On the evening of December 8th, 1864, Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis stood on the western bank of Ebenezer Creek, roughly twenty miles north of Savannah, and watched his engineers lay a pontoon bridge across the dark water. His 14,000 troops had been crossing for hours, and behind them, pressing forward in the cold, stood some 600 fugitive slaves who had attached themselves to the column, hoping to follow the Union army to freedom. Davis gave the order to dismantle the bridge and pull it back to the shore.

The planks came up, the pontoons were drawn in, and the 600 were left stranded on the enemy side. Some tried to swim the frigid creek. A few were helped by scattered Union soldiers who defied the order. Many others were killed or captured by the Confederate cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler that was known to be closing in.

Major James Connelly, one of Davis’s own officers, protested openly, and word of the atrocity reached Sherman himself. But Brigadier General Davis kept his command, spared because the army was short of experienced field commanders. The incident at Ebenezer Creek would eventually give rise to Special Field Order No. 15, which set aside land for the liberated slaves and their families.

But that came later. For now, the march went on. It had begun in the smoldering ruins of Atlanta. In September 1864, the city fell to Union forces after the Battle of Jonesboro severed its last rail lifeline, forcing Confederate General John Bell Hood to abandon it in a blaze of destruction that left shattered rail cars and chaos in his wake.

The Union occupied Atlanta on September 2nd, a victory that gave President Abraham Lincoln’s re-election campaign a crucial boost. But for Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, the capture was only the opening act. He established his headquarters in the hollowed-out city, ordered the few remaining civilians to evacuate, and began planning a stroke that would carry the war deep into the heart of the South. Hood’s scattered army regrouped and began harassing Union supply lines, while Sherman made several unsuccessful attempts to bring him to battle.

Disagreements with his superiors over the next step followed. Sherman then laid out his strategy in messages to Lincoln and Grant: “I propose we disrupt the road from Chattanooga and advance with wagons towards Milligville, Milan, and Savannah. Occupying Georgia is futile until we can repopulate it. But the complete destruction of its infrastructure, homes, and populace will severely weaken their military capabilities.

I am prepared to undertake the march and make Georgia lament. ” Grant’s reply came on November 2nd, a simple directive: “Go as you propose. ”

Sherman’s army prepared for a 225-mile journey to the coastal city of Savannah. Before leaving, he ordered the destruction of all industrial and commercial facilities in Atlanta, sparing churches and private residences in the order, though many homes were nonetheless caught in the spreading fires.

By the time the troops marched out on the morning of November 16th, roughly 40 percent of the city lay in ruin. The army numbered 62,000 men, mostly infantry, supported by a cavalry division of 5,000 and 2,000 artillerymen with 64 cannons. Major General Henry Slocum commanded the left wing, Major General Oliver Howard the right. They had destroyed their own supply line, cutting themselves off entirely from the north, and were now dependent on the Georgia countryside for food, forage, and everything else they needed for the entire trek.

Foraging units fanned out to the villages along the route with instructions to collect as much food as possible, to refrain from looting civilian homes, and to concentrate on the wealthier inhabitants. In practice, the foragers treated the instructions as a license for plunder. They confiscated livestock, meat, and grain, and then they went into the homes. Clothing, jewelry, wigs, anything that could be sold or displayed was taken.

Some southern families tried to bury their valuables, often relying on their slaves to guide the soldiers to the hidden caches. Confederate resistance to these raids was at best inadequate. Lieutenant General William Hardee assembled a small garrison of militia, numbering in the thousands, at Milledgeville to confront Howard’s forces, only to watch the Union maneuvers shift eastward. It was a feint, and Hardee realized too late that Sherman was hiding his true objective.

There were also wandering cavalry units under Major General Joseph Wheeler, and these proved far more dangerous. Wheeler’s men were particularly effective at intercepting foragers and executed captured Union soldiers without trial. As Howard continued his deceptive maneuvers around Macon, one of his cavalry regiments fell into an ambush set by Wheeler’s forces and was drawn into a trap during the pursuit. Three brigades of Georgia militia were advancing through Griswoldville, just a few miles east of Macon, where Wheeler’s cavalry would leave the Union pursuers to contend with them.

The skirmish diverted part of Howard’s force, but the weight of federal numbers quickly overwhelmed the defenders, and the Georgia militia suffered heavy casualties. As the mounted foragers rode through the wealthier districts of northern Georgia, they took it upon themselves not only to destroy plantation property but also to liberate the enslaved people who worked there. To the southern aristocrat, these Union soldiers were marauders and thieves. To the men, women, and children in bondage, they represented a chance at freedom.

The newly freed slaves flocked to the Union columns and joined the march, their numbers eventually reaching into the thousands. It was a humane development, but a difficult one. Feeding so many additional people from foraging and rations strained the army’s resources and divided the officers, and in one case the strain produced outright disaster. On November 23rd, Slocum’s wing reached the state capital, Milledgeville.

The governor and state officials had already fled. Inside the Capitol building, federal troops staged a symbolic vote to annul Georgia’s secession from the Union. Without firing a shot, Sherman had captured the political center of the state. He chose to intensify the pressure.

Along with extended foraging, the troops were granted greater freedom to destroy any infrastructure that could support the southern cause. Cotton gins, mills, and manufacturing facilities were burned, shelled, or rammed apart. Even the estate and personal plantation of former Governor Howell Cobb went up in flames, with the sole exception of the slaves’ quarters. Hundreds of miles of railway were systematically dismantled, soldiers working in shifts with crowbars to twist the tracks into shapes that were nearly impossible to repair.

As the columns advanced toward Savannah, Wheeler’s skirmishers harassed them relentlessly. Frustrated by the constant interference, Sherman sent his cavalry commander, Judson Kilpatrick, to pursue Wheeler’s base at Waynesboro. Kilpatrick’s troopers broke through the Confederate defensive lines and severed Wheeler’s access to Augusta, forcing him to retreat from the town and sharply reducing his ability to impede the Union advance. The landscape changed as the army entered Georgia’s low coastal plains, a low-lying region of swamps and marshes that offered little in the way of plunder or foraging.

At the same time, the number of fugitive slaves following the army kept growing. It was in this setting, on the evening of December 8th, that Davis reached Ebenezer Creek and committed the act that would stain the campaign. The engineers built their pontoon bridge, the troops crossed, and then the bridge came up, leaving the 600 behind to the mercy of Wheeler’s cavalry. The protests of Major Connelly and others reached Sherman, but Davis kept his post.

The incident led directly to Special Field Order No. 15, the directive that set aside land for the liberated slaves. Sherman’s treatment of Confederate mines was considerably less humane. As the army neared Savannah, it began encountering torpedoes, the era’s term for anti-personnel mines, and the devices had a deeply demoralizing effect on the Union troops.

Frustrated, and mindful of how Confederate captors had treated Union prisoners of war, Sherman ordered Confederate prisoners to clear the minefields by any means necessary, even without knowledge of where the torpedoes were buried. On December 10th, Sherman’s main force arrived at the outskirts of Savannah. There they found Hardee, who had fortified the city with 10,000 troops and was holding the Union advance in check. Hundreds of miles from any supply base, Sherman needed resupply for a potential siege, so he dispatched a small contingent to capture Fort McAllister on the coast.

On December 13th, the fort fell after a brief fight with a minor Confederate garrison. The Union army had reached the sea, and the U. S. Navy could at last bring supplies to the beleaguered troops.

For the first time in more than a month, the army had a secure supply line. On December 17th, Sherman sent a message to Hardee demanding the surrender of Savannah or the city would face a formidable assault. Hardee chose neither surrender nor continued resistance. On December 20th, the Confederate garrison crossed the Savannah River and retreated northward.

The mayor of Savannah came out to personally deliver the keys of the city to Sherman. Sherman had done what many believed impossible. Operating without supply lines or communication with the north, entirely on his own authority, he had subdued Georgia. His army had marched through the countryside meeting minimal resistance, living off the land, and bringing destruction to everything that could sustain the Confederate war effort.

The campaign had taken 37 days. It inflicted an estimated $100 million in damages in 1864 currency, roughly $1 billion in modern terms, most of it yielding little direct military advantage to the advancing army. More than 300 miles of railroad were destroyed, along with countless pieces of southern infrastructure. Thousands of horses and cattle were confiscated, and millions of pounds of food taken.

Emboldened by his success, Sherman turned his strategy toward the Carolinas. Using the same scorched-earth methods that had subdued Georgia, he planned to carve a path toward Robert E. Lee’s rear flank. In 1865, he would add the destruction of Columbia, South Carolina, and the capture of Confederate General Joseph E.

Johnston to his list of achievements, a campaign that would continue until the end of the war. Throughout it all, he delivered what both his supporters and detractors called divine retribution. The march effectively severed Lee from many of his remaining allies, and Sherman’s advance northward posed a constant threat of encirclement to the Army of Northern Virginia. By April 9th, 1865, Lee had surrendered.

The legacy of the march remains a subject of debate among historians and enthusiasts. Sherman himself offered his own justification: “Since the public mind has settled on the conclusion that the institution of slavery was so interwoven in our system that nothing but the interposition of war could have eradicated it, I believe that the war was worth all that it cost in life and treasure. ” For the 600 left at Ebenezer Creek, for the families who watched their plantations burn, and for the thousands who followed the columns toward freedom, the cost had been counted in very different terms.

The march through Georgia had broken the Confederacy’s back, but its shadow stretched far beyond the battlefield, into the landscape, the politics, and the memory of the nation for generations to come.