Sherman’s Augusta bypass fuels myths

Since the Civil War, Augusta, Ga., has displayed both satisfaction and anxiety about its role during the conflict. Pride for having been an important Confederate munitions and hospital center is tempered by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s decision to bypass rather than attack the city near the end of the war. This seeming good fortune planted doubt in the minds of Augustans that time has not completely resolved.

In 1860, Augusta, on the fall line of the Savannah River, was the second-most-populous city in the state. Its more than 12,000 residents included a sizable number of slaves and free blacks as well as foreigners, most of whom were Irish and German. The city also was home to Georgia’s largest manufacturing center, clustered mainly on the Augusta Canal adjacent to the river.

Compared with the rest of the state and the South as a whole, Augusta was moderate politically. In the 1860 presidential election, the two Unionist candidates, Stephen Douglas and John Bell, received five times more votes in the city than John Breckenridge, the secessionist flag bearer. In a sign of the times, the Republican, Abraham Lincoln, was not even on the ballot.

By January 1861, however, Augusta fell in line as Georgia, following South Carolina’s lead, voted to secede. As a result, Gov. Joe Brown personally went to Augusta to direct local militia in the seizure of the U.S. arsenal with its store of some 20,000 muskets and rifles, plus artillery and other armaments.

Though never the scene of actual combat, Augusta, a major rail center, served as a throughway for Confederates moving from one point to another. High-ranking officials such as President Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander Stephens and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard frequently passed through the town. In September 1863, Gen. James Longstreet and his regiments traveled from Virginia by way of Augusta to do battle at Chickamauga.

Over the course of the war, Augusta sent more than 2,000 of its sons to fight for the Confederacy. This meant the female and black populations had to provide many workers for the expanding war industries.

Augusta was important to the Confederacy primarily because of the manufacture of ordnance, munitions and other war-related materiel. The main facilities were the arsenal, the powder works and the cotton factory, one of the leading textile manufacturers in the South.

Col. Josiah Gorgas, chief of the Confederate Ordnance Bureau, assigned Col. George Washington Rains to turn the arsenal into a first-rate facility to produce large quantities of ammunition, small arms and field artillery. After the Northern blockade took hold and impeded munitions imports, Rains, who had graduated third in the class of 1842 from West Point, also received the job of resolving a shortage of gunpowder.

Concluding that Augusta best met his specifications for location, environment and raw materials, he did a remarkable job of designing and building the powder works into a 2-mile-long complex. This operation turned out nearly 3 million pounds of high-quality gunpowder.

As the war intensified and casualties mounted, Augusta became one of the South’s principal hospital centers. This was an outgrowth of its medical college and a number of drug establishments being located there. Prominent city residents, including the Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, a Presbyterian minister and father of future President Woodrow Wilson, raised funds for the care of sick and wounded soldiers.

Augusta converted hotels, schools and churches into hospitals and constructed new buildings. Overcrowding, however, eventually led to deterioration of patient care for Confederate soldiers and Federal prisoners alike.

In the latter part of 1863, as the Union armies drove farther into Southern territory, refugees began streaming into Augusta. They came up from Louisiana and down from Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Planters sent their slaves from coastal areas to prevent their capture.

Some refugees came with possessions; others arrived destitute. Lodging and food became scarce, and prices skyrocketed. This was a dramatic change since just the previous June, when British observer Lt. Col. Arthur Fremantle had stopped in Augusta and commented, “No place that I have seen in the Southern States shows so little traces of the war.”

When Sherman made his famous March to the Sea through Georgia in late 1864, Augustans believed they were targeted for attack. Sherman had other ideas, however. In his memoirs, he wrote that his army feinted toward Macon and Augusta but passed through, unimpeded, to Savannah while jauntily singing choruses of “John Brown’s Body.” Later, as Sherman headed north through South Carolina, he looked to Augusta and Charleston, then captured the capital at Columbia instead.

Augustans have long since wondered why Sherman did not attack their city and whether he considered Savannah and Columbia more important. Local folklore grew up around this issue, including a story that Sherman had a girlfriend from when he was stationed at the Augusta Arsenal as a young officer in 1844, and he spared the city because of his affection for her.

To settle the question, in 1888, the editor of the Augusta Chronicle wrote to Sherman, asking why he had not attacked the city. Sherman replied from his home in New York that it was because the enemy had large concentrations of troops there and he did not want to get bogged down. He knew that once he bypassed Augusta, he would render its production capability useless to the Confederate armies in North Carolina and Virginia.

Old myths die hard, however. Augusta’s role as a major supplier of war materiel and as a leading hospital center during the Civil War has taken a back seat to curiosity about Sherman. As historian Elissa R. Henken discovered in researching legends about the Union general, residents of towns that were bypassed during the March to the Sea are uneasy about how their ancestors reacted. There is guilt associated with the notion that only towns that did not display opposition were spared. Local writer Edward J. Cashin admitted that as a youth he suffered “the beginnings of a historical inferiority complex” over this issue.

In his 1888 letter to the Chronicle, the crusty Sherman recognized this sentiment and, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, replied that if the people of Augusta thought he had slighted them, he would send his “bummers” and their descendants to Augusta to finish the job. Augustans must not have been amused at Sherman’s poking fun at their expense; nonetheless, the speculation about why he did not attack their city continues.

Thomas J. Ryan is a writer from Bethany Beach, Del., and a member of the Central Delaware Civil War Round Table. Research assistance was provided by Stef Meyer, Augusta Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau; Erick D. Montgomery, Historic Augusta Inc.; Gordon A. Blaker, Augusta Museum of History; and Fay L. Verburg, Reese Library, Augusta State University.