Southern Storm (51 page)

At Tarver’s Mill Major Hitchcock watched
Harper’s
artist T. R. Davis sketch the scene sitting under the branches of a fine live oak.

The Seventeenth Corps crossed the Ogeechee River utilizing both a trestle
(left)
and pontoon
(right)
bridge.

Major General Oliver Otis Howard commanded Sherman’s Right Wing during the Savannah Campaign. Even without a right arm (lost in battle in 1862), Howard projected an image of professional competence not always borne out by his combat performance. Nevertheless, Sherman designated him his second-in-command over Henry Slocum, who ranked Howard.

Major General Henry W. Slocum was described by one Sherman aide as “brave, cool, experienced.” Sherman’s Left Wing commander was competent but prickly, so much so that his career went on hold when he refused to serve under an officer he personally despised. Slocum’s command included the largest contingent of eastern soldiers to participate in the March to the Sea.

Camp Lawton was supposed to replace Andersonville, but the approach of Sherman’s columns forced its evacuation.

What the Federal soldiers saw inside the compound stirred widespread anger, some of which vented itself on the nearby town of Millen.

Sherman told his Seventeenth Corps commander to make Millen’s destruction “‘tenfold more devilish’ than he had ever dreamed of.”

Flamboyant and controversial, Brigadier General H. Judson Kilpatrick led Sherman’s cavalry in the Savannah Campaign. Quick to anger and a fighter, Kilpatrick was also, in the words of one Federal officer, “the most vain, conceited, egotistical little popinjay I ever saw.” Kilpatrick’s men were in almost constant skirmishes with Rebel cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler.

The largest-scale encounter between the two came at Waynesboro on December 4, when Kilpatrick personally led one of the attacks against Wheeler’s barricaded position.

A miscellany of scenes common during Sherman’s March: destroying railroad track
(top)
, foragers heading out and returning to camp in the evening
(middle pair)
, an infantry column crossing a river via a pontoon bridge
(bottom)
.