One of the most interesting first hand accounts I have read is "A Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl." This young girl, about 16, left Washington Georgia, northwest of Augusta and traveled to Albany, Georgia in southwest Georgia near Andersonville about a month after Sherman had crossed through the state. She took her "servant" with her and made some very interesting observations on the social morays of the time along with the difficulties she encountered with ruined railroad tracks and destroyed homes.
There are also a number of great first hand accounts found in The Southern Historical Society Papers and The Confederate Veteran particularly in the 6 weeks from Milledgeville to Savannah.
"The March from Atlanta to the Sea" by Charles Colcock Jones gives a good account from a Southern perspective.
Gen. Oliver Howard, a division commander under Sherman gives a very interesting account of the trek in his letters to his young daugther living in New York. He was a fine Christian man and very apologetic for some of the actions of his men while executing his duty as he saw it.
In my book, "The Battle for Buckhead Creek and Waynesborough" I provide excerpts from many sources for this timeframe. Sherman's troops camped out on my great Aunt's place north of Statesboro while preparing to invade Savannah and she left an interesting letter regarding caring for wounded "yankee" soldiers.
One of the almost forgotten events of Sherman's March was the drowning of some 200 blacks when the troops crossed the Savannah River at Ebenezer north of Savannah.
An unknown number of "freed" blacks followed along behind Sherman's troops hoping to get the promised "forty acres and a mule" which was published in Sherman's Special Field Order #15. You can read it here:
http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/sfo15.htm
Some of the black men particularly were pressed into service, but some left their families voluntarily. Sally's husband, Jim was one who left Statesboro with Sherman's troops unvoluntaribly ostensibly to cut trees for the corderoy roads across the creeks and swamplands. He was never heard from again and the family assumes he was one of the ones drowned at Ebenezer.
In this event, after the bridge was built across the flooded river, the Yankee troops rushed the bridge in their urge to get across and pushed many of the black men who were working on the bridge into the river. They then destroyed the bridge before the refugees could cross drowning many of them - some accounts give 200, others 500.
Jim Rigdon is the only name I have been able to actually identify in this largest masacre of civilians in the war - the Indian masacres excepted. The bodies were gathered up and buried in unmarked graves there at Ebenezer.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Cox, (U.S.) gives the following account in his book, The March to the Sea:
“As the campaign progressed, great numbers of negroes attached themselves to the columns and accompanied the march. This was contrary to the wish of Sherman, who felt the embarrassment of having thousands of mouths added to the number of those who must be fed from the country as he moved. Those who had less responsibility for the campaign did not trouble themselves so much with this consideration, and the men in the ranks generally encouraged the slaves to leave the plantations. The negroes themselves found it hard to let slip the present opportunity of getting out of bondage, and their uneducated minds could not estimate the hope of freedom at the close of the war as having much weight against the instant liberty which was to be had by simply tramping away after the blue-coated soldiers.
The natural result was that the regular bivouacs of the troops were fringed by numberless gipsy camps, where the ***** families, old and young, endured every privation, living upon the charity of the soldiers, helping themselves to what they could glean in the track of the army foragers. On the march, they trudged along, making no complaint, full of a simple faith that "Lincoln's men" were leading them to abodes of ease and plenty.
When the lower and less fruitful lands were reached, the embarrassment and military annoyance increased. This was more particularly felt in the left wing, which was then the only one exposed to the attacks of the enemy. Losing patience at the failure of all orders and exhortations to these poor people to stay at home, General Davis (commanding the Fourteenth Corps), ordered the pontoon bridge at Ebenezer Creek to be taken up before the refugees who were following that corps had crossed, so as to leave them on the further bank of the unfordable stream and thus disembarrass the marching troops. It would be unjust to that officer to believe that the order would have been given, if the effect had been foreseen. The poor refugees had their hearts so set on liberation, and the fear of falling into the hands of the Confederate cavalry was so great, that, with wild wailings and cries, the great crowd rushed, like a stampeded drove of cattle, into the water, those who could not swim as well as those who could, and many were drowned in spite of the earnest efforts of the soldiers to help them. As soon as the character of the unthinking rush and panic was seen, all was done that could be done to save them from the water; but the loss of life was still great enough to prove that there were many ignorant, simple souls to whom it was literally preferable to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”
Source: The Battles for Buckhead Creek and Waynesborough.
Sherman's March
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