Battle Analysis Paper

1. 1

On the evening of November 18
th
, 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s
headquarters were being prepared so he could bed down for the night. His encampment was setup on
the west side of the Alcovy River on the outskirts of Covington, Georgia. Before retiring for the day,
“Sherman had a local black elder brought to him to be queried about local roads and conditions.”
1
After
the man provided what knowledge he could, Sherman wanted to question the black elder if he
understood why the war was being fought and what it meant for him as a slave refugee. The man
stated that he “supposed slavery was the cause and that our success was to be his freedom.”
2
In a
display of shrewdness and singular focus on military objectives which typified his character, Sherman
responded “that we wanted the slaves to remain where they were and not to load us down with useless
mouths…, that our success was their assured freedom.”
3
This seemingly heartless comment by General
Sherman came to embody the efforts, both in policy and practice, to distance slave refugees from his
Army’s march to the sea in November-December 1864. Paradoxically though, deeper analysis shows
that slave refugees not only were deeply engaged with Sherman’s Army but were integral to its success.
The success of multiple warfighting functions to include intelligence, movement and maneuver,
protection and, most importantly for an autarkic army, sustainment, were aided deeply by slave
refugees in the wake of Sherman’s march.
As the winter approached in late 1864, the military landscape had changed dramatically in the
war. General Sherman’s Army had just conquered Atlanta, Georgia in September, a devastating blow to
the Confederate economy and Southern morale as a whole. At the time Sherman’s force was comprised
of nearly 60,000 Soldiers. In contrast, the Confederacy had only 3,500 cavalry under Major General
Wheeler and 2,000 Georgia State militia under Major General Smith within striking distance of
Sherman’s forces. An additional 10,000 Confederate Soldiers were stationed near Savannah.
4
The
biggest problem facing the Confederacy was intelligence: they had no idea where Sherman’s Army
would strike next. Sherman successfully maintained mission secrecy through strict internal

2. 2

communications only as his Army cut a 60 mile wide swath on a 285 mile march across Georgia from the
ruins of Atlanta to the safety of the Union Navy off the coast of Savannah from November 15
th
to
December 21
st
, 1864.
5
The only resistance his army received came in the form of light skirmishes at
Griswoldville, Sandersville and Waynesboro and the periodic harassing actions of Wheeler’s cavalry in
the rear of his Army. Sherman’s goals were two-fold: to make Southerners feel the “hard hand of war”
deep in Confederate territory and to demonstrate that their government was incapable of protecting
them.
6
Despite the controversial nature of Sherman’s “total war” tactics, he severed Confederate
territory, dealt a blow to Southern civilian morale and hastened the end of the war.
On November 8
th
, 1864, General Sherman issued Special Field Order number 119 to his
subordinate commanders from his headquarters in Kingston, Georgia. In it, he gave his guidance for the
upcoming mission: the march to Savannah. He gave special attention to maintaining a small,
unencumbered footprint. Soldiers were to rid themselves of luxuries and carry only food provisions and
ammunition.
7
This guidance also applied to all slave refugees that were sure to swell the ranks as they
were liberated from their master’s yoke. Sherman was adamant that “all slave refugees should now go
to the rear” and that “none should be encouraged to encumber us on this march” in order to avoid
being a hindrance to the mission.
8
Essentially, military expediency was championed above all else.
Special Field Order 120 provided more specific guidance for commanders on not only how to
manage but to leverage slave refugees in support of the mission. In part VII, commanders were
authorized to use, “Negroes who are able-bodies and can be of service to the several columns may be
taken along.”
9
In the same sentence however, Sherman’s shrewd, cold-heartedness shines through
when he also notes that when it comes to the “question of supplies…his [commander’s] first duty is to
see to them who bear arms.”
10
Sherman’s willingness to extract efforts from slave refugees while being
reluctant to provide them with a blanket of protection for fear that they would bog down his force really
speaks to his personal views on race.

3. 3

General Sherman’s views on race were deeply reflective of the times in which he lived and
undoubtedly informed his Special Field Order guidance on slave refugees. He did not believe in racial
equality. As author Noah Trudeau notes in an interview with National Public Radio, Sherman believed in
a strict racial and social hierarchy: there were those who ruled and those who needed to be ruled.
11
In
fact, he may very well have supported trading the preservation of the Union for allowing the institution
of slavery to remain intact if the political winds had blown that direction. Personally, he was somewhat
uncomfortable with the social and racial disorder his army played a part in unleashing. Nonetheless, he
was a fervent Unionist above all else. Upon hearing that South Carolina had seceded Sherman, who was
dining with a friend in Virginia at the time, coldy told him that, “You people of the South don’t know
what you are doing…this country will be drenched in blood.”
12
Despite his bitterness towards
Southerner secessionists, he had spent a substantial amount of time in the South and had developed a
certain fondness for the Southern way of life. For him, slave refugees were merely an ancillary element
in a larger campaign to save the South from itself. The Union Soldiers under Sherman’s command
possessed wide and highly nuanced views on slave refugees and this shaped how they interacted with
them.
At a plantation near Herndon, Georgia, Union Major Henry Hitchcock conversed with the “black
mammy” of the house about a variety of things. Towards the end of the conversation Major Hitchcock
quipped to her that the whites who owned the plantation “would probably denounce Union Soldiers
just as much as if they had actually burned the plantation house.”
13
The slave women replied back, “it
ought to be burned.”
14
A slightly shocked Major Hitchcock inquired why and she replied, “Cause there
has been so much devilment here.”
15
This incident symbolized the long standing resentment most slave
refugees had against their former masters. The Soldiers that comprised Sherman’s Army came from all
over the Union. From Illinois to Ohio to New York, many of these Soldiers came face to face with
Southern culture for the first time and way of life they did not understand. In fact, some of them had

4. 4

never even seen a Negro before. This produced a wide variety of responses to slave refugees, both
positive and negative. A Soldier from the 34
th
Illinois wished to absorb and assist as many as they could
but “but our limited supplies prevents us from taking many.”
16
Another Soldier from the 105
th
Ohio
“related that he ‘saw several darkey women and men who wished to come. I advised the women not to
come, they were anxious to come and said that they were abused by their masters shamefully.’”
17

These Soldiers and others like them who were sympathetic to the Negro plight gave what they could but
not to the point of degrading their own supplies or violating Union policy towards slave refugees. These
largely positive sentiments towards slave refugees were not unanimous though. A substantial amount
of Union Soldiers had no interest in interacting with them, whether for military or personal reasons.
“Even in this Union army of liberation, the racism of the age was still prevalent throughout the ranks.”
18

As the number of slave refugees swelled during the march, some “grew increasingly hesitant about
getting too close to the white soldiers, who might be their source of freedom, but who often treated
them with harshness and disrespect.”
19

Slave refugees’ views of and interaction with Union Soldiers were overwhelmingly positive. For
most of slaves “it was payback time.”
20
This proved to be an operational boon for Sherman’s march.
Whether it was intelligence gathering, assisting Union foraging detachments, providing security, tearing
up rail lines or providing manual labor and knowledge of local terrain, most slave refugees were more
than ready to assist in tasks that expedited their liberation. Around the town of Jackson, Georgia,
former slaves were quick to point out to passing Soldiers that “bloodhounds tracked anyone trying to
escape, including Union Soldiers.”
21
Thus the order was quickly put out to kill any and all bloodhounds
they encountered on their route. They were also quick to point out to approaching Union troops,
“where their masters had hidden food, livestock and even valuables.”
22
Lastly, they proved instrumental
in the destruction and twisting of Confederate railroad lines (known as “Sherman’s neckties”) as well as
providing knowledge on where other rail lines were located.

5. 5

However, while most Union troops considered slave refugee assistance beneficial, some
resented it. For them, not only was it dishonorable that Union troops were participating in the
destruction of private property but that “newly freed slaves enthusiastically approved of [and
participated in] the foraging and destruction of Confederate property” as well.
23
This countervailing
sentiment was evident amongst some slaves who did not support the social and racial upheaval
Sherman’s troops were facilitating as well. In the town of Covington, a young white woman named Tillie
Travis described to a Union Soldier that her female black slave ran up to her yelling that she had been
robbed by Sherman’s men. When another Union Soldier asked what the fuss was about, Ms. Travis
replied “your Soldiers are carrying off everything she owns, and you pretend to be fighting for the
negro.”
24
An additional twist to the story was that a Union officer’s Negro servant was caught wearing a
hat that belonged to the hysterical Negro female slave. These incidents highlight that while most slave
refugees supported Sherman’s troops who in turn were mostly open to the assistance they provided to
the Union cause, it was a highly nuanced operational environment of overlapping, conflicting and
shifting loyalties and emotions. These range of emotions were at the forefront during the most tragic
incident on Sherman’s march: they tragedy at Ebenezer Creek.
On December 9
th
, 1864, Union troops under the command of General Davis began to cross
Ebenezer Creek, which was flooded, on a pontoon bridge. In their rear were some 650 slave refugees
following the Army. What transpired next was truly abhorrent:
As the last unit of Davis’s rear guard, the 58th Indiana, reached the far side, the bridge was
unlashed. The pontoons floated away, leaving the slaves unable to cross the deep
water. Knowing that Confederate cavalry was nearby, the fugitives, fearful of being captured
and killed or re-enslaved, panicked. They jumped into the water, frantically trying to swim
across and evade Wheeler. Seeing their terror and desperation, some Federals began
throwing logs and anything else they could find toward the drowning people. Although some
were saved on makeshift rafts or by soldiers who waded into the creek, a huge number
drowned and others were captured by the arriving Confederate troopers.
25


General Davis came under a tremendous amount of criticism in the aftermath of the incident, even from
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. General Sherman was quick to come to the defense of his general and

6. 6

defended Davis’ actions at Ebenezer Creek. When asked about the incident Sherman “blamed the ex-
slave refugees for ignoring his advice not to follow the army.”
26
In a strictly military sense, Sherman was
right. Refugees that were not of any service to his forces were an operational liability to his Army which
needed to move quickly and avoid being bogged down by refugees, or what we would refer to today as
internally displaced persons. On the other hand, Davis’ command to cut the bridge and essentially
abandon hundreds of refugees to death or recapture was a criminal offense. Davis, like Sherman, was a
man of his times. He was a racist who saw no moral obligation to assist Negroes who were of no service
to his troops. Additionally, the Union government had no mechanisms or detailed procedures in place
to manage the 4 million slave refugees it freed in its wake over the course of the war. Special Field
Orders 119 and 120 provided vague guidance on this matter and thus it was left to the whims of the
commander on the ground.
As mentioned above, there were no mechanisms, procedures and, most importantly, resources
in place to manage the slave refugee crisis. Neither the Army nor Secretary of State William Seward was
prepared for managing hundreds of thousands of displaced slaves. Stability operations did not exist.
Consequently, what transpired was vague, makeshift policy and practice executed by commanders on
the ground.
Sherman’s strategy was truly revolutionary in warfare: he purposeful severed communications
and logistics lines in order to bring total war to the heart of Dixie and expedite an end to the conflict. In
this campaign, slave refugees became a vital fifth column to his forces. They were pivotal to the
execution of four warfighting functions: intelligence, movement and maneuver, protection and
sustainment. Sherman’s forces may have succeeded without slave refugee assistance, but it would have
been at a much higher cost in terms of men and materiel.
Stability operations are the single most important facet of unified land operations doctrine for
the 21
st
U.S. Army Soldier. Although current and future conflict zones will not present a situation in

7. 7

which four million people are enslaved, they most certainly will contain internally displaced and
dispossessed peoples. The decisive factor for Union troops, both during Sherman’s march to the sea
and in the war as a whole, is that slave refugees, despite the ambivalence and hostility they sometimes
received from Union troops, were almost always invariably going to support them in order to secure
their freedom from Confederate oppression. Sherman knew this and exploited it with minimal concern
for the average slave refugee’s welfare. The 21
st
century U.S. Army will not have this unique advantage.
Thus, the need to continually improve our interagency coordination in stability operations is vital to the
successful conclusion of hostilities and a transition into sustainable peace. As the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have shown, it is often non-combatants who prove to be the decisive factor in combat.

8. 8


1
Noah Andre Trudeau, Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 136.

2
Ibid, 136.

3
Ibid, 136.

4
Stephen J. Rauch, ed., U.S. Army Signal Center Military History Program: Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff
Ride Reading Book, 2
nd
ed., (Fort Gordon, GA: 2007), 19.

5
Owen Dunphy, “March to the Sea: America’s Civil War,” in Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff Ride Reading
Book, 2
nd
ed., ed. Stephen Rauch (Fort Gordon, GA: 2007), 24.

6
John M. Marszalek, “Scorched Earth: Sherman’s March to the Sea,” Civil War Trust, accessed October 3, 2015,
http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/fall-2014/scorched-earth.html.

7
William Tecumseh Sherman, “Special Field Orders, HDQRS. MIL. DIV. OF THE MISS, In the Field, Kingston, GA.,
Numbers 119, November 8, 1864,” in Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff Ride Reading Book, 2
nd
ed., ed.
Stephen Rauch (Fort Gordon, GA:2007), 43.

8
Ibid, 43.

9
Ibid, 44.

10
Ibid, 44.

11
Noah Andre Trudeau, “What We Don’t Know About Sherman’s March.” Interview by Liane Hansen. National
Public Radio, January 4, 2009.

12
Owen Dunphy, “March to the Sea: America’s Civil War,” in Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff Ride Reading
Book, 2
nd
ed., ed. Stephen Rauch (Fort Gordon, GA: 2007) 47.

13
Steven E. Woodworth, “November 1864: The March to the Sea,” in Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff Ride
Reading Book, 2
nd
ed., ed. Stephen Rauch (Fort Gordon, GA: 2007)78.

14
Ibid, 78.

15
Ibid, 78.

16
Trudeau, Southern Storm, 135.

17
Ibid, 135.

18
Marszalek,”Scorched Earth,” http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/fall-2014/scorched-
earth.html.

19
Ibid.

20
Trudeau, Southern Storm, 107.

21
Ibid, 107.

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22
Woodworth, “November 1864,” in Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff Ride Reading Book, 2
nd
ed., ed.
Stephen Rauch (Fort Gordon, GA: 2007), 78.

23
Ibid, 77-8.

24
Trudeau, Southern Storm, 135.

25
Marszalek,”Scorched Earth,” http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/fall-2014/scorched-
earth.html.

26
Ibid.


WORKS CITED

Trudeau, Noah Andre. Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Noah
Trudeau is an American historian and writer who has written several books and produced programs for National
Public Radio (NPR). I believe his target audience is the broader American public, not the academic community. He
writes in an extremely detailed, chronological fashion with a wide array of primary sources. There is minimal bias
in his writing and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.

Rauch, Stephen J, ed, U.S. Army Signal Center Military History Program: Savannah Campaign Nov-Dec 1864 Staff
Ride Reading Book, 2
nd
ed. Fort Gordon, GA: 2007. Stephen Rauch is the command historian at Ft. Gordon,
Georgia. His target audience is Ft. Gordon Soldiers, more specifically officers engaged in professional writing
assignments. This compilation book provides a succinct array of both primary and secondary resources related to
the Savannah Campaign. The only bias I detected to a small degree was the secondary sources which tend to
minimize, not whitewash, the conduct of Sherman’s forces during the campaign. It would have been interesting to
see a Confederate account placed alongside them for comparative analysis. I would recommend this book to
anyone interested in the topic.

Marszalek, John M. “Scorched Earth: Sherman’s March to the Sea,” Civil War Trust, accessed October 3, 2015,
http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/fall-2014/scorched-earth.html. John Marszalek is a
Professor Emeritus from Mississippi State University who has authored/edited over 250 articles and 13 books
related to the Civil War, Jacksonian America and Race Relations. He serves on several boards related to the
heritage of Abraham Lincoln. His target audience in this web article is the average history buff, not the academic
community. He provides a brief synopsis of the campaign which provides a brief overview of the campaign. He is
largely even-handed in this article with maybe a slight sympathy towards the Confederate plight during Sherman’s
march. I would recommend this source only as a lead-in to his more comprehensive works.


Trudeau, Noah Andre. “What We Don’t Know About Sherman’s March.” Interview by Liane Hansen. National Public
Radio, January 4, 2009. This brief interview of Noah Trudeau, former executive director of NPR, provides a nice
window into Trudeau’s personal thoughts on his book beyond the written words. Two minutes of the interview
are dedicated to the topic of slave refugees during the campaign. It reinforces the shrewd, militarily-focused
mindset of Sherman who sees slave refugees as burdensome and somewhat of an irritant to his forces. The
audience is the average American listener to NPR and I would recommend it as an alternative medium to
traditional research sources.

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