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Updated: June 24, 2025
The utmost activity prevailed at all points, but it was manifest we could not get off much before the 1st day of February; so I determined to go in person to Pocotaligo, and there act as though we were bound for Charleston.
Therefore, on the 2d of January, I was authorized to march with my entire army north by land, and concluded at once to secure a foothold or starting-point on the South Carolina side, selecting Pocotaligo and Hardeeville as the points of rendezvous for the two wings; but I still remained in doubt as to the wishes of the Administration, whether I should take Charleston en route, or confine my whole attention to the incidental advantages of breaking up the railways of South and North Carolina, and the greater object of uniting my army with that of General Grant before Richmond.
The next morning I rode to Pocotaligo, and thence reconnoitred our entire line down to Coosawhatchie. Pocotaligo Fort was on low, alluvial ground, and near it began the sandy pine-land which connected with the firm ground extending inland, constituting the chief reason for its capture at the very first stage of the campaign.
When Toombs came up, he "damned the dawdling trainmen, and pretty soon infused his own nervous force into the whole concern. The wheezing engines and freight vans were readily put in motion, and Governor Brown's 'army' started toward Savannah." News reached General Taylor about that time that the Federal forces at Port Royal were coming up to capture Pocotaligo on the Charleston and Savannah road.
In the mean time, all guns, shot, shell, cotton, etc., to be moved to a safe place, easy to guard, and provisions and wagons got ready for another swath, aiming to have our army in hand about the head of Broad River, say Pocotaligo, Robertsville, and Coosawhatchie, by the 15th January.
The governor's army was quietly shunted off and woke up at Pocotaligo in South Carolina, where it was just in time to repulse the enemy after a spirited little action, thereby saving the railway. Doubtless the Georgians, a plucky people, would have responded to an appeal to leave their State under the circumstances, but Toombs enjoyed the joke of making them unconscious patriots.
General Fosters troops to occupy Savannah, and gunboats to protect the rivers as soon as Howard gets Pocotaligo. W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General.
'Hello, nigger! he said when he seed me, 'whar you cum from? so I tells him from Pocotaligo, an' before he could ax any more queshuns, I went on an' tole him we cotched fifty Yankees down dere yesterday, an' massa he was so tickled dat he let me go to Barnwells to see my family, an' den I said I'd got off de track an' was dead beat an' drefful hungry, an' would he please to sell me suthin to eat.
We reached the city of Charleston, which was held by part of the division of General John P. Hatch, the same that we had left at Pocotaligo. We walked the old familiar streets Broad, King, Meeting, etc. but desolation and ruin were everywhere.
In the mean time, all guns, shot, shell, cotton, etc., to be moved to a safe place, easy to guard, and provisions and wagons got ready for another swath, aiming to have our army in hand about the head of Broad River, say Pocotaligo, Robertsville, and Coosawhatchie, by the 15th January.
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