December 21, 1864---“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.”

DECEMBER 21, 1864:      

“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.” With those words, Sherman’s March To The Sea ends. After William Hardee’s Confederates marches out of the city on the night of the 20^th, the City Fathers of Savannah hold a hurried meeting. It is decided to cede the city to the Union if Sherman promises not to destroy it as he had Atlanta and so many other places along his route.

Amazingly, Sherman agrees to spare the city, and for more reasons than the pragmatic one that Savannah is an important port city. Sherman, who is in truth a sensitive man and (it should be recalled) a longtime resident of the South, is charmed by the grand old city, its lovely houses, its live oaks, and its history as the oldest city in Georgia, the first State capital, and as a Revolutionary War site. Due to Sherman’s nostalgia for the Old South, the lovely historic district of old Savannah still exists to this day. 

In truth, many people in Savannah (and not just the newly-freed blacks) are relieved (if not happy) to see the Yankees. Most of the town’s citizens are sick of the war, sick of privation, and sick of the disruption caused by transients, drunken soldiers on leave, war profiteers, and cut-purses. The merchants want trade, the laborers want work, the women want their husbands home from the war, and everyone wants normality. 

December 20, 1864---The Cotton Barge Bridge: Hardee Quits Savannah Without A Fight

DECEMBER 20, 1864:     

Surrounded on three sides with his back to the sea and with the Union trying to cut off his only escape route,  General William Hardee C.S.A. decides that discretion is the better part of valor and marches his 10,000 men out of Savannah, Georgia overnight. Although the river bridges have largely been destroyed, Hardee improvises a clever bridge made of lashed-together cotton barges, and his men escape over this ingenious makeshift pontoon bridge. Hardee’s men retreat into South Carolina, glad to be away from Sherman. Although Sherman is castigated in the Press for allowing the 10,000 trapped troopers to escape, Sherman remains unruffled; he has plans for them.  

December 19, 1864---The Union Army gets Scrooged; The Battle of Altamaha Bridge

DECEMBER 19, 1864:      

Putting the humbug on Christmas furloughs and cease-fires, Edwin M. Stanton, the Union’s Secretary of War issues General Orders 301, directing that all men fit for combat be put into the field to “aid the patriotic and gallant troops now smiting the reeling enemy with victorious blows.”

  

The Battle of Altamaha Bridge:      While he waits to enter Savannah, General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A. is not idle. Today he sends troops to Doctortown to destroy the Altamaha Bridge over the Ogeechee River, cutting off Savannah’s rail lifeline. The Confederate defenders, using a rail mounted gun, drive off the Federal troops.

December 18, 1864---"A hard species of warfare."

DECEMBER 18, 1864:   

   

General William Tecumseh Sherman U.S.A.’s troops wait patiently outside Savannah. On this day, Sherman sends General William Hardee C.S.A. a note demanding the city’s surrender. Hardee refuses to parley. 

Their correspondence is reprinted below:

SHERMAN:

You have doubtless observed from your station at Rosedew that sea-going vessels now come through Ossabaw Sound and up Ogeechee to the rear of my army, giving me abundant supplies of all kinds, and more especially heavy ordnance necessary to the reduction of Savannah. I have already received guns that can cast heavy and destructive shot as far as the heart of your city; also, I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied; and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah and its dependent forts, and shall await a reasonable time your answer before opening with heavy ordnance. Should you entertain the proposition I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, and the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge a great national wrong they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.

HARDEE:

I have to acknowledge receipt of a communication from you of this date, in which you demand "the surrender of Savannah and its dependent forts," on the ground that you have "received guns that can cast heavy and destructive shot into the heart of the city," and for the further reason that you "have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison can be supplied." You add that should you be "forced to resort to assault, or to the slower and surer process of starvation, you will then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and will make little effort to restrain your army" &c. The position of you forces, a half a mile beyond the outer line for the land defenses of Savannah, is, at the nearest point, at least four miles from the heart of the city. That and the interior line are both intact. Your statement that you "have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison can be supplied" is incorrect. I am in free and constant communication with my department. Your demand for the surrender of Savannah and its dependent forts is refused. With respect to the threats conveyed in the closing paragraphs of your letter, of what may be expected in case your demand is not complied with, I have to say that I have hitherto conducted the military operations intrusted to my direction in strict accordance with the rules of civilized warfare, and I should deeply regret the adoption of any course by you that may force me to deviate from them in future.

Sherman is not perturbed; he knows this is a waiting game. 

Sherman writes to Grant:  

 This may seem a hard species of warfare, but it brings the sad realities of war home to those who have been . . . instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities.

December 17, 1864---'Till Stoneman's cavalry came, and they tore up the tracks again”

DECEMBER 17, 1864:   

The Battle of Marion, Virginia:        

After being repulsed at Saltville on October 2^nd, the Union had left the mountainous region of the Virginia arrowhead alone. However, the industrial capacity --- salt and lead --- of the area was ever becoming more crucial to the shrinking Confederacy’s war effort. On this day, Major General George Stoneman U.S.A. led 5,000 mounted men through the mountains of eastern Tennessee into the Virginia arrowhead, where they wreaked havoc on the local infrastructure until they reached the town of Marion. 

General George Stoneman, U.S.A.

Marion itself was bitterly politically divided, with a local Unionist militia fighting a local Confederate militia in the area. About 1,500 Confederate regulars were in Marion itself. 

General John C. Breckinridge, C.S.A.

In what became a two-day battle, the Union cavalry were at first repulsed by the Confederates, who knew the lay of the land and held the high ground (much as like at Saltville).  A frustrated Stoneman detached several hundred men to raid the local smelting plant and lumber mills. This forced the Marion Confederates to divide their forces to protect these valuable assets. As the first day ended, the Union troops were bottlenecked at a local covered bridge. 

On the morning of the second day, the firefight continued --- but so did the raiding. Stoneman’s detached riders managed to destroy the local Confederate supply dump, leaving the Rebels with no powder and shot other than what they had. And although the Confederates pinned down the Federals at the covered bridge and elsewhere, inflicting heavy casualties, they eventually ran out of ammunition. 

At that point, Stoneman ordered a cavalry charge. The Confederate commander, Brigadier General John C. Breckinridge (once Vice-President of the United States, and a Presidential candidate in 1860) ordered his men to scatter, and most of them made their way south into western North Carolina through the winter mountains. Without food, weapons and ammunition, weakened and suffering from exposure, and in the midst of heavily Unionist territory, Breckenridge’s men were rendered hors de combat.

Within the next several days, Stoneman took and destroyed Saltville putting its salt mines out of production, and wrecked the lead mines at Marion. He also destroyed rolling stock and wrecked the railroad.  

Though a “small” and essentially unknown battle, the Battle of Marion had long-term and severe consequences for the South. The Army of Northern Virginia lost the last source of its precious salt supply, and the loss of the lead mines meant that there were no raw materials to produce bullets. 

The Union raids are memorialized in the song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down: 

". . . Till Stoneman's cavalry came, and they tore up the tracks again . . .”

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"---The Band (1969) 

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"---Joan Baez (1971) 

December 16, 1864---The Battle of Nashville (Day Two)

DECEMBER 16, 1864:    

The Battle of Nashville    (Day Two):        

General John Bell Hood C.S.A. has contracted his lines at Nashville so that one is anchored on Overton’s Hill (Peach Orchard Hill) and the other on Shy’s Hill (Compton’s Hill). As day breaks, General George H. Thomas U.S.A.’s men assault Overton’s Hill. For some unknown reason, Thomas decides to launch the attack on Overton’s Hill with the same troops that had taken Montgomery’s Hill the day before, a force that had fought gallantly but with much loss of blood in hand-to-hand combat. Exactly why Thomas decides to use the same troops when he has 60,000 men on hand is never clear.

 

The assault on Overton’s Hill stalls as the Confederates fight for their very lives. Unfortunately for the Graybacks, they have made two mistakes. The first is that the entrenchments they have dug are shallow, and the second is that they have entrenched not on the military crest of the hill, where they can fire down on the Union line but on the geographical crest, where the assaulting troops are hidden from the Confederate line until the men are atop each other. The bloody stalemate is finally broken when the 13th Regiment U.S.C.T. joins the battle. Although 40% of the men fall, the Confederates are defeated on Overton’s Hill.

The engagement on Shy’s Hill gets off to a slow start. Although the outnumbered Confederates are dashing to Overton’s Hill to buck up the defenses, from afar off General Schofield can only see moving troops. Fearful that he is going to be badly outnumbered on Shy’s Hill, he requests three brigades of reinforcements. This body of troops is not ready to go off until 4:00 P.M. Before he launches the attack he softens up Shy’s Hill with artillery; the Union men who have taken Overton’s Hill also begin bombarding Shy’s Hill. When the assault finally steps off, it is almost 5:00 and the shadows are beginning to lengthen. The Union command is concerned that Hood may reinforce overnight or retreat, but Schofield’s men go up Shy’s Hill in an enveloping blue wave against minimal and demoralized resistance. 

Seeing his line broken on the flanks, Hood calls for a general retreat. Blue forces chase the fleeing Grays back through Franklin and Columbia. Hood does not make camp until he reaches Tupelo, Mississippi. 

The Army of Tennessee is destroyed “in detail”. Federal casualties in the battle are 387 killed, 2,562 wounded, and 112 missing. 

Confederate casualties are harder to ascertain. Since most of its units were shattered, no one really troubled to count heads, and desertions became endemic as the Confederates trudged south toward Tupelo.   

Although Hood claimed to have 19,000 men at the end of the battle, less partisan sources put the number of men who left the field at anywhere between 18,000 and 13,000. It may have been even lower. The best estimates for Confederate losses are 6,000 (1,500 killed, the rest captured, missing, or deserted in the midst of battle). If Hood came to Nashville with 17,000 men and lost 6,000 he may have had as few as 11,000 during the retreat, and of these, thousands deserted on the march south.  One source claims that the once-great Army of Tennessee had less than 5,000 men when Hood finally resigned his commission in disgrace on January 13, 1865.  

The Battle of Nashville is one of the least-understood battles of the Civil War. Far less studied than Antietam or especially Gettysburg, Nashville was the one battle of the Civil War where a major army of the Confederacy was utterly destroyed. While not the turning point that some historians claim, it certainly deserves more attention than it has gotten, as does the whole Franklin-Nashville Campaign. 

That Campaign was essentially delineated by a railroad track, Sherman’s main supply line between Nashville and Atlanta. In the Spring, Sherman had successfully pushed Joseph Johnston along the length of that line. Johnston had garrisoned Atlanta, and then, just as he was about to strike what could have been a punishing blow at Sherman, he was replaced by John Bell Hood. 

What Johnston implicitly understood and Hood only imperfectly grasped was that Atlanta was the plum. Johnston had allowed himself to be pushed southward because he realized that the line between Nashville and Atlanta meant nothing in and of itself. It was merely a connector. Holding Atlanta, with its rail lines, its factories, its banks, and its munitions plants was the crux of the matter. 

No one will ever know what the outcome of a Johnston-Sherman Battle of Atlanta would have been. It is fairly clear though that even if Johnston would have been forced from the city --- and that is no means certain --- Johnston would have stayed in the area as long as possible, anchoring Sherman to Atlanta and rendering his army an oversized garrison force that he could have, and would have, engaged repeatedly. Johnston, in short, understood  theatres of war.

John Bell Hood, brave as he was and tough as he was, simply did not. Instead of parking his forces near Atlanta and jabbing at Sherman repeatedly, Hood retreated up the rail line trying to get Sherman to follow him. And in fact, at first Sherman did. But then he tired of the game. Sherman understood that Union forces in Nashville could just as easily handle Hood as he could himself. So Sherman, free to do so, plucked the plum, and moved on.

Hood for his part was like a smaller boy chased from a treehouse by bigger boys who then retaliates by stealing the ladder and making faces at them.

When provocation failed to gain Sherman’s full attention, Hood moved back up the line, covering the same ground that Johnston had, but with no clear idea of what he was going to do. At Spring Hill, his troops bivouacked overnight, and while everyone was asleep an entire Union army under John Schofield marched through town. Bizarrely, Hood remained completely unaware of Schofield’s movements, something that no one to this day understands. 

At Franklin, Hood threw his men against the Union lines with gusto but with no planning, and gutted his army. He repeated the same mistake at Nashville.   As a combatant, Hood was a formidable enemy, but as a tactical commander he failed to use his resources to familiarize himself with the ground, his opponents’ plans, or his own battlefield options. As a strategic commander, he was worse, seeming to have no grasp of the larger issues or the larger environment in which he moved. He was aggressive, where Johnston had been cautious, and that was all that recommended him. 

But dash proved not to be enough. Jefferson Davis, who often played favorites among his generals and who thought he knew the science of war better than any of them, could have done much for the Confederacy he served by relieving Hood when Hood lost Atlanta. Davis chose not to, and an end game of no benefit and much harm was played out against the Confederacy. Atlanta was the moment when the Confederacy was psychologically defeated; but Nashville was the moment when the Confederacy was forced to confront an ugly truth --- that indeed, the Yankees had become a superior fighting force.