On this day in 1865, Union General William T. Sherman’s army is rained in at Savannah, Georgia, as it waits to begin marching into the Carolinas.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

In the fall of 1864, Sherman and his army marched across Georgia and destroyed nearly everything in their path. Sherman decided the war would end sooner if the conflict were taken to the civilian South, a hard view shared by both President Abraham Lincoln and General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant. Sherman’s men tore up railroads, burned grain

 General Ulysses S. Grant     President Abraham Lincoln

stores, carried away livestock, and left plantations in ruins. The Yankees captured the port city of Savannah just before Christmas, and Sherman took some time, three weeks, to rest and resupply his fatigued and depleted troops.  After this well-deserved rest, Sherman planned to move into the Carolinas and subject those states to the same brutal treatment that Georgia had received. He intended to pay particular attention to South Carolina as that state was seen as starting the war.  He began his operations by dividing his 60,000 troops into two wings.  He gave General Oliver O. Howard two

General Oliver O. Howard

corps and directed him to move north-east to Charleston, South Carolina, while General Henry Slocum was to move

General Henry W. SLocum

northwest toward Augusta, Georgia. These were just diversions to Sherman’s main target however, which was Columbia, South Carolina.  Just as Sherman was preparing to move out on January 17, the rains began the Yankees waited while heavy rains pelted the region for 10 days.  It turned out to be the heaviest rainfall in 20 years. Although a number of Sherman’s aides thought a winter campaign in the Carolinas would be difficult with such wet weather, Sherman had spent four years in Charleston as a young lieutenant in the army, and he believed that the march was still possible.  He also possessed an army that was more than ready to continue its assault on the Confederacy.  In a letter Sherman wrote to his wife during that period, he said that he “…never saw a more confident army…The soldiers think I know everything and that they can do anything.”  Sherman’s army did not begin moving until the end of January 1865. When the army finally did get moving, it conducted a punitive campaign against South Carolina that was even worse than the one waged against Georgia. Sherman wanted to exact revenge on the state that had led the call for secession and had then started the war by firing on Fort Sumter.

 

                                                                                      

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Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com