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head of cattle, and arrived with ten thousand.
The teams were in splendid flesh, and not a wagon was lost on the road.
Kilpatrick collected all his remounts, and every officer had three or four led horses, while every regiment was followed by at least fifty negroes and footsore soldiers, riding on horses or mules.
Besides this, great numbers of horses were shot, by Sherman's order, because of the disorganizing effect of so many idlers mounted.
In all the march through Georgia the rebels had only once obliged Sherman to use more than a skirmish line.
His casualties were one hundred and three killed, four hundred and twenty-eight wounded, two hundred and seventy-eight missing. He had captured thirteen hundred and thirty-eight prisoners.
As for the men, whether called on to fight, to march, to wade streams, to make roads, clear away obstructions, build bridges, or tear up railroads, they were always ready.
Their spirit was superb.
Sherman himself declared:1 ‘I only regarded the march from Atlanta to Savannah as a “ shift” of base, as the transfer of a strong army, which had no opponent and had finished its then work, from the interior to a point on the sea-coast, from which it could achieve other important results.
I considered this march as a means to an end, and not as an essential act of war.’
But, however easy of actual accomplishment, however unobstructed by opposition, however unmolested by an enemy, the march to the sea will always be regarded as one of the most splendid achievements in military history.
The daring of the conception and the originality of
New York Appleton 1885.
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