Sherman, in his "Memoirs," says, "Neither Atlanta, Augusta, nor Savannah was the objective, but the 'army of Joe Johnston,' go where it might." Against that army he moved, Johnston retreating, striking as he went, Sherman persistently advancing. For several months marching and fighting were almost continuous. The country was broken, and covered with brush and woodland, its roads or tracks, mean at the best, becoming quagmires whenever it rained. At every available spot Johnston impeded the march. Battles were fought at each defensive point, the hardest that at Kenesaw Mountain, where Sherman lost twentyfive hundred men. Sherman's progress resembled that of Grant. When his opponent could not be driven out he was flanked and forced to retire to another strong point.

The Fabian policy of the cautious Johnston did not please the cabinet generals at Richmond. They wanted a more aggressive general, a man who would seek to drive Sherman back, and about midsummer they removed Johnston and put the hard fighter Hood in his place. They lost rather than gained by the change. Hood made furious attacks, lost men by the thousands, but met with continued defeat, and on the 1st of September, fearing to be surrounded in Atlanta and cut off from his base of supplies, he evacuated that town, leaving it to Sherman's troops.

The news of the fall of Atlanta filled the North with delight. Sherman was the hero of the hour. At all the chief military posts a salute of one hundred guns was fired in his honor. He had won the first great success of the year. Grant highly praised the brilliancy of his campaign. His official reward was a promotion to major-general in the regular army. There he lay, in

the heart of the Confederacy, his work only begun, not ended. Before taking another step he awaited the movements of his antagonist. When they came Sherman was delighted. Hood, finding himself helpless before his strong foe, and knowing it to be useless to strike in front, decided to strike from the rear, to cut Sherman's long line of communication, and by threatening his base of supplies, to force him to retreat. He could not have done anything more to the liking of his shrewd antagonist. "If Hood will go to Tennessee," said Sherman, with a chuckle, "I will supply him with rations for the trip." All he did was to send General Thomas to Nashville to protect his rear while he himself prepared for a new and daring project, to perform which he wanted Hood and his veterans out of

the way.

Georgia lay before him, the greatest source of supply for the Confederate armies, "the workshop and corncrib of the South." Savannah lay on the sea, nearly three hundred miles away. The withdrawal of Hood had left the field open before him. He could let go of his base of supplies. Georgia was able to feed him and his army. Savannah once reached, the ships of the North could bring all he needed. It was a great and spectacular plan, the device of a soldier of genius.

None knew of his project, north or south. Nothing so bold was dreamed of. He and his army simply disappeared from view and for a month nothing was heard of them. There was intense anxiety in the North about his fate, many fearing that he had walked into a trap from which he might never escape. President Lincoln did not appear to share this anxiety. He had as much confidence in Sherman as in Grant and simply said to anxious inquirers, in his humorous

way, "I know which hole he went in at, but I do not know which hole he will come out at."

Meanwhile Sherman was "marching through Georgia," with hardly an enemy to oppose him, with scarcely an obstacle in his path. He set out from Atlanta on November 16, with an army sixty-two thousand strong. Through Georgia he swept, with a front thirty miles from wing to wing, cutting a broad swath through the centre of the State, gathering food from the country, rendering it incapable of furnishing supplies to the Confederacy. It was to the soldiers like a holiday march. To the slaves it was the " day of jubilee." Thousands of them followed the army, flocking from every plantation, keeping on for miles when told that there was no food to give them. They were content to starve, if they could only gain freedom.

On December 13, Fort McAllister, near Savannah, was captured. On the 21st the city surrendered. Two days afterwards Sherman sent the President a dispatch that has become famous: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." The success of the daring march was brilliant. Sherman wrote, "We have not lost a wagon on the trip and our trains are in a better condition than when we started."

The news of this great march filled the North with exultation. There was a strain of the romantic and unusual in it that riveted men's attention. Sherman's enterprise had proved an easy and safe one, but it seemed as if he had plunged through a sea of danger, and men looked on him as if he was one of the daring knights-errant of old. For a time nothing was talked of but Sherman's wonderful march, and the song in