal, when he suddenly noticed that the General had gone off on foot to where there was shooting.

The frantic aide ran forward, searched for a while, then retraced his steps to discover that Sherman had returned ahead of him. However, it wasn’t more than thirty minutes before he was again on the move, again heading toward the front. This time, Hitchcock walked alongside. They had covered maybe one hundred yards when there was the
boom-thud
of a cannon firing nearby. Sherman stopped, looked toward the source of the sound, and quickly stepped to one side. Hitchcock, hearing a “loud
rush
and whizzing in air over and in front of us,” hit the deck. The solid shot struck elsewhere before bounding toward the rear. Hitchcock rose, dusted himself off, and joined his boss. “This place is not safe,” Sherman said, “they are firing down the road—we had better go back.”

The pair returned to the frame house, which abutted the Central of Georgia Railroad in its backyard. There they found the rest of Sher
man’s staff, spooked by the same skipping iron ball, clustered nervously behind the psychological cover represented by the flimsy structure. Just as a column of soldiers began cutting diagonally across the tracks, Sherman sighted down the right-of-way toward Savannah. The road ran straight and true, making it a perfect targeting guide for any alert Rebel gunner.

“I could see the cannoneers preparing to fire, and cautioned the officers near me to scatter, as we would likely attract a shot,” remembered Sherman. “Very soon I saw the white puff of smoke, and, watching close, caught sight of the ball as it rose in its flight, and, finding it coming pretty straight, I stepped a short distance to one side, but noticed a negro very near me in the act of crossing the track at right angles.” Major Hitchcock watched, frozen in horrific anticipation, as the cannon round hit the ground some distance off, but continued ricocheting along the right-of-way. A bounce carried it past the huddled staff and their boss; it hissed close to the infantry file, and with what seemed an eerily precise aim, struck the black man in the head, killing him instantly. Remarked Sherman: “A soldier close by spread an overcoat over the body, and we all concluded to get out of that railroad cut.”

The incident of the near misses was not the only noteworthy moment for Major Hitchcock this day. Ever conscious of his self-appointed role as chronicler/historian of the enterprise, he realized that December 10 marked a milestone. Now that Sherman’s forces were coming into contact with Savannah’s fixed line of defenses, this day “may be considered as ending our
march
on this campaign.” As reports came in through the evening citing the strong resistance being met by all corps, Hitchcock also wondered: “How long will it take us to get over the
last
five of our ‘300 mile march’?”

There were those in the Savannah garrison who were content to carry out their job assignment without much reference to what was happening around them. Edwin Ledyard was one. He worked in the Savannah Arsenal, where his duties included delivering ordnance to the main line of defense. “I was driving out…in a light wagon belonging to the arsenal and was near our intrenchments when a cannon [shell] suddenly exploded some distance in front,” he recollected.

“What is that?” Ledyard asked a passing soldier.

“That’s Sherman,” was the answer.

The stranger suggested that he drive his wagon elsewhere. “I took his advice,” said a suddenly frightened Ledyard.

Now that Sherman was closely investing Savannah, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee’s options had much simplified. There were only five narrow corridors along which to approach western Savannah—the two railways, as well as the Augusta, the Louisville, and the Ogeechee roads—so Hardee blocked them all. Taking full advantage of the low-lying land and irrigated rice fields in between those access points, his engineers had flooded the intervening ground, making it hugely difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate the defensive perimeter through those regions. In addition, recognizing that there was little chance that Federal naval elements would attack the city, the Confederate commander had reoriented a great deal of his most powerful ordnance to point inland.

Hardee divided his intermediate line of trenches and strong points into three sectors. On the right, to garrison two and a half miles of front from the Savannah River to the Central of Georgia railway, he put 2,000 militia and twenty cannon under Major General Gustavus W. Smith. On the far left, covering a seven-mile stretch anchored on the Little Ogeechee River, were 4,000 men (and thirty-two guns) commanded by Brigadier General Hugh W. Mercer, who was superseded today by Major General Ambrose R. Wright, presumably recovered from his earlier power tussle with Governor Brown. The units under Wright were a mix of veterans, militia, and local defense outfits. Holding down the four critical miles in the center were 4,000 mostly veteran soldiers under Major General Lafayette McLaws. Backing him up were twenty-nine cannon of various calibers. A land approach from the south was deemed impossible because of the extensive swamps; vessels attempting to penetrate the lower barrier through its various streams or small rivers would encounter powerful detached batteries at critical choke points.

In situation reports dispatched today to General Beauregard, Hardee said that the “enemy is in heavy force all along my front.” He noted that there was skirmish and “artillery firing throughout the day,” and feared that he might, at any moment, “expect a determined attack.” Hardee also informed Beauregard that every soldier in the city’s gar
rison was at his post on the front. Said the lieutenant general: “I have not a reserve.”