Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/202

 356 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS won, Sherman's ability to cut the Gordian knot, as no other man dared, was dis- played with especial force. Instead of frittering away his precious time by sim- ply holding Atlanta, or wasting strength unnecessarily by hunting up a baffled and elusive foe, or devoting all his energy to keeping open his long line of com- munication and supply, he determined to strike a disastrous blow at the Con- federacy, swiftly and unexpectedly. Cutting loose from his connection with the West, he would live on the enemy and lay waste the storehouse of the Confed- eracy or, as he expressed it in outlining his plans to General Grant, " move through Georgia, smashing things, to the sea." The boldness of this desperate measure at first attracted, as it afterward alarmed, the authorities at Washington. Consent was given and then recalled, but, before the recall could reach him Sherman had acted quickly, fearing this same counter- mand. Upon receipt of the order consenting to his march, he cut the tele- graph wires to the north, then he burned his bridges, tore up the railroad that connected him with the West, and, with his army reduced to its actual available fighting strength of 60,000 men, with banners streaming, gun-barrels glistening in the sun, bands playing, and the men singing lustily " Glory, glory, hallelujah ! " Atlanta was left behind, and " Sherman's army " set its face eastward and com- menced its memorable march to the sea. In two parallel columns the army of invasion and destruction moved through the fertile land, cutting a swath of desolation forty miles wide, and crippling the Confederacy by dissipating its most cherished resources, For fully a month the army was practically lost, so far as communication with the North was concerned. Then it struck the sea at Savannah, captured that beautiful city, and, in the cele- brated despatch which actually reached President Lincoln on Christmas Eve, Gen- eral Sherman presented to the President and the country " the city of Savannah, as a Christmas gift." Savannah taken, the more difficult march northward was determined upon, so as to make a junction with Grant before Richmond, and end the war by one final and tremendous stroke. The " Campaign of the Carolinas," as this northward march was called, was a really greater achievement than the march to the sea, for it was against more formidable natural odds, and was done in midwinter. The distance covered, from Savannah to Goldsboro, in North Carolina, was four hun- dred and twenty-five miles ; five large rivers were crossed, three important cities were captured, and the Stars and Stripes were once more flung to the breeze above the ruins of Fort Sumter. And yet, in fifty days from the start, the army reached Goldsboro, " in superb order," and concluded what Sherman himself des- ignates as " one of the longest and most important marches ever made by an or- ganized army in a civilized country." It was a great achievement, but it was without the novelty, the mystery, and the dramatic qualities of the earlier cross- country campaign, and so it has come to pass that the first has been the most famous, and Sherman's march to the sea has gone into history as one of the rom- ances and glories of the War of the Rebellion. The campaign of the Carolinas fitly ended, as had the march to the sea, in