Noah Andre Trudeau - Southern Storm: Shermans March to the Sea

Dedicated to the memory of Burke Davis (19132006).

First on the ground to Appomattox
and first with Sherman to the sea.

A basic understanding of Civil War military organization, tactics, and weapons is assumed in the text that follows, so a brief primer may not be out of place here. For the most part, the military forces of each side were organized along the same hierarchy: in descending order of size, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, and companies. The Union forces engaged in the Savannah Campaign were organized along traditional lines. Like their cobelligerents in the east, those in the west tended to follow a numbering system (e.g., Seventeenth Corps, First Division, Second Brigade) and when I am referring to those units with the names of their commanders I have not capitalized the result (e.g., Gearys division, Carmens brigade). Regiments are always referred to by their number and state, such as the 4th Minnesota. The Confederate organization in this campaign was much more problematical. It represented an ad hoc mix of regular Confederate States units (mostly belonging to Wheelers cavalry corps) and Georgia state units, which were themselves of various kinds. The Confederate roster at the end of this book does not reflect an actual table of organization at any part of the campaign, but is simply a means of visually organizing the disparate commands that at one time or another and in one way or another, between November 15 and December 21, 1864, got in Shermans path.