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The number of deaths in the Stockade in May was seven hundred and eight, about as many as had been killed in Sherman's army during the same time. Bitter experience had long since taught us that the Rebels rarely threatened in vain. Wirz, especially, was much more likely to kill without warning, than to warn without killing. This was because of the essential weakness of his nature.
At the time of my visit to Andersonville a large number of Federal prisoners had been removed to Millen, Savannah; Charleston, and other parts of, the Confederacy, in anticipation of an advance of General Sherman's forces from Atlanta, with the design of liberating their captive brethren; however, about fifteen thousand prisoners remained confined within the limits of the Stockade and Confederate States Military Prison Hospital.
He forced his rival from the stand he had taken as warder of the gateways to the South's supply land, fighting him step by step from Dalton backward to Atlanta, and capturing that stronghold of the Confederacy by persistent and desperate fighting. Then, when Atlanta was won, Sherman's ability to cut the Gordian knot, as no other man dared, was displayed with especial force.
By this, however, the enemy was defeated in his designs upon Sherman's line of communications. The persistency with which he followed up this success exhausted him, and made a season for rest and repairs necessary.
Dispassionate reflection would have brought him to the conclusion that Lee was even more overweighted in Virginia than he in Georgia; that his Government had given him every available man, only leaving small garrisons at Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile; that Forrest's command in Mississippi, operating on Sherman's communications, was virtually doing his work, while it was idle to expect assistance from the trans-Mississippi region.
Deeply as I believed the March to the Sea to have been imperative, of "Sherman's bummers" and their excesses I had a fair historic knowledge and a very poor opinion; and this I should have been glad to tell Juno, had she ever given me the chance; but her immodest sympathy for herself froze all sympathy for her.
These poor Southerners never began to open their eyes to the hopelessness of their cause till Sherman's almost unopposed march showed the weakness of the whole country. Even strangers like myself were so carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment, that we shut our eyes to what should have been clearly manifest to us.
"All right, mayor," Sherman said, "I'll go along." He called a clerk and gave some orders. Then he slipped the stock sheets into a drawer and took his hat from a peg. They strode along together, Van Ness gesturing and talking; Sherman's head slightly bent as if in thought. Now and then he asked a curt question. The crowd about the jail had dwindled to a few curiosity seekers.
Sherman's livery stable behind the Brampton House, and in half an hour was driving along that familiar road to Coniston, alone; for she had often driven Jethro's horses, and knew every turn of the way. And as she gazed at the purple mountain through the haze and drank in the sweet scents of the year's fulness, she was strangely happy.
Cameron made trouble at Washington by calling Sherman's words "insane"; and Sherman's "insanity" became a stumbling-block that took a long time to remove. Grant, in command at Cairo, began his career as a general by cleverly forestalling the enemy at Paducah, where the Tennessee flows into the Ohio.
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