Southern Storm (65 page)

Kilpatrick’s men found themselves in something of a forager’s paradise. Their commander looked across Liberty County and saw many wealthy plantations. The area had been relatively untouched by the war, and even more important, it was far enough distant from Savannah that no Union infantry units had ranged this far, so the troopers had it all to themselves. Add to the mix the absence of Wheeler’s cavalry and the impotency of the local militia, and the result proved to be a catastrophe for Liberty County’s property owners.

One of the more affluent of them was Mrs. Mary Jones Jones,
*
recent widow of the influential cleric and planter the Reverend Dr. Charles Colcock Jones. (Dr. Jones made the conversion of slaves to Christianity his life’s work. Through his efforts there was some improvement in their living conditions, even as he taught his converts a Christian obedience to their owners.) The holdings he had passed to his wife consisted of three plantations plus associated slaves: Arcadia in northwestern Liberty County, Montevideo near Riceboro, and May
bank, closer to the coast. Mrs. Jones, a fervent secessionist like her husband, had managed the estates since his passing in March 1863. The abrupt Yankee invasion forced some hard choices. The family decided to remain at Montevideo, which lay along the most likely route for any invader, but to store their goods at the more remote Arcadia. Maybank, presumably, would be left in God’s hands.

Mrs. Jones had spent the previous day in remote Arcadia, preparing for the goods and valuables she intended to place there. She set off for Montevideo at sunset in a carriage driven by her house slave, Jack. They were about seven miles north of Riceboro when an armed Union officer gestured them to a halt. After enduring a hasty inspection, Mrs. Jones, despite her imperious ways, was advised by the Federal of a roadblock ahead manned by less understanding Yankees. Thus forewarned, she had Jack take her on a roundabout path that led them to a Confederate picket post. Her hopes that a Southern gentleman would see to her needs proved wishful thinking once the officer made clear that he had his orders, which did not include providing her with an armed escort.

The black servant of a family friend offered to help; with him operating as a scout, Mrs. Jones and Jack were able to get to about four miles west of Riceboro, where they encountered another C.S. picket who said that the town bridge was down. A nearby couple who knew the family urged her to stay with them for the night, but Mrs. Jones was determined to reach Montevideo. She was ready to continue on foot when the picket learned that the bridge had been sufficiently repaired to handle her carriage. The town itself was occupied by Union troopers, necessitating another detour, but by 9:00
P.M
. she had reached her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren at the Jones family homestead.

Her travails were far from over. The wagons carrying the goods intended for Arcadia had found the route closed by enemy checkpoints, so the family members now hustled to secrete what they could on the Montevideo grounds. Other neighbors passed through with ominous tidings of where the Yankees were operating. Then her son-in-law, the Reverend Robert Quarterman Mallard, insisted on leaving to join his militia unit. Left alone, the women prepared to greet the next day with what Mrs. Jones’s daughter later wrote of as a “fearful anxiety.” It was not a misplaced concern.

Ahead of Liberty County would be six weeks of almost constant exposure to Yankee raiding parties and foraging expeditions. The ordeal, the most extensive suffered by any region during Sherman’s march, was just getting started.

Once the fall of Fort McAllister had been confirmed, Lieutenant General Hardee feared it presaged an all-out assault. Work on the now-critical floating bridge was not progressing as rapidly as everyone hoped it would; only the first leg (from the city to Hutchinson’s Island) was completed. Worried that he was almost out of time, Hardee ordered a temporary wharf built on the north side of the island to allow him to evacuate troops by boat if need be. (When the dawn of December 15 revealed that the Federals were not mounting a major operation, Hardee canceled the wharf to continue building the bridge.)

A turf war now erupted over management of the bridge project. Lieutenant Colonel B. W. Frobel, a Confederate States Army engineer on detached service with the Georgia state forces, caught the ear of the militia commander, Major General Gustavus G. W. Smith, to convince him that he could do a better job than Beauregard’s man, Colonel Clarke. Smith pressed Hardee, who passed the buck by foisting Frobel on Clarke. Neither had anything good to say about the other, and not until Clarke concocted some make-work to keep Frobel out of his hair was the chief engineer able to devote his full attention to finishing the job.

T
HURSDAY
, D
ECEMBER
15, 1864

Now that the emotional high of Fort McAllister was behind them, Union soldiers returned to the often tiresome and sometimes deadly business of the siege. “No change from yesterday,” noted a diarist in the 129th Illinois. “Occasional shots from Rebel gun. They do no harm. One man wounded on skirmish line.” “The frogs are peeping at night, the mosquitoes kiss us on our cheeks and leave a smart which is quite uncomfortable at times,” added a Massachusetts comrade. “The birds are leaping from tree to tree and warble forth their sweetest notes of praise.” “This morning I go and see the tide come in,” wrote an Illinois boy.

Along some sections of the opposing lines the philosophy was live and let live. “We were stationed on the east side of the swamp & Ogeechee canal,” wrote an Ohioan with the Fourteenth Corps. “Lieutenant Heath of Co. A made an agreement with the Rebel picket in our front that either party should give the other warning before firing.” Not so at other points. According to a member of the 68th Ohio (Seventeenth Corps), “a heavy detail from our regiment was assisting to build a line of heavy earthworks, when the saucy enemy threw a number of shells among the working party; but the boys hugged the ground and escaped injury.” On a portion of the Fifteenth Corps line, the heavier-caliber Rebel cannon had their way with a section from the 12th Battery, Wisconsin Light Artillery which “lost three men today all of them being badly wounded.”

Behind the front lines, the men grumbled about the food and indulged in the general gripe of being located in the midst of a swamp. “Rations getting scarce,” complained a Hoosier. “Living on rice and short on ‘hard tack,’ groused an Ohio man. “We are now living on plain rice, without salt,” contributed a Minnesotan. “We first chopped a trough-like hole in a log, then laid the heads of the rice-sheaves in it, and with a club threshed the grains out; then we rubbed the kernels between our hands to clear it of hulls; after which we used our lungs for a fanning mill, placing the rice, hulls, sand, and all, in a tin plate and blowing until we had it free from hulls; but the sand still remained, and, like the rice, sunk to the bottom and could not be cleaned out; so we had to cook the rice with the sand in it.”

Many of the Yankees manning the Fourteenth Corps lines were wondering today what to make of some unusual prisoners taken early in the morning. “The story they tell is this,” related a soldier in the 79th Pennsylvania. “Some six hundred Federal prisoners, confined in the ‘Bull Pens’ at Charleston, took the oath of allegiance to the confederacy, and were formed into a battalion…. For a long time they were not allowed arms. On Tuesday last [December 13], however, 250 were taken from the battalion on trial, and ordered to hold the fort in front of our lines. On Wednesday evening [December 14] while the officers were asleep, a guard was placed over them, one of the guns was spiked and filled with mud, and off they started in squads for our lines.” “There is much diversity of opinion as to what should be the judgment in their cases,” continued a Wisconsin soldier in the 21st regiment.
“They have undoubtedly done wrong in their enlisting but they claim they have never been disloyal at heart to the U.S. and I believe in this they are honest.”

When evening settled in along the lines, a number of Union patrols edged ahead to fix the locations of suspected enemy strong points. One such was drawn largely from the 104th Illinois. “The boys waded in [the swamp] for a considerable distance,” recalled a member of the expedition. “In places the water was deep, reaching to the armpits of some. The route taken was found to be impracticable, and the enemy becoming alarmed and opening fire, the command was ordered back to camp, where it arrived wet, cold and disgusted with Georgia swamps.”

Closer to the Savannah River, Colonel Ezra Carmen was making his way to the headquarters tent of the Twentieth Corps commander, Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams, his head fairly buzzing with glittering prospects. Carmen led the brigade that now had a two-regiment foothold on Argyle Island, thanks to the transfer of the 2nd Massachusetts to join the 3rd Wisconsin. Carmen saw Argyle Island as the perfect launching point to break the enemy’s communication link with Charleston in order to trap the Savannah garrison inside its battlements. He found Brigadier General Williams with Major General Henry Slocum, the Left Wing chief. Both listened eagerly to Carmen talk as he pointed to a rough map he had drawn showing the city, the river, and the thin line representing the planked Union Causeway—Savannah’s only connection to the outside world.

There were, Carmen explained, “boats enough in the river to cross a brigade every hour.” Despite the firefights ignited each time a Federal touched the South Carolina shore, Carmen had been assured by Colonel William Hawley (commanding the 3rd Wisconsin) that the Union Causeway “could be reached by a brigade.” Even as Carmen was explaining this, a courier arrived with a message from Hawley confirming everything that had been said. Carmen’s enthusiasm was becoming infectious; even cautious Henry Slocum saw the possibilities clear enough. “Damn it!” he exclaimed at last. “Let us take this plank road and shut these fellows in.” Before departing for his headquarters, he alerted Carmen to have the rest of his brigade ready to move on a moment’s notice.

Back at his camp, Slocum sent a situation report to Sherman, at
9:00
P.M
. Summarizing the current situation plus his plans for Carmen’s brigade, the Left Wing commander strongly recommended moving at least a division, and possibly an entire corps, across the Savannah River via Argyle Island into South Carolina. Such an action, he emphasized, would enable the Twentieth Corps to “seal up that side of the city and be in a position to shell every portion of it.” For one of the few times in his professional military career, Slocum was raring to go. He was anxious to know what Sherman thought of the enterprise.

Today’s
Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel
printed an assessment from Savannah that was both sobering and encouraging. The account, after listing a number of the wounded recently admitted to the principal military hospital (seventeen altogether), reported the death of one of the principals in the Griswoldville fight, Major Ferdinand W. C. Cook, who had directed the Athens Local Defense Battalion. Savannah’s citizens were cautioned against hoarding food, and those with a surplus were asked to share with those in need.

Still, there was nothing in the present circumstances that gave Savannah’s authorities any cause for alarm. Said the writer: “The citizens of Savannah have only to discharge their duty, and act in concert with the brave and gallant veterans in defending our homes and firesides from the pollution of a hostile foe, the enemy will be driven back in dismay and confusion, and our city rendered secure from future trouble.”

This cheery outlook was not shared by General P. G. T. Beauregard in Charleston, who put Richmond on the spot today by officially requesting validation for his plan to preserve Lieutenant General Hardee’s forces, even if it meant abandoning Savannah. “I desire being informed if these instructions are approved by the War Department, and are applicable to Charleston as well as Savannah,” Beauregard wired President Davis’s military adviser. Working off the same page, Hardee chimed in a separate message, warning that unless his communication and supply line to Charleston could be held open, “I shall be compelled to evacuate Savannah.”

In another note sent this day to Major General Samuel Jones, the
man principally responsible for keeping the corridor open, Hardee confessed, “I feel uneasy about my communications.” Now that matters were moving inexorably toward an evacuation, Hardee wanted to be sure that there were no misunderstandings, so he asked Beauregard to “come here and give me the benefit of your advice.”

Amid the day’s bustle, one of the chief actors in the drama quietly slipped off the stage. General Braxton Bragg, rushed over from the North Carolina coast by Jefferson Davis to guide efforts from Augusta, packed his bags to depart from Charleston, where he had conferred with Beauregard. With no real authority for him to wield, Bragg was feeling very much like a fifth wheel. Declaring that his “services [were] not being longer needed in this department,” he transferred himself back to North Carolina. Watching him go, a clerk in the Richmond War Department mused that Bragg’s principal contribution had been to play “the part of chronicler of the sad events from Augusta.”

As promised, the USS
Harvest Moon
steamed up the Ogeechee River from Ossabaw Sound, carrying Major General Sherman and Rear Admiral Dahlgren. Breakfast was served and consumed by the time the boat hove to near the captured redoubt. Dahlgren now played the part of tourist, with Sherman his guide. The naval officer thought McAllister “a truly formidable work; so crammed with bombproofs and traverses as to look as if the spaces were carved out of solid earth, a very strong and complete work.” Also taking the tour was Major Hitchcock, who spent a while gazing at the spiky ditch alongside the steep fort wall and thinking about that awful climb to the parapet. “How on earth they ever did what they did is wonderful,” he proclaimed. The biggest surprise for Dahlgren was the sight of the surrendered Rebel garrison, “still there cooking, etc., as if nothing had happened.”