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No requisitions were made as in European armies, for the country was sparsely settled, and the civil authorities were unable to respond.
The system adopted was simply indispensable to success; but the troops were supplied with all the essentials of life and health, and the animals of the command were kept well fed. Doubtless, acts of pillage, robbery, and violence occurred, as in every war, but such acts were exceptional and incidental.
Sherman's ‘bummers,’ as they were called, committed neither murder nor rape; and no houses were burned except by order of a corps commander, and then only when the troops had been molested, the roads destroyed, or bridges burned by the inhabitants.
The day the national army moved, the alarm and confusion of the enemy began.
On the 16th of November, Cobb, who was in command in Georgia, sent word to Richmond that Sherman had burned Atlanta, and was marching in the direction of Macon.
‘We have no force,’ he said, ‘to hinder him, and must fall back to Macon, where reinforcements should be sent at once.’
Beauregard, on the same day, telegraphed from Tuscumbia: ‘I would advise all available force which can be sent from North and South Carolina be held ready to move ’
New York Appleton 1885.
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