Before beginning the campaign, Grant and Sherman agreed on a plan.  Grant, with the Army of the Potomac, was to drive back Lee and take Richmond.  Sherman, with the armies of Thomas, McPherson, and Schofield, was to attack Johnston and push his way into Georgia.  Each was to begin his movement on the same day (May 4, 1864).

On that day, accordingly, Sherman with 98,000 men marched against Johnston, flanked him out of Dalton, and step by step through the mountains to Atlanta, fighting all the way.  Johnston’s retreat was masterly.  He intended to retreat until Sherman’s army was so weakened by leaving guards in the rear to protect the railroads, over which food and supplies must come, that he could fight on equal terms.  But Jefferson Davis removed Johnston at Atlanta, and put J. B. Hood in command.

Hood, in July, made three furious attacks, was beaten each time; abandoned Atlanta in September, and soon after started northwestward, in hope of drawing Sherman out of Georgia.  But Sherman sent Thomas and a part of the army to Tennessee, and after following Hood for a time, he returned to Atlanta, tearing up the railroads as he went.  Then, having partly burned the town, in November he started for the sea with 60,000 of his best veterans.

[Illustration:  SHERMAN’S MARCH TO THE SEA]

The troops went in four columns, covering a belt of sixty miles wide, burning bridges, tearing up railroads, living on the country as they marched.  Early in December the army drew near to Savannah; about the middle of the month (December 13) Fort McAllister was taken; and a few days later the city of Savannah was occupied.  During all this long march to the sea, nothing was known in the North as to where Sherman was or what he was doing.  Fancy the delight of Lincoln, then, when on the Christmas eve of 1864, he received this telegram: 

SAVANNAH, Georgia, December 22, 1864.

To His EXCELLENCY, PRESIDENT LINCOLN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition; also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.

W. T. SHERMAN, MAJOR GENERAL.

Sherman had sent the message by vessel to Fort Monroe, whence it was telegraphed to Lincoln.

%446.  Sherman marches northward.%—­At Savannah the army rested for a month.  Sherman tells us in his Memoirs that the troops grew impatient at this delay, and used to call out to him as he rode by:  “Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond.”  So he was; but he did not wait very long, for on February 1, 1865, the march was resumed.  The way was across South Carolina to Columbia, and then into North Carolina, with their old enemy, J. E. Johnston, in their front.  Hood, in a rash moment, had besieged Thomas at Nashville; but Thomas, coming out from behind his intrenchments, utterly destroyed Hood’s army.  This forced Davis to put Johnston in command of a new army made up of troops taken from the seaport garrisons and remnants of Hood’s army.  In March, Sherman reached Goldsboro in North Carolina.