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March from the
Chattahoochee to the sea, and crowned
General Hazen with an unfading chaplet of honor.
It opened to
Sherman's army a new base of supplies; and it was a chief cause of the speedy fall of
Savannah, for the soldiers in that city, amazed by the seeming rashness and yet perfect success of the assault, felt that it would be a useless waste of life to attempt to defend it against such assailants.
The citizens shared in this feeling, and many of them, accompanied by the mayor and aldermen of the city, waited upon
General Hardee, at his Headquarters in Oglethorpe Barracks, and insisted upon his surrender of the post.
After putting into
Captain Williamson's hands commuinications for
Foster,
Dahlgren, and the War Department,
Sherman returned to
Fort McAllister, and lodged that night; and early the next morning
he met
General Foster, who had come up the
Ogeechee in the steamer
Nemaha, during the night.
2 He accompanied that officer to
Ossabaw Sound, where, at noon, they had an interview with
Admiral Dahlgren, on board the
Harvest Moon.
Sherman made arrangements for
Foster to send him some heavy siege-guns from
Hilton Head, wherewith to bombard
Savannah, and with
Dahlgren, for engaging the forts below the city during the assault.
On the following day
he returned to his lines.
Several 30-pounder Parrott guns reached
Sherman on the 17th, when he, summoned
Hardee to surrender.
He refused.
Three days afterward,
Sherman left for
Hilton Head, to make arrangements with
Foster for preventing a retreat of
Hardee toward
Charleston, if he should attempt it, leaving
Slocum to get the siege-guns into proper position.
Unfavorable winds and tides detained him, and on the 21st, while in one of the inland passages with which that coast abounds, he was met by
Captain Dayton in a tug, bearing the news that during the previous dark and windy night,
Hardee, had fled from
Savannah with fifteen thousand men, crossed the river on a pontoon bridge, and was in full march on
Charleston; also, that the
National troops were in possession of the
Confederate lines, and advancing into
Savannah without opposition.
The story was true.
Hardee's movement had been unsuspected by the
National pickets.
Under cover of a heavy cannonade during the day and evening of the 20th, he had destroyed two iron-clads, several smaller vessels, the navy yard, and a large quantity of ammunition, ordnance stores, and supplies of all kinds.
Then
