ocked, singly and by
families, to join "Massa Linkum's boys." The railroads were destroyed,
and the Carolinas thus cut off from the Gulf States.

Each regiment detailed a certain number of foragers. These, starting off
in the morning empty-handed and on foot, would return at night riding or
driving beasts laden with spoils. "Here would be a silver-mounted family
carriage drawn by a jackass and a cow, loaded inside and out with
everything the country produced, vegetable and animal, dead and alive.
There would be an ox-cart, similarly loaded, and drawn by a nondescript
tandem team equally incongruous. Perched upon the top would be a ragged
forager, rigged out in a fur hat of a fashion worn by dandies of a
century ago, or a dress-coat which had done service at stylish balls of
a former generation. The jibes and jeers, the fun and the practical
jokes, ran down the whole line as the cortege came in, and no masquerade
in carnival could compare with it for original humor and rollicking
enjoyment. ... The camps in the open pine-woods, the bonfires along the
railways, the occasional sham battles at night with blazing pine-knots
for weapons whirling in the darkness, all combined to leave upon the
minds of officers and men the impression of a vast holiday frolic."
[footnote: The March to the Sea, by Major-General J. D. Cox. Campaigns
of the Civil War. Scribners.]

At the start Sherman was uncertain just where he should strike the
coast. The blockade vessels were asked to be on the lookout for him from
Mobile to Charleston. By the middle of December the army lay before
Savannah. Hardee held the city with 16,000 men, but evacuated it
December 20, 1864, Sherman entering next day. He wrote to Lincoln, "I
beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah." The
capture of Fort McAllister a week before had opened the Ogeechee River,
and Sherman now established a new base of supplies on the sea-coast.

The North rang with praises of the Great March, which had pierced like a
knife the vitals of the Confederacy. Georgia, with her arsenals and
factories, had been the Confederacy's workshop. Twenty thousand bales of
cotton had been burned upon the march, besides a great amount of
military stores. The 320 miles of railroad destroyed had practically
isolated Virginia from the South and the West. And all this had been
done with the loss of less than 1,000 men.

[1865]

Meanwhile Thomas had dealt the Confederacy another staggering