Marching with Sherman: Passages from the Letters and Campaign Diaries of Henry Hitchcock, Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers, November 1864-May 1865

“Tomorrow morning we set out on a campaign which will be remembered. God grant it aid to bring to a speedy end this terrible and lamentable war!” So wrote Major Henry Hitchcock on the eve of General William Sherman’s epic march across Georgia to the sea. Hitchcock, a new member of Sherman’s staff, was right about the fame, or infamy, that would attach to the campaign. His diaries and letters describe at first hand the destructive swath Sherman’s army cut through Georgia and the Carolinas. The major, religious and trained in the law, watches the burning and pillage with as much sorrow as satisfaction. If his sympathy for the Southern people is strong, so is his devotion to the Union and its unstoppable general.