Southern Storm (71 page)

Per the Hardee-Beauregard evacuation plan, between 8:00
P.M
. and 10:00
P.M
. the troops manning the various river forts were to spike their guns, dump munitions in the water (no fires or explosions to alert the enemy), and march into South Carolina, using either the floating bridge or boat transport. Additionally, the 4,000 soldiers under Major General Ambrose Wright, holding the southernmost seven miles of the intermediate line, were to withdraw, pass through the town, and cross the river using the pontoon bridge. The last to leave would spike all cannon being abandoned, while the skirmish line screening the operation would remain in place until at least 10:30
P.M
.

“I have no words to picture the gloomy bitterness that filled my breast on that dreary march through water, mud and darkness,” related one of Wright’s men. About the only ones glad to go were Brigadier General Samuel W. Ferguson’s dismounted cavalry, who knew that once across the Savannah River, they would be reunited with their horses.

Before the city council’s emergency session adjourned, those present (some prominent citizens had been invited to join the elected ones) heard from Captain Josiah Tattnall, commanding the Savannah River Squadron. Voices rose in protest when he mentioned a plan to burn several vessels still under construction in the shipyards, as it was pointed out that there was a great danger that flames would spread to
nearby residences. Tattnall allowed that if the aldermen could round up fifty workmen, he would be able to sufficiently damage the ships to avoid having to set them ablaze. But it was too late for such deals. Even as the aldermen were departing from the City Exchange, a fire was seen in the distance where the shipyards were located, set by retreating troops under orders to leave nothing of military value behind. Three officials from the affected districts raced off to organize bucket brigades.

Elsewhere in Savannah the hundred-man provost detail was finding itself seriously overmatched by the mobs of mostly white looters. The unit had been divided into smaller squads that patrolled the downtown district. They would key in on the sounds of entryways being smashed open. “Men, women and children would force open a door but like hungry dogs after a bone, each for himself, indifferent to the property or rights of others, they would grab, smash, pull, tear, anything & everything, shoes, meat, clothes, soap, hats, whatever came to hand,” said one of those tasked with maintaining order.

Many of the Rebel artillerists chose to dispose of their excess munitions by discharging it at the enemy. “The shelling to-night from the river battery and from their works in our front is unusually severe,” recorded a New Yorker in the Twentieth Corps, “the flying pieces striking our tents and barking the trees.” An Ohio comrade never forgot how the Rebels “opened their batteries full blast upon us,” while a Pennsylvanian termed it “a severe artillery fire,” and commented that “the shot and shell flew in and around us in liberal profusion.”

Lieutenant General Hardee departed from Savannah with most of his staff on the steamer
Swan
not long after 9:00
P.M
. One aide remained behind with a small detail charged with the responsibility of seeing that the escape route was held open long enough for the skirmish lines to pass through the city. An officer with the garrison took note of one unfortunate reality: “By reason of the lack of transportation many of the Confederate sick and wounded were left in hospital when Savannah was evacuated.”

At 10:00
P.M
. it was the turn of Major General Lafayette McLaws’s 4,000 men, holding the critical center of the intermediate line, to commence their evacuation. Here too the cannon were to be spiked (at 11:00
P.M
.), while the skirmish line held its place until half past midnight. “Our camp fires were left burning and our entire army…marched into Savannah,” wrote a Georgia soldier. “I will never forget the event.”

It fell to W. H. Mendel, a young man in the ranks of the 1st Georgia Reserves, to warn the ambulatory wounded in the hospitals along the retreat route. “Since my father was very ill and not expected to live, after performing my duty, I went to see him and to bid the family good bye,” he recollected.

When the hour arrived for Baker’s North Carolina Brigade to withdraw, the headquarters band got in its last licks by launching into a spirited rendition of “Dixie.” In response, nearby Yankee pickets groaned, then shouted: “Played out! Played out!” One Tarheel long remembered the silent tramp along the road to the city “lined by the great live oak trees, with their long festoons of waving moss and vines which swing backward and forward, in the pale moonlight, and seemed to be ghosts of our departed hopes.”

Not far offshore, those strong winds were piling up the waves, making it a slow and uncomfortable journey for the USS
Harvest Moon,
transporting Major General Sherman’s party. The General’s host, Rear Admiral Dahlgren, knew from experience that they would not reach the Savannah area until daylight. Sherman was unfazed. With his orders to Howard and Slocum not to initiate any offensive activity while the heavy siege guns were being installed, he wasn’t expecting any dramatic changes in the situation there for at least the next twenty-four hours.

Major General Gustavus W. Smith was designated to extricate his 2,500 men from their positions northeast of the city starting at 11:00
P.M
.
Guns being left behind were to be spiked by midnight, and the skirmish line was to maintain the covering screen until 1:00
A.M
. “I can’t describe my feelings when we had to leave,” wrote a Georgian, “desperate to think after 4 years of service that I have to leave my native state to the mercy of a ruthless enemy.”

Neatly calculated schedules had a way of unraveling when faced with reality, and this night was no exception. Even with an hour or more head start, the troops coming up from Major General Wright’s sector took a while to reach Savannah, so there was a tendency for the various streams of men to converge in town at about the same time. “The scene of our army crossing the Savannah river at midnight, with the aid of bonfires to prevent the horses and men from marching into the river and off the dikes into the water surrounding them, presented a panorama that I will always remember,” wrote a Georgian. Said another: “As we passed through the city guns were firing in every direction, doors were being knocked down, women and children were screaming, and the devil to pay generally.”

An artilleryman thought the “night was exceedingly dark, and everything seemed to move without system or direction. In the city, as we passed through, men were discharging their fire-arms and making the night hideous with their oaths and blasphemies; horsemen galloped about apparently without object and women…going hither and thither. On the roadside and alongside of the pontoons, all night long, men and horses were strewn in confusion—some struggling in the mud and water, others worn down with fatigue, and perhaps sick at heart and in body, resting or asleep.”

W
EDNESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
21, 1864

More and more it was becoming apparent to the Union soldiers manning the siege lines that something out of the ordinary was happening in Savannah. An Illinois diarist in the Fifteenth Corps spotted a large fire burning there, while Brigadier General Geary of the Twentieth Corps could hear sounds that he intepreted as the movement of troops and wagons across a pontoon bridge. Inside the tight beachhead his men were holding on the South Carolina shore, Colonel Carmen could hear “the curses and yells and tramping of men…indicating plainly that the city was being evacuated.”

Now the Confederate skirmish lines began to evaporate as the various commands slipped away into Savannah. When one Georgia officer made the rounds to pull in his posts, he found that all his men except one had already fled “to parts unknown.” That one, an “old tried and true soldier,” had grimly held his position even as those around him bugged out. Another officer nervously stared at his watch and worried that he was waiting too long. “I don’t know what in the hell to do!” he muttered to one of his men. That soldier’s advice was brief and to the point: “Obey orders.”

Whether from exhaustion or the presence of so many armed men in the streets, the number of incidents in Savannah diminished noticeably after midnight, until some of the retreating Rebels thought they were passing through a ghost town. A Confederate States marine put the time at near 1:00
A.M
. when he and his comrades “fell into the long line of silent men who were pouring in a continuous stream over a pontoon bridge which had been erected between the city and the Carolina shore.” An artilleryman jostling nearby recalled that the “constant tread of the troops and the rumbling of the artillery as they poured over those long floating bridges was a sad sound, and by the glare of the huge fires at the east of the bridge it seemed like an immense funeral procession stealing out of the city in the dead of night.”

Beginning a little after 2:00
A.M
., curious Federal pickets began realizing that the Rebel lines had become very, very quiet. On the far right, Private V. Thornton Ware of the 6th Iowa was remembered as the first to poke his nose into the empty enemy trenches to bring back word that the way was clear. Another comrade in those ranks cast his vote for Private Robert Barr, whose less than lofty intentions in scouting forward were “after getting something to eat and foraging a little.”

Holding the Union left astride the most direct route into Savannah was Brigadier General John W. Geary’s division (Twentieth Corps). This night’s picket detail fell to the 102nd New York, several of whom took notice when no one from the other side “answered their calls.” Colonel Henry A. Barnum, commanding the Third Brigade, authorized Lieutenant Colonel Harvey S. Chatfield to send out a ten-man
patrol to confirm whether or not the Rebels had gone. Sergeant Alexander Hunt was one of those who “crawled up to their works about 3
A.M
., [and] found them deserted.” Chatfield informed Barnum, who passed word along to Geary, who immediately put together a flying column to push “forward rapidly in the direction of Savannah, hoping to overtake and capture a part of the enemy’s forces.”

Even as the last pockets of Confederate infantry were retreating through the city, the plucky Savannah River Squadron was dying. One of the first to go was the ironclad CSS
Georgia,
a formidable behemoth whose engines could not adequately power the ship, condemning it to spend much of its service as a adjunct floating battery to Fort Jackson. Its crew now helped nature take its course by opening valves to allow the vessel to disappear into the river muck.

More spectacular was the end of the wooden gunboat
Isondiga,
which had grounded above the bridge while providing protection for the crossing. Set afire by its crew, the
Isondiga
exploded before dawn. Still afloat as the sun rose were the steamer
Firefly
and the ironclad CSS
Savannah.
The latter had tried to break out to sea and failed because a path could not be cleared in time through the minefield designed to protect it. Now the warship lurked in position along the South Carolina shore.

Striding at the head of Brigadier General Geary’s flying column was the 102nd New York, with Sergeant Hunt near the front. “Soon we met two men coming toward us in a buggy, one carrying a white flag, which he waved excitedly,” remembered the noncom. “We sent them to the rear under guard and hurried on. It was still dark. A few shots were fired at us from the brush, but we did not stop.”

The party consisted of two of the aldermen, who, having gotten separated from the mayor, ran first into the Yankees. Their meeting with General Geary was something of a nonevent, since they lacked the authority to deliver the city into his hands. Another carriage was intercepted, this one bearing Mayor Arnold. Said Geary: “Just outside of the city limits, near the junction of the Louisville and Augusta
roads, I met the mayor of Savannah and a delegation from the board of aldermen bearing a flag of truce. From them I received, in the name of my commanding general, the surrender of the city. This was at 4:30
A.M
.”

Mayor Arnold handed over an official note addressed to Major General Sherman:

An unknown officer belonging to Major General Gustavus W. Smith’s command was the last to transit the floating bridge. Behind him was an empty passageway, rocking slowly in the river current. Rockets were fired, signaling the last of the river battery crews to spike their guns and take to their boats. Then the bridge itself was broken up, its anchor cables cut, and the sections allowed to scatter with the river current. Some sections sank, others caught fire, still others drifted aimlessly.

In the town, the small provost guard detail clustered nervously near its transportation, the steamer
Swan
. Someone had remembered at the last minute that there was a detachment still guarding the old Confederate Powder Magazine, but even as a courier was making ready to recall the unit, spotters in the City Exchange steeple yelled that they could see the first Yankee skirmishers entering the town. It was too late to recall the unfortunate party, whose members would become prisoners of war.