In this letter I do not intend to give you anything like directions for future action, but will state a general idea I have, and will get your views after you have established yourself on the sea-coast.  With your veteran army I hope to get control of the only two through routes from east to west possessed by the enemy before the fall of Atlanta.  The condition will be filled by holding Savannah and Augusta, or by holding any other port to the east of Savannah and Branchville.  If Wilmington falls, a force from there can co-operate with you.

Thomas has got back into the defences of Nashville, with Hood close upon him.  Decatur has been abandoned, and so have all the roads except the main one leading to Chattanooga.  Part of this falling back was undoubtedly necessary and all of it may have been.  It did not look so, however, to me.  In my opinion, Thomas far outnumbers Hood in infantry.  In cavalry, Hood has the advantage in morale and numbers.  I hope yet that Hood will be badly crippled if not destroyed.  The general news you will learn from the papers better than I could give it.

After all becomes quiet, and roads become so bad up here that there is likely to be a week or two when nothing can be done, I will run down the coast to see you.  If you desire it, I will ask Mrs. Sherman to go with me.

Yours truly, U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General

I quote this letter because it gives the reader a full knowledge of the events of that period.

Sherman now (the 15th) returned to Savannah to complete its investment and insure the surrender of the garrison.  The country about Savannah is low and marshy, and the city was well intrenched from the river above to the river below; and assaults could not be made except along a comparatively narrow causeway.  For this reason assaults must have resulted in serious destruction of life to the Union troops, with the chance of failing altogether.  Sherman therefore decided upon a complete investment of the place.  When he believed this investment completed, he summoned the garrison to surrender.  General Hardee, who was in command, replied in substance that the condition of affairs was not such as Sherman had described.  He said he was in full communication with his department and was receiving supplies constantly.

Hardee, however, was cut off entirely from all communication with the west side of the river, and by the river itself to the north and south.  On the South Carolina side the country was all rice fields, through which it would have been impossible to bring supplies so that Hardee had no possible communication with the outside world except by a dilapidated plank road starting from the west bank of the river.  Sherman, receiving this reply, proceeded in person to a point on the coast, where General Foster had troops stationed under General Hatch, for the purpose of making arrangements with the latter officer to go through by one of the numerous channels running inland along that part of the coast of South Carolina, to the plank road which General Hardee still possessed, and thus to cut him off from the last means he had of getting supplies, if not of communication.