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 another. Thus, by the
middle of January, we had effected a lodgment in South Carolina,
and were ready to resume the march northward; but we had not yet
accumulated enough provisions and forage to fill the wagons, and
other causes of delay occurred, of which I will make mention in due
order.

On the last day of December, 1864, Captain Breese, United States
Navy, flag-officer to Admiral Porter, reached Savannah, bringing
the first news of General Butler's failure at Fort Fisher, and that
the general had returned to James River with his land-forces,
leaving Admiral Porter's fleet anchored