ad also fulfilled nobly and
well their part, had decoyed General Hood to Nashville and then
turned on him, defeating his army thoroughly, capturing all his
artillery, great numbers of prisoners, and were still pursuing the
fragments down in Alabama. So complete success in military
operations, extending over half a continent, is an achievement that
entitles it to a place in the military history of the world. The
armies serving in Georgia and Tennessee, as well as the local
garrisons of Decatur, Bridgeport, Chattanooga, and Murfreesboro',
are alike entitled to the common honors, and each regiment may
inscribe on its colors, at pleasure, the word "Savannah" or
"Nashville." The general commanding embraces, in the same general
success, the operations of the cavalry under Generals Stoneman,
Burbridge, and Gillem, that penetrated into Southwest Virginia, and
paralyzed the efforts of the enemy to disturb the peace and safety
of East Tennessee. Instead of being put on the defensive, we have
at all points assumed the bold offensive, and have completely
thwarted the designs of the enemies of our country.

By order of Major-General W. T. Sherman,
L. M. DAYTON, Aide-de-Camp.

Here terminated the "March to the Sea," and I only add a few
letters, selected out of many, to illustrate the general feeling of
rejoicing throughout the country at the time. I only regarded the
march from Atlanta to Savannah as a "shift of base," as the
transfer of a strong army, which had no opponent, and had finished
its then work, from the interior to a point on the sea-coast, from
which it could achieve other important results. I considered this
march as a means to an end, and not as an essential act of war.
Still, then, as now, the march to the sea was generally regarded as
something extraordinary, something anomalous, something out of the
usual order of events; whereas, in fact, I simply moved from
Atlanta to Savannah, as one step in the direction of Richmond, a
movement that had to be met and defeated, or the war was
necessarily at an end.

Were I to express my measure of the relative importance of the
march to the sea, and of that from Savannah northward, I would
place the former at one, and the latter at ten, or the maximum.

I now close this long chapter by giving a tabular statement of the
losses during the march, and the number of prisoners captured. The
property captured consisted of horses and mules by the thousand,
and of quant