Grant’s Final Judgment of It
By the first mails which reached Sherman after he arrived on the coast, December 14 and 15, containing letters from Grant dated December 3 and 6, full information was received of the battle of Franklin, which had occurred November 30. Thomas’s official report of the battle of Nashville was received by Sherman on December 24, but rumors of that victory had reached him earlier. Sherman’s first letter to Grant, relative to future operations, written in reply to those from Grant of December 3 and 6, was dated December 16. In that letter was mentioned Sherman’s plan in the following words: “Indeed, with my present command I had expected, upon reducing Savannah, instantly to march to Columbia, South Carolina, thence to Raleigh, and thence to report to you.” Sherman’s second letter to Grant, on the same subject, written in reply to Grant’s letter of the 18th, was dated December 24, the day on which he received Thomas’s report of the battle of Nashville. In this letter Sherman said: “I am also gratified that you have modified your former orders.... I feel no doubt whatever as to our future plans. I have thought them over so long and well that they appear as clear as daylight.”
When Sherman first mentioned his future plan he knew that the success of his past plan in Tennessee had been assured. Thomas had succeeded in concentrating his forces at Nashville, and Hood had suffered a severe defeat in attempting to prevent it. At the time of Sherman’s second letter, mentioning his very mature consideration of his future plans and perfect confidence in respect to them, he knew that Hood’s army had been broken up, and had become a small factor in the future problem. How long, and to what extent, had Sherman anticipated these results in Tennessee, and matured the plans of future operations, which were dependent upon those results? I shall consider these several questions, which involve so intimately the character of my old commander.
[( 1) War Records, Vol. XXXIX, part iii, p. 202.]
[( 2) War Records, Vol. XXXIX, part ii, pp. 364, 411.]
[( 3) War Records, Vol. XXXIX, part iii, p. 594.]
[( 4) ibid., p. 576.]
[( 5) Ibid., p. 594.]
[( 6) Vol. II, p. 154.]
[( 7) Mr. Jefferson Davis’s speech. See General Sherman’s “Memoirs,” Vol. II, p. 141.]
[( 8) See the Century War Book, “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,” Vol. IV, p. 257.]
[( 9) War Records, Vol. XXXIX, part iii, p. 658.]
[(10) War Records, Vol. XXXIX, part iii, p. 202.]
[(11) Vol. II, pp. 374-6.]
[(12) See my letter to General Sherman, December 28, 1864, p. 254.]
CHAPTER XVII Sherman’s Purpose in Marching to the Sea—His Expectations that the Change of Base Would Be “Statesmanship,” If Not “War”—The Thousand-Mile March of Hood’s Men to Surrender to Sherman—The Credit Given by Grant to Sherman—“Master of the Situation”—The Fame of Sherman’s Grand Marches—His Great Ability as a Strategist.
The actual result in Tennessee was more decisive than Sherman had any good reason to expect. But he had good reason to expect, and evidently did, that Thomas would be able, after he had concentrated his troops, and after Hood had done considerable damage, to drive the latter out of Tennessee and pursue him with such force and energy as fully to occupy his attention and prevent him from interfering in any manner with Sherman’s own operations. Hence Sherman as well as Grant had reason to assume that Hood’s army would be eliminated from the military problem in the Atlantic States. Again, the general military situation as known to General Sherman, or probably to anybody else, in October and November, 1864, did not indicate that Grant, with the force he then had in Virginia, would be able to capture or destroy Lee’s army. He might undoubtedly capture Petersburg and Richmond, but Lee would probably be able to withdraw his army toward the south, nearer to his sources of supply, and by skilful manoeuvers prolong the contest until the National Government might abandon it. Grant’s letters at that time confirm this view of the military situation.
Some writers have attempted to explain and justify Sherman’s action in taking with him so large an army, while leaving Thomas one so much smaller, on the ground that he might meet in his march to the sea such opposition as possibly to require so large a force to overcome it. But to any one familiar with the facts, and to no one more than to Sherman, his army of 60,000 men was evidently all out of proportion to any possible resistance it could meet in Georgia. But when he should start northward from Savannah the case would become vastly different. At any point in the Carolinas he might possibly meet the whole of Lee’s army. That is to say, Sherman’s ulterior plan could not be prudently undertaken at all without an army as large as that with which he actually marched to the sea, namely, 60,000 men. Indeed, as the records show, Sherman considered a long time before he decided that he could spare the Twenty-third Corps to go back and help Thomas. If any question can possibly exist as to what was the essential part of Sherman’s plan in marching to Savannah, what other possible military reason can be given for that march except to make the subsequent march to Virginia with so large an army? Why change his base to Savannah? What was he to operate against after he got there?
Nothing could have been clearer to any military mind in the fall of 1864, than that if either Lee’s or Hood’s army could be captured or destroyed, the surrender of the other must necessarily follow very quickly, and the rebellion be ended. No man could have been more earnest than Sherman in his laudable desire to make the capture of his own adversary the beginning of the end. Sherman’s well-known character leaves this beyond question. It is not possible that he could have preferred a manifestation of the power of the nation by destroying Southern property rather than by destroying a Southern army.