engineers of the age, perfectly
competent to advise me on the strategy and objects of the new
campaign. He expressed himself delighted with the high spirit of
the army, the steps already taken, by which we had captured
Savannah, and he personally inspected some of the forts, such as
Thunderbolt and Causten's Bluff, by which the enemy had so long
held at bay the whole of our navy, and had defeated the previous
attempts made in April, 1862, by the army of General Gillmore,
which had bombarded and captured Fort Pulaski, but had failed to
reach the city of Savannah. I think General Barnard expected me to
invite him to accompany us northward in his official capacity; but
Colonel Poe, of my staff, had done so well, and was so perfectly
competent, that I thought it unjust to supersede him by a senior in
his own corps. I therefore said nothing of this to General
Barnard, and soon after he returned to his post with General Grant,
at City Point, bearing letters and full personal messages of our
situation and wants.

We were very much in want of light-draught steamers for navigating
the shallow waters of the coast, so that it took the Seventeenth
Corps more than a week to transfer from Thunderbolt to Beaufort,
South Carolina. Admiral Dahlgren had supplied the Harvest Moon and
the Pontiac, and General Foster gave us a couple of hired steamers;
I was really amused at the effect this short sea-voyage had on our
men, most of whom had never before looked upon the ocean. Of
course, they were fit subjects for sea-sickness, and afterward they
begged me never again to send them to sea, saying they would rather
march a thousand miles on the worst roads of the South than to
spend a single night on the ocean. By the 10th General Howard had
collected the bulk of the Seventeenth Corps (General Blair) on
Beaufort Island, and began his march for Pocotaligo, twenty-five
miles inland. They crossed the channel between the island and
main-land during Saturday, the 14th of January, by a pontoon-
bridge, and marched out to Garden's Corners, where there was some
light skirmishing; the next day, Sunday, they continued on to
Pocotaligo, finding the strong fort there abandoned, and
accordingly made a lodgment on the railroad, having lost only two
officers and eight men.

About the same time General Slocum crossed two divisions of the
Twentieth Corps over the Savannah River, above the city, occupied
Hardeeville by one division and Purysburg by a