No Army Since Caesar

"Confederate defenders expected the swamps in tidewater South Carolina to stop Sherman before he got fairly started. Indeed, so far under water were the roads in this region that Union scouts had to reconnoiter some of them in canoes. But Sherman organized 'pioneer battalions' of soldiers and freedmen (some of the latter recruited from the thousands of contrabands who had trailed the army to Savannah) to cut saplings and trees to corduroy the roads, build bridges, and construct causeways. Meeting resistance from Wheeler's cavalry at some rain-swollen streams and rivers, the bluecoats sent out flanking columns that waded through water up to their armpits, brushing aside alligators and snakes, and drove the rebels away. Northward lapped the blue wave at a rate of nearly ten miles a day for forty-five days including skirmishing and fighting. Rain fell during twenty-eight of those days, but this seemed to benefit South Carolina only by slightly damping the style of Sherman's arsonists. 'When I learned that Sherman's army was marching through the Salk swamps, making its own corduroy roads at the rate of a dozen miles a day,' said Joseph Johnston, 'I made up my mind that there had been no army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar.'"

Ten Times More Difficult

"Even more important, perhaps, than the destructive vengeance of Sherman's army in spreading this demoralization was its stunning logistical achievements. Sherman himself later rated the march through the Carolinas as ten times more important in winning the war than the march from Atlanta to the sea. It was also ten times more difficult. Terrain and weather posed much greater problems in South Carolina than in Georgia. The march from Atlanta to Savannah proceeded 285 miles parallel to major rivers in dry autumn weather against token opposition. The march northward from Savannah was aimed at Goldsboro, North Carolina, 425 miles away, where Sherman expected to be resupplied by Union forces moving inland from Wilmington. Sherman's soldiers would have to cross nine substantial rivers and scores of their tributaries during what turned out to be the wettest winter in twenty years."

Not Pretty, and Hardly Glorious

"The war of plunder and arson in South Carolina was not pretty, and hardly glorious, but Sherman considered it effective. The terror his bummers inspired 'was a power, and I intended to utilize it....My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses and make them fear and dread us.' It seemed to work: 'All is gloom, despondency, and inactivity,' wrote a South Carolinian on February 28. 'Our army is demoralized and the people panic stricken....the power to do has left us...to fight longer seems to be madness.'"

Few Escaped

"Destroyed it [South Carolina] was, through a corridor from south to north narrower than in Georgia but more intensely pillaged and burned. Not many buildings remained standing in some villages after the army marched through. The same was true of the countryside. 'In Georgia few houses were burned,' wrote an officer; 'here few escaped.' A soldier felt confident that South Carolina 'will never want to seceed again....I think she has her 'rights' now.'

South Carolina Must Be Destroyed

"At the beginning of 1865 the only sizable portions of the Confederate heartland still untouched by invading Yankees were the interior of the Carolinas and most of Alabama. Grant and Thomas planned a two-pronged campaign to deal with the latter...

Destructive as these enterprises were, they became a sideshow to Sherman's march through South Carolina. As his army had approached Savannah in December 1864, Georgians said to Sherman: 'Why don't you go over to South Carolina and serve them this way? They started it.' Sherman had intended to do so all along. He converted Grant to the idea, and on February 1, Sherman's 60,000 blue avengers left Savannah for their second march through the heart of enemy territory. This one had two strategic purposes: to destroy all war resources in Sherman's path; and to come up on Lee's rear to crush the Army of Northern Virginia in a vise between two larger Union armies and 'wipe out Lee,' in Grant's succinct phrase.

Sherman's soldiers had a third purpose in mind as well: to punish the state that had hatched this unholy rebellion. The soldiers' temper was not improved by the taunts of southern newspapers against this 'grand army of Mudsills.' one of the mudsills, an Ohio private, vowed to make South Carolina 'suffer worse than she did at the time of the Revolutionary War. We will let her know that it isn't so sweet to secede as she thought it would be.' A South Carolina woman whose house was plundered recalled that the soldiers 'would sometimes stop to tell me they were sorry for the women and children, but South Carolina must be destroyed."

A Hard Rule

"The test of merit in my profession, with the people, is success. It is a hard rule, but I think it right."

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, 1862

Too Small for a Republic

"South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."

Former South Carolina Attorney General and anti-secessionist James L. Petigru, 1860

A Mightly Avalanche

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

Sam Houston of Texas, 1861