A Christmas Gift For Abe: Sherman and Savannah, Georgia
What kind of a Christmas gift do you get for a man who seemingly has everything? Say, for a President of the United States who has just won a second term in office and for whom the nation’s bloody Civil War seemed to finally be drawing to a close?
If you’re U.S. Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, you get him a city: One deep in Confederate territory that you’ve taken with hardly a shot fired after a march of 275 miles with nearly 62,000 troops.
Sherman gifted the city of Savannah, Georgia, to President Abraham Lincoln on Dec. 22, 1865 — 160 years ago Sunday.
Taking The War To The Home of The Southern Soldier
The Civil War was in its third year. Thousands of young men on each side had died, with no end in sight. Political opposition to the war in the North grew. That fall, President Abraham Lincoln would find himself running against George McClellan, an army general Lincoln had fired in March 1962 for not taking action against the rebellion.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s troops under siege in Richmond, Virginia. But the commander of the Union’s western forces, Gen. William T. Sherman, had won key battles along the Mississippi River and in Tennessee.
The plan that developed: Send Sherman’s army to take the key railroad hub of Atlanta, Georgia. He accomplished that by September, handing Lincoln a badly-needed victory that helped assure his re-election that fall.
The next idea was a bit more complicated: Sherman wanted to cut a wide swath through the South by marching to the sea. He knew that as his troops burned their way across Georgia, the men manning the trenches around Richmond would hear about the horrors of war he would bring to their homes, towns and plantations.
Gen. William T. Sherman
Credit: National Archives
Although he’d later gain fame as a military leader, Sherman did not consider himself a professional soldier. He ran a bank in San Francisco and served as president of what would later become Louisiana State University.
He rejoined the Army at the beginning of the Civil War and was relieved of duty in December 1861 after what may have been a nervous breakdown.
After victories at Shiloh, Tenn., in April 1862 and Vicksburg, Miss., in 1863, he was promoted to brigadier general. The next year, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant gave Sherman command of the western theater of the war.
While Grant was keeping Robert E. Lee’s Army bottled up near Richmond, Sherman set out from Chattanooga with the intent of slicing the South in half and taking the fight to the hometowns of the fighting Southern men.
His tactics were brutal but effective.
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston
Credit: National Archives
One of the most experienced military leaders to join the Southern cause, Joseph E. Johnston earned the first Rebel victory of the war at Manassas, Va., in July 1861.
Constantly at odds with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Johnston was replaced in 1862 with Robert E. Lee. Johnston then commanded armies in the western theater.
Johnston’s strategy before the compelling numbers of Sherman’s advance on Atlanta: a gradual retreat and a war of attrition. Johnston knew that a war-weary North was contemplating voting Abraham Lincoln out ofoffice and suing for peace.
However, Davis again removed Johnston from command and replaced him with Gen. John Hood. Hood took a more active defense, which enabled Sherman’s troops to make progress more quickly.
The Confederate Army abandoned Atlanta on Sept. 1. Sherman and his army rolled into the city the next day.
