The Fateful Lightning (55 page)

Dibrell seemed oblivious to Wheeler’s black mood, said, “Sir, you likely saved Augusta. They won’t try that again.”

Wheeler turned toward Dibrell, scanned the faces of the other senior officers. “I don’t care a whit about Augusta. We had an opportunity. We just gave him the chance to do this again. Because somebody got excited.”

Others began to move closer now, and Seeley saw Colonel Hagan, the Alabaman.

“Sir, I regret it was a few of my men. We were dismounted, awaiting the pass of the enemy. Some of my men couldn’t wait. I deeply regret this, sir.”

Seeley was surprised at the man’s admission, knew of Hagan from various fights around Atlanta, a man seemingly made for higher command. Wheeler stared at him, said, “I shall condemn no man for enthusiasm, Colonel. But we shall have to confront Kilpatrick again. Would you suggest how your men might redeem themselves?”

“We shall redeem ourselves by your orders, sir. What you instruct in the future, we shall carry out. If you wish us to assault the enemy on our own, we shall do so.”

Seeley watched Wheeler’s reaction, could see that Wheeler had a good deal of respect for Hagan.

“That time shall come, Colonel.”

Riders came in from the direction of the retreat, a squad led by one of the Tennesseans, Captain Jarvis.

“Sir! The Yankees have withdrawn to a creek crossing some four miles out. They are preparing a defensive position, sir!”

Seeley knew Jarvis, one of Forrest’s former troopers, and Wheeler seemed to regard him as he had any of Forrest’s men.

“Would you have us remain here and moan about that, Captain?”

“No, sir. It is a strong position, though, sir.”

Wheeler lowered his head, then said, “Fall into formation. We know where the enemy is, and we shall teach him a lesson. If we cannot surprise him, we shall crush him, man against man.”

Jarvis seemed to accept Wheeler’s judgment, made a quick glance toward Seeley, who understood the meaning. Seeley felt helpless, had a sickening stir inside of him, that what Wheeler wanted to do now
was simply wrong. But he could say nothing, looked toward his own division commander, Dibrell, who seemed to embrace every suggestion Wheeler made. Dibrell said, “We are prepared, sir. On your order. Let us teach those devils what it is to trespass on our soil.”

T
hey moved out as quickly as formations could be assembled, the urgency obvious, not allowing Kilpatrick’s men to establish a strong line, or even worse, not encouraging the Yankees to pull back farther, escaping altogether. But Wheeler’s efforts confronted well-prepared bluecoats, Kilpatrick’s men greeting Wheeler’s approach with well-aimed musket fire and the overwhelming firepower of repeating carbines. As quickly as the fight in Aiken had run its course, no more than a half hour, the confrontation Wheeler seemed so badly to need dissolved in a hail of Yankee musket balls. If there was to be another confrontation, another opportunity for Wheeler to rip his saber through the heart of Judson Kilpatrick, it would come at another time.

With complaints against Wheeler’s men continuing, even Hardee couldn’t prevent the inevitable reaction from the impatience of the War Department. Confederate cavalryman Wade Hampton had been sent southward from Lee’s army in Virginia, had focused most of his efforts toward the protection of Augusta. In the Confederate hierarchy, Hampton carried considerable respect, and, he was a native South Carolinean. If South Carolina was to assist its own cause, the people had to embrace a hero, someone who could inspire the civilians to support their army. On February 17, less than a week after the triumphant, yet hollow victory at Aiken, Joe Wheeler’s authority over the cavalry forces confronting Sherman was diminished by the elevation of Hampton to that command.

Reacting to the hammer blow of Wheeler’s loss of authority, combined with the frustrating futility in their attempt to strike yet another meaningful blow against their Federal adversaries, Wheeler’s men began to desert the army in even greater numbers, driven away from their cause by discouragement and despair. For Captain Seeley and his diminishing force, the orders would come again very soon, the call once more to track down and scout the Federal advance,
seeking some vulnerability, an opportunity to damage Sherman’s army any way they still could.

Though Kilpatrick may have been bruised and humiliated at Aiken, the defeat was no great catastrophe for Sherman’s army. Despite a wave of congratulatory praise heaped on Wheeler for his success, letters from Governor Magrath, accolades from various ranking Southern generals, the victory that Wheeler’s men tried to embrace proved even more hollow than they knew. Kilpatrick’s men had made their advance through Aiken as part of a well-planned feint toward Augusta, one more part of Sherman’s plan to keep the Confederate command guessing. Ultimately, the fight at Aiken proved to be a distraction that only benefited the Federals, who had already extended their march deeper into the heart of South Carolina, well away from any threat to Augusta.

As for the wholesale burnings, pillage, devastation, committed in South Carolina, magnify all I have said of Georgia some fifty-fold….

—
DAVID P. CONYNGHAM
, The New York Herald

T
he trail of destruction began with the first advance of Sherman’s men, the soldiers as aware as their commander that South Carolina was a very special place, destined for the kind of punishment that went beyond scavenging for supplies. Hardeeville was among the first towns to feel the torch, the destruction there beginning with the firing of an old church, spreading to the business and government buildings, as well as the railroad depot. From there the devastation spread toward Orangeburg, Barnwell, and Lexington, the troops justifying their complete disregard for civilian property by the simple explanation that South Carolina, more than any other state in the Confederacy, had given birth to the rebellion, and thus should feel the greatest pain. For some the destruction was as much sport as it was military necessity, most of that kind of viciousness coming from Kilpatrick’s cavalry. With the embarrassment of the fight at Aiken behind him, Kilpatrick moved his men northward, obeying Sherman’s instructions to protect the western flank of the army. But Kilpatrick took Sherman’s orders a step further.
As his horsemen made their way through the various towns and river crossings, they probed and tested what kind of resistance the rebels might be putting in their way. But the rebels were barely there at all, scatterings of home guard and state militia, who vanished as quickly as the Federal cavalry appeared. With little danger confronting them, Kilpatrick’s men followed the lead of their commander, who showed no quarter to any Southern towns along their path.

The advance into South Carolina had not been completely free of confrontation. As Howard’s men moved away from Pocotaligo, they had pushed toward the Salkehatchie River, and there Hardee had established a stout defensive line along the far banks. Already, as they drove closer to the Salkehatchie, the Federal troops had been forced to slog their way through the misery of swamplands and bog holes for many miles, and the low plains around the Salkehatchie were no different. Still swollen from the extensive rains, the river was certain to tax the abilities of Sherman’s engineers, the men charged with laying the pontoon bridges. Adding to that challenge was a steady dose of artillery fire from batteries spread along the rebel side of the river. But, as had happened all through Georgia, Hardee’s men were too few, and Sherman’s too determined to make their crossing. With a force Hardee could not match, Oliver Howard’s lead divisions spread out in flanking movements, and continued to brave the rebel fire until the bridges had been laid. Once the rebels realized that their position was untenable, they had no alternative but to pull away. It was Hardee’s first real confrontation with Sherman’s army, and it ended with no surprises, save one. Hardee never expected that Sherman’s army would use the route they did, straight through the worst of the swamplands that Hardee and Beauregard had convinced themselves would be such an impassable barrier to any army’s advance. To the Confederate generals’ disbelief, the Federal troops made their advance through the most miserable conditions many of those soldiers had ever experienced, wading chest-deep through lowlands that might span a mile or more across, the officers struggling to maintain a column of march in some woodlands where no roads had ever existed. On the primary routes, the engineers pressed many of the troops into the kind of labor they had never performed before, working as sappers, cutting the small trees and saplings the engineers
could lay as a carpet on the muddy trails, corduroying the roads to provide some support for the wagons and artillery.

Once past the Salkehatchie, Sherman understood just how effective his feints had been. While the geography offered more obstacles to his army than he expected, the rebels did not. As he moved the two wings deeper into South Carolina, it became evident that the greatest concentration of enemy troops were still mired in the uncertainty of their senior commanders, heavy garrisons holding forts in Augusta and Charleston. Between the two cities, South Carolina lay mostly unprotected.

As the infantry wound its way in the cavalry’s wake, the destruction became a contagion, the troops still scavenging for food, for loot, inspired and energized by the burned-out buildings in every place the cavalry had already been. The pickings were mostly slim, the lower part of the state not nearly the fertile breadbasket they had found in Georgia. Adding to the wrath of the troops was the march itself, the men impatient with the slog through such miserable countryside, only to find that the occasional farm offered little reward for their troubles.

If the goal of the army seemed to be punishment, Sherman held to a slightly different purpose: conquest, with an eye toward laying bare the illusion that South Carolina could protect herself from his army. He understood, even encouraged the army’s animosity toward the birthplace of the war, and he had very little objection to the columns of black smoke that welcomed him into every small town. But all along the way, he studied the maps, Captain Poe’s careful rendering of the roadways and intersections that would eventually lead the army to Sherman’s next major goal. On February 16, while Hardee sat perched in Charleston, the Confederate commander still expected to learn that Sherman had swung his army that way, still watched for a flotilla of Federal gunboats that he anticipated would steam through the mouth of Charleston Harbor. Instead, Sherman’s men continued their drive through the center of the state, and soon after clearing the misery of the lowlands, the vanguard of Howard’s wing arrived on the high bluffs overlooking Congaree Creek, a small tributary of the Congaree River, which framed the city of Columbia.

As his army gathered into camps across the river from the state capital, Sherman rode forward to see the place for himself. He expected a fight, or at least some effort by the rebels to hold him away. The scouts told him a very different story. The city lay virtually undefended, the only defensive forces positioned there a small body of Wade Hampton’s newly arrived cavalry. Despite Hampton’s proud
boasts that he had come south to rescue the fortunes of his home state, the citizens of Columbia could see for themselves the inevitability of Sherman’s advance. On the hills west of town, across the Congaree, blue masses began to fill every open space, the heights offering each side a perfect view of the other. Even the most hopeful civilians began to accept that Hampton’s bravado was only talk. As Sherman’s army continued to mass, Hampton had no choice but to withdraw his horsemen, and leave the citizens of the capital city to whatever fate Sherman had in mind.

“CAMP SORGHUM,” NEAR COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA—FEBRUARY 16, 1865

It was another of the former prison camps, the ground potholed with makeshift dugouts, burrowed by the hands of Federal prisoners. But those men were long gone, Sherman assuming they had been marched northward, their captors still embracing the fantasy that prisoners of war served any real value.

He sat on a log, beside Oliver Howard, stared through field glasses, looking out over the river, past the skeletal remains of the bridge.

“Burned it themselves?”

Howard glassed as well, said, “Yes, sir. Knew we were coming. It was the smart thing to do.”

“The smart thing to do is surrender, and end this damned war. All they’ve done is delay us for a day or so. I want Captain Poe working his pontoons with all speed. He’s getting mighty good at it. I’m interested in more than this view.”

There was an artillery blast, down to the right, a burst of smoke rising up through low trees. Sherman looked that way, said, “Who the hell’s firing? And what are they firing at?”

Howard had no answer, the two men rising, Sherman nursing the stiffness in his hips, the ride through the rugged ground plaguing him. He stretched his back as he walked, camps spread out to both sides, all across the hillsides, and as always, the salutes poured his way, the calls of “Uncle Billy.” He ignored that now, heard another blast, quickened his pace toward the rising smoke. There were shouts
down below him, and he glanced that way, saw men with hats in the air. But they weren’t paying any mind to him. He saw now, the shells were impacting in the city, bursts of fire and smoke. He moved quickly down the hill, any pains in his bones forgotten, a low fury building inside him. Howard was struggling to keep up with him, and Sherman called out, “Did you order anyone to start an artillery assault?”

“No, sir. It wasn’t me.”

It’s your people, Sherman thought. But there would be time for chewing out Howard later, if there was guilt to be assigned. The cannons erupted again, and Sherman was there now, a battery of six guns, smoke rolling around them. He stopped, tried to catch his breath, saw an officer, the man wide-eyed at Sherman’s approach. The man threw up a salute, said, “Captain DeGress, sir. Playing havoc with those rebels, that we are.”

Sherman ignored the salute, said, “Who authorized you to begin your own artillery barrage?”

The captain slowly dropped his hand, pointed toward the town, stammered his explanation. “Sir, we have spotted considerable cavalry moving about in the streets. The intersections where we can plainly see them provides excellent targets for my men. Good training for the newer crews. These are twenty-pound Parrotts, sir. They can do the job, I assure you.”

“I know what kind of guns they are, Captain. Have you not noticed that you are conducting a one-man war?”

“Sir, I believed it was the prudent thing to do. I am convinced that there is a considerable body of rebel infantry in the city, awaiting our crossing. Some of the infantry officers have confided in me that they expect a heavy fight once we push across the river. I thought it best to, um, loosen them up a bit.”

Sherman looked at Howard. “Have your scouts mentioned any infantry positions over there?”

Howard was staring hard at DeGress, said, “No, sir. Captain, did
anyone
give you authorization to fire on the city?”

DeGress was clearly nervous now. “No, sir. I just thought it was prudent. The infantrymen seemed to appreciate it.”