W. T. Sherman Major-General.

Headquarters military division of the Mississippi
in the field, Savannah, Georgia, December 24, 1864.

Major-General H. W. Halleck, Chief-of-Staff; Washington, D. C.

General:  I had the pleasure of receiving your two letters of the 16th and 18th instant to-day, and feel more than usually flattered by the high encomiums you have passed on our recent campaign, which is now complete by the occupation of Savannah.

I am also very glad that General Grant has changed his mind about embarking my troops for James River, leaving me free to make the broad swath you describe through South and North Carolina; and still more gratified at the news from Thomas, in Tennessee, because it fulfills my plans, which contemplated his being able to dispose of Hood, in case he ventured north of the Tennessee River.  So, I think, on the whole, I can chuckle over Jeff.  Davis’s disappointment in not turning my Atlanta campaign into a “Moscow disaster.”

I have just finished a long letter to General Grant, and have explained to him that we are engaged in shifting our base from the Ogeeohee to the Savannah River, dismantling all the forts made by the enemy to bear upon the salt-water channels, transferring the heavy ordnance, etc., to Fort Pulaski and Hilton Head, and in remodeling the enemy’s interior lines to suit our future plans and purposes.  I have also laid down the programme for a campaign which I can make this winter, and which will put me in the spring on the Roanoke, in direct communication with General Grant on James River.  In general terms, my plan is to turn over to General Foster the city of Savannah, to sally forth with my army resupplied, cross the Savannah, feign on Charleston and Augusta, but strike between, breaking en route the Charleston & Augusta Railroad, also a large part of that from Branchville and Camden toward North Carolina, and then rapidly to move for some point of the railroad from Charleston to Wilmington, between the Santee and Cape Fear Rivers; then, communicating with the fleet in the neighborhood of Georgetown, I would turn upon Wilmington or Charleston, according to the importance of either.  I rather prefer Wilmington, as a live place, over Charleston, which is dead and unimportant when its railroad communications are broken.  I take it for granted that the present movement on Wilmington will fail.  If I should determine to take Charleston, I would turn across the country (which I have hunted over many a time) from Santee to Mount Pleasant, throwing one wing on the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper.  After accomplishing one or other of these ends, I would make a bee-line for Raleigh or Weldon, when Lee world be forced to come out of Richmond, or acknowledge himself beaten.  He would, I think, by the use of the Danville Railroad, throw himself rapidly between me and Grant, leaving Richmond in the hands of the latter.  This would not alarm me, for I have an army which I think can maneuver, and I world force him to attack me at a disadvantage, always under the supposition that Grant would be on his heels; and, if the worst come to the worst, I can fight my way down to Albermarle Sound, or Newbern.