rregular troops, that could not, I felt
assured, exceed ten thousand men. I caused the fine depot at
Millen to be destroyed, and other damage done, and then resumed the
march directly on Savannah, by the four main roads. The Seventeenth
Corps (General Blair) followed substantially the railroad,
and, along with it, on the 5th of December, I reached Ogeechee
Church, about fifty miles from Savannah, and found there fresh
earthworks, which had been thrown up by McLaw's division; but he
must have seen that both his flanks were being turned, and
prudently retreated to Savannah without a fight. All the columns
then pursued leisurely their march toward Savannah, corn and forage
becoming more and more scarce, but rice-fields beginning to occur
along the Savannah and Ogeechee Rivers, which proved a good
substitute, both as food and forage. The weather was fine, the
roads good, and every thing seemed to favor us. Never do I recall
a more agreeable sensation than the sight of our camps by night,
lit up by the fires of fragrant pine-knots. The trains were all in
good order, and the men seemed to march their fifteen miles a day
as though it were nothing. No enemy opposed us, and we could only
occasionally hear the faint reverberation of a gun to our left
rear, where we knew that General Kilpatrick was skirmishing with
Wheeler's cavalry, which persistently followed him. But the
infantry columns had met with no opposition whatsoever. McLaw's
division was falling back before us, and we occasionally picked up
a few of his men as prisoners, who insisted that we would meet with
strong opposition at Savannah.

On the 8th, as I rode along, I found the column turned out of the
main road, marching through the fields. Close by, in the corner of
a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young
officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted
in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg, and
told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff
of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse
had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off all the
flesh from one of his legs. I saw the terrible wound, and made
full inquiry into the facts. There had been no resistance at that
point, nothing to give warning of danger, and the rebels had
planted eight-inch shells in the road, with friction-matches to
explode them by being trodden on. This was not war