onderful cooerdination between the different
arms of the Service and with all auxiliary branches--especially
the commissariat and transport, and, to clinch everything, a
thoroughness of execution which distinguished each unit concerned.
As a feat of arms this famous march is hardly worth mentioning.
There were no battles and no such masterly maneuvers as those of
the much harder march to Atlanta. Nor was the operational problem
to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the subsequent march
through the Carolinas. Sherman himself says: "Were I to express
my measure of the relative importance of the march to the sea, and
of that from Savannah northward, I would place the former at one,
and the latter at ten--or the maximum."

The Government was very doubtful and counseled reconsideration.
But Grant and Sherman, knowing the factors so very much better,
were sure the problem could easily be solved. Sherman left Atlanta
on the fifteenth of November and laid siege to Savannah on the tenth
of December. He utterly destroyed the military value of Atlanta and
everything else on the way that could be used by the armies in the
field. Of course, to do this he had to reduce civilian supplies to
the point at which no surplus remained for transport to the front;
and civilians naturally suffered. But his object was to destroy the
Georgian base of supplies without inflicting more than incidental
hardship on civilians. And this object he attained. He cut a swath
of devastation sixty miles wide all the way to Savannah. Every
rail was rooted up, made red-hot, and twisted into scrap. Every
road and bridge was destroyed. Every kind of surplus supplies an
army could possibly need was burnt or consumed. Civilians were
left with enough to keep body and soul together, but nothing to
send away, even if the means of transportation had been left.

Sherman's sixty thousand men were all as fit as his own tall sinewy
form, which was the very embodiment of expert energy. Every weakling
had been left behind. Consequently the whole veteran force simply
romped through this Georgian raid. The main body mostly followed the
rails, which gangs of soldiers would pile on bonfires of sleepers.
The mounted men swept up everything about the flanks. But nothing
escaped the "bummers," who foraged for their units every day, starting
out empty-handed on foot and returning heavily laden on horses or
mules or in some kind of vehicle. If Atlanta had been a volcano