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friend,

W. T. SHERMAN Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI
IN THE FIELD, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, December 24, 1864.

Major-General H. W. HALLECK, Chief-of-Staff; Washington, D. C.

GENERAL: I had the pleasure of receiving your two letters of the
16th and 18th instant to-day, and feel more than usually flattered
by the high encomiums you have passed on our recent campaign, which
is now complete by the occupation of Savannah.

I am also very glad that General Grant has changed his mind about
embarking my troops for James River, leaving me free to make the
broad swath you describe through South and North Carolina; and
still more gratified at the news from Thomas, in Tennessee, because
it fulfills my plans, which contemplated his being able to dispose
of Hood, in case he ventured north of the Tennessee River. So, I
think, on the whole, I can chuckle over Jeff. Davis's
disappointment in not turning my Atlanta campaign into a "Moscow
disaster."

I have just finished a long letter to General Grant, and have
explained to him that we are engaged in shifting our base from the
Ogeeohee to the Savannah River, dismantling all the forts made by
the enemy to bear upon the salt-water channels, transferring the
heavy ordnance, etc., to Fort Pulaski and Hilton Head, and in
remodeling the enemy's interior lines to suit our future plans and
purposes. I have also laid down the programme for a campaign which
I can make this winter, and which will put me in the spring on the
Roanoke, in direct communication with General Grant on James River.
In general terms, my plan is to turn over to General Foster the
city of Savannah, to sally forth with my army resupplied, cross the
Savannah, feign on Charleston and Augusta, but strike between,
breaking en route the Charleston & Augusta Railroad, also a large
part of that from Branchville and Camden toward North Carolina, and
then rapidly to move for some point of the railroad from Charleston
to Wilmington, between the Santee and Cape Fear Rivers; then,
communicating with the fleet in the neighborhood of Georgetown, I
would turn upon Wilmington or Charleston, according to the
importance of either. I rather prefer Wilmington, as a live place,
over Charleston, which is dead and unimportant when its railroad
communications are broken. I take it for granted that the present
movement on Wilmington will fail. If I should determine to take
Charleston, I would turn acr