osecution of the next
stage of the campaign. I was quite impatient to get off myself,
for a city-life had become dull and tame, and we were all anxious
to get into the pine-woods again, free from the importunities of
rebel women asking for protection, and of the civilians from the
North who were coming to Savannah for cotton and all sorts of
profit.

On the 18th of January General Slocum was ordered to turn over the
city of Savannah to General J. G. Foster, commanding the Department
of the South, who proposed to retain his own headquarters at Hilton
Head, and to occupy Savannah by General Grovers division of the
Nineteenth Corps, just arrived from James River; and on the next
day, viz., January 19th, I made the first general orders for the
move.

These were substantially to group the right wing of the army at
Pocotaligo, already held by the Seventeenth Corps, and the left
wing and cavalry at or near Robertsville, in South Carolina. The
army remained substantially the same as during the march from
Atlanta, with the exception of a few changes in the commanders of
brigades and divisions, the addition of some men who had joined
from furlough, and the loss of others from the expiration of their
term of service. My own personal staff remained the same, with the
exception that General W. F. Barry had rejoined us at Savannah,
perfectly recovered from his attack of erysipelas, and continued
with us to the end of the war. Generals Easton and Beckwith
remained at Savannah, in charge of their respective depots, with
orders to follow and meet us by sea with supplies when we should
reach the coast at Wilmington or Newbern, North Carolina.

Of course, I gave out with some ostentation, especially among the
rebels, that we were going to Charleston or Augusta; but I had long
before made up my mind to waste no time on either, further than to
play off on their fears, thus to retain for their protection a
force of the enemy which would otherwise concentrate in our front,
and make the passage of some of the great rivers that crossed our
route more difficult and bloody.

Having accomplished all that seemed necessary, on the 21st of
January, with my entire headquarters, officers, clerks, orderlies,
etc., with wagons and horses, I embarked in a steamer for Beaufort,
South Carolina, touching at Hilton Head, to see General Foster.
The weather was rainy and bad, but we reached Beaufort safely on
the 23d, and found some of General Blair'