“John Brown’s body lies amouldering in the grave,
  But his soul goes marching on. 
  Glory, glory, Hallelujah.”

Their progress was of the nature of a frolic, though in one way a very stern frolic.  They had little trouble from the small and scattered Confederate forces that lay near their route.  They industriously and ingeniously destroyed the railway track of the South, heating the rails and twisting them into knots; and the rich country of Georgia, which had become the chief granary of the Confederates, was devastated as they passed, for a space fifty or sixty miles broad, by the destruction of all the produce they could not consume.  This was done under control by organised forage parties.  Reasonable measures were taken to prevent private pillage of houses.  No doubt it happened.  Sherman’s able cavalry commander earned a bad name, and “Uncle Billy,” as they called him to his face, clearly had a soft corner in his heart for the light-hearted and light-fingered gentlemen called “bummers” (a “bummer,” says the Oxford Dictionary, “is one who quits the ranks and goes on an independent foraging expedition on his own account").  They were, incidentally, Sherman found, good scouts.  But the serious crimes committed were very few, judged by the standard of the ordinary civil population.  The authentic complaints recorded relate to such matters as the smashing of a grand piano or the disappearance of some fine old Madeira.  Thus the suffering caused to individuals was probably not extreme, and a long continuance of the war was rendered almost impossible.  A little before Christmas Day, 1864, Sherman had captured, with slight opposition, the city of Savannah, on the Atlantic, with many guns and other spoils, and was soon ready to turn northwards on the last lap of his triumphant course.  Lincoln’s letter of thanks characteristically confessed his earlier unexpressed and unfulfilled fears.

Grant was proceeding all the time with his pressure on the single large fortress which Richmond and Petersburg together constituted.  Its circuit was far too great for complete investment.  His efforts were for a time directed to seizing the three railway lines which converged from the south on Petersburg and to that extent cutting off the supplies of the enemy.  But he failed to get hold of the most important of these railways.  He settled down to the slow process of entrenching his own lines securely and extending the entrenchment further and further round the south side of Petersburg.  Lee was thus being forced to extend the position held by his own small army further and further.  In time the lines would crack and the end come.