The march to the sea, a poem

23–25 November 1863

Battles for Chattanooga

THE RAID OF THE ANDREWS MEN.

J- Great Shiloh's bloody day.
Brave Mitchell, with his men in blue.

By Chattanooga lay.
Far and alone he had come there,

With but a thousand men,
To chase the rebels to their lair,

THE MARCH TO THE SEA. 89

" To-morrow night the train will go

From Chattanooga town,
And we will ride to Kenesaw

Before the sun is down.
And there we'll hide and wait the train,

THE MARCH TO THE SEA. 89

The night grew stormier still,
But still they kept their dangerous way

Past Chattanooga's hill.

THE MARCH TO THE SEA. 91

NOTES, 149

These were the last who died on the March to the Sea.

Note 14, p. 135. This song was sung by thousands of
Sherman's soldiers after the completion of the march,
and it had the honor of giving its name to the campaign
it celebrates. Its author, the present writer, had been
one of Sherman's army, and was captured at the battle
of Chattanooga. While a prisoner in the South he
escaped from the Macon stockade, disguised himself in
a Confederate uniform, went to the Southern army, and
witnessed some of the fierce fighting about Atlanta, re-
ferred to in the poem. He was discovered and sent back
to prison at Columbia, S. C, where he wrote the song.
He soon escaped again, rejoined Sherman's army, and
for a time served on General Sherman's staff. At Cape
Fear river he was sent North with dispatches to Grant
and President Lincoln, bringing the first news the North
had of Sherman's successes in the Carolinas. The author
reproduces this song of his here because it has an inter-
est as being one of the songs of Sherman's soldiers, and
one familiar to the country in general in the years fol-
lowing the war.

From the press of the Arena Publishing Company.