Ozaukee County's
War History
by Daniel E. McGinley

as extracted from THE PORT WASHINGTON STAR
September 25, 1897



26th Wisconsin
Chapter 15

As previously stated, each army corps followed a separate road usually. The different divisions of a corps took turns in leading it, in each division, the brigades did the same and in each brigade, the regiments led in turns. The leading organization of an army, corps, division, brigade, etc. had several advantages that were eagerly sought. It reached camp early, had good roads if any were to be had, could pick up any forage to be found along the road, and had numerous other advantages over those that followed in its wake. A road might be fairly good when the leading division marched over it, and be a virtual quagmire before the last one reached it. The leading division was sometimes resting in camp by 6 P.M., while the rear division wallowed through the mud nearly all night, and at times, did not reach camp in time to take its place in the column the next morning. The organization that would be in the lead today would be in the rear of the column tomorrow, and each passed to the front in succession, provided it reached the camp or bivouac in time to take its allotted place.

Although the different regiments and brigades were proud of the distinction of being selected for a dangerous undertaking, such as leading a forlorn hope in forcing the crossing of a river, where the troops would have to paddle or pole themselves across in boats, in the face of a hot musketry fire, they were never over-anxious to be chosen for the task. If detailed or ordered to undertake such a task, they prepared for it and marched forward without a murmur, but with their thoughts on God and their distant loved ones, for veterans knew full well that they were taking their lives in their hands on such occasions.

On the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th of December, Sherman's army pressed steadily forward, skirmishing almost constantly with the enemy and wrecking the railroad as it went. Its old adversary, Gen. W. J. Hardee, was now ahead of Shermanís army with a remnant of Hood's forces and some militia, in all about 10,000 men; and as the Union troops advanced, the rebels tried to obstruct the roads to delay them as much as possible. But Sherman's men pressed on with an invincible air that was inspiring, and "Treason fled before us for resistance was in vain." On the 9th, a young officer of the Seventeenth Corps and his horse were killed by a torpedo, which the rebs had planted in the middle of the road. Gen. Sherman, who happened to be near the spot at the time, declared that the planting of torpedoes in such a manner was not war but murder, and ordered the prisoners, then in the hands of that corps, to march ahead of the column and remove any other torpedoes that might be found, but luckily for the prisoners, no more were found. The column and trains turned off of the road, however, and marched through the woods and fields.

On the 10th, Sherman's whole army reached and deployed before the enemy's line of defenses some four or five miles out of Savannah, and amid the booming of cannon and the cracking of the skirmisher's rifles, the Union line was formed, pressed near to the enemy's works and intrenched. Shermanís line was formed with the Fourteenth Corps on the left, its left resting on the Savannah river; the Twentieth Corps came next; then the Seventeenth, and the Fifteenth formed the right, straddling the Savannah and Pensacola railroad and thus severing the last line of communication between the rebel garrison and the outside world.

The weather was very cold during the succeeding five or six days, thick ice formed at times, but being deployed principally in a pine forest, the Union troops had plenty of fuel, and managed to keep warm by keeping up large fires. Of course, the pickets could not have fires, and the boys suffered much from the cold while keeping guard between the lines.

On the 13th, a division of the Fifteenth captured Fort McAllister, a fortress on the west bank of the Ogeechee river, by a brilliant assault. This success opened the Ogeechee river to the Union fleet, which was waiting in the Ossabaw Sound with a large supply of food and clothing for Shermanís army. Picking out the torpedoes with which the river had been filled at Fort McAllister by the enemy, the light draft steamers of the fleet ran up to the right of Shermanís line with a large mail and supply of hardtack and pork on the 17th. This was the first mail received by Shermanís boys since the preceding 12th of November, and it caused no end of rejoicing in their ranks. The poor fellows forgot for a time that they were very hungry, having had to live on rice and a little cob-corn for several days previous, for most of them had mental feasts in the contents of their mails, and were much amused at the news contained in the latest papers received, in regard to the whereabouts and doings of Shermanís army.

But although the fleet could land plenty of supplies at "King's Bridge," on the right of the Union line, the roads were so bad -- so bottomless -- that it was impossible to haul enough by wagons to supply the wants of the famishing troops, and Sherman made up his mind that he must storm the enemy's defenses and force his way into the city. Orders were issued to that effect, and the hungry soldiers went willingly to work making the necessary preparations. The country around Savannah is very low and swampy, and is intersected with innumerable salt-water creeks or bayous. Along a system or drain of these creeks, Hardee had built his defenses, and there was scarcely a rod of dry land by which his line could be approached at any point. Across these bayous, and in many places a wide stretch of swamp or marsh, the Union troops must make their way under fire before they could assault the enemy's works. As the bayous or creeks were quite narrow in places, our boys went to work making portable foot-bridges, which they intended to carry on their shoulders and lay across the deep channels when they came to them. It would have been a slow and trying assault had it been made, and thousands would undoubtedly have been killed or wounded before the lines could cross, but happily Hardee evacuated the place on the night of the 20th, and escaped with his 20,000 troops across the river into South Carolina, and on the 21st, Shermanís army marched in and encamped in and around the city.

But it was found that the Savannah river was filled with torpedoes great and small for several miles below the city and also by a row of log cribs filled with stones, and it was the day after Christmas before the first steamer succeeded in getting up to the city with food for the troops. As provisions were very scarce among the citizens that remained in the town, it was a very hungry Christmas for a large majority of Shermanís boys, many of them having little or nothing to eat for two or three days. On the 26th, the steamers began to come up the river with supplies, which were loaded upon wagons and hurried off to the camps, hundreds of the boys working willingly as stevedores in order to get something to eat. Few great armies suffered from privations and the pangs of hunger with more patience and fortitude than did Sherman's.

It took a long time to unload food and clothing enough to supply the wants of the army, but after two weeks of hard work, they were pretty well provided for, and Sherman began to prepare for the next move or campaign. Grant, at first, wanted him to load his army upon the great fleet which was then lying at the mouth of the Savannah, and take it directly to Virginia, there to assist him in capturing or crushing Lee's army; but the long-head Sherman had a better plan, as he soon convinced Grant and the President, and that was to march his army to Virginia overland, cutting and destroying the railroads -- the arteries of the so-called Confederacy -- and destroying a large portion of the rebel army's means of subsistence, en route. This plan resulted in the great march through the Carolinas, one of the most wonderful, trying and successful of the military campaigns of modern times, and instrumental, in a large degree, in hastening the downfall of the Slaveholder's so-called government, and the end of their rebellion.

To inaugurate the Carolina campaign, the Seventeenth Corps was sent by water to Beaufort, S.C., embarking at Fort Thunderbolt, several miles below Savannah. From Beaufort, the corps marched inland and after some hot skirmishing, made a lodgement on the Savannah and Charleston railroad, at Pocotaligo, S.C., the birth-place of the rebellion. By the middle of January, Sherman had his preparations made for the start, and turning over the city of Savannah to Gen. Foster and his Nineteenth Corps, he issued orders for the campaign and went in person by water to Beaufort, S.C. and thence to Pocotaligo, where he joined the Seventeenth Corps.

The army with which Sherman made the march through the Carolinas was the same that had marched to the sea, except that a few thousand of the troops that made the latter march were mustered out at Savannah by reason of the expiration of their terms of service, and about the same number of convalescents and recruits had reported to their respective commands there, thus keeping the total number of the troops at nearly the same figure it had been when leaving Atlanta. Gen. Slocum had ferried across two of his divisions to the Carolina shore opposite Savannah, and a division of the Fifteenth Corps had also crossed there and started north on the long causeway which stretched across the great salt marsh opposite the city, when the winter rains set in with a downpour that swelled the water in the Savannah until it overflowed its banks and flooded the marsh, nearly drowning the division of the Fifteenth Corps, and driving back to the western bank those of Slocum's wing that had crossed. The flood delayed the start two weeks, but at the end of that time, the Left Wing, Corse's division of the Fifteenth Corps, and Kilpatrick's cavalry, marched forty miles up the Savannah to Sister's Ferry and found a crossing where the land on the South Carolina bank was higher and there they crossed. The Twenty-sixth Wisconsin was now in the Third Brigade, Gen. Coggswell, Third Division, Gen. T. Ward, and Twentieth Corps, Gen. A.S. Williams.