Fort McAllister II

On December 13, 1864, Union troops brought Sherman's March to the Sea to a decisive moment near Savannah, Georgia, storming Fort McAllister and crushing the small Confederate garrison charged with holding it. The fort's capture came as a major Federal objective during the closing phase of the campaign led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, its strategic importance to the war effort making the victory a significant one.

Prelude

By December 10, Sherman's armies had finally reached the outskirts of Savannah after their long trek from Atlanta, and his men were running short on supplies. Nearby, off the coast, Admiral John A. Dahlgren sat with a fleet carrying provisions the soldiers badly needed, along with six weeks' worth of undelivered mail that had piled up during the march. Confederate defenses ringing Savannah, however, kept Dahlgren from joining forces with Sherman's men.

While positioning his troops for the push into Savannah, Sherman sent cavalry to scout Fort McAllister and the fortifications surrounding it. The scouts concluded that the fort, only lightly held, could be overrun by a resolute infantry assault. Sherman understood that capturing the fort would hand the Union Army control of the Ogeechee River, opening a route to the coast. He therefore directed Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard's Army of the Tennessee to carry out the assault, and Howard tasked Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen's division with leading the charge.

Aftermath

Elated by what his men had accomplished, Sherman traveled down the Ogeechee by boat to inspect the captured stronghold firsthand. That night found him at Lebanon plantation, which Gen. Hazen had claimed as his headquarters, sharing a meal alongside Lt. Col. Strong and Hazen with Major Anderson, the officer who had commanded the fallen fort and who was now held prisoner in the very house where he had spent his boyhood. Conversation turned tense when Sherman voiced sharp displeasure over Anderson's decision to bury mines along the approach to the fortification, a tactic he regarded as unworthy of a soldier's honor. As a consequence, Sherman directed Anderson to work alongside captured Confederate troops assigned to clear away those same explosives once fighting had ended.

There was another side to Anderson's conduct, however. Prior to his capture, he had spotted a group of Union soldiers marching from the fort straight toward hidden explosives buried in their path, ordnance that would have gone off beneath their boots. Rather than let harm come to them, Anderson reached out and guided the men safely past the danger. Years afterward, this act of mercy surfaced again when George W. Sylvis, who had been a young lieutenant with the 47th Ohio during the fight, wrote a letter recalling the episode to the very man who had once stood against him on the battlefield.

The morning following the engagement, Sherman set out by boat again, this time to meet Admiral Dahlgren aboard his flagship. He took particular satisfaction in the performance of the soldiers who had won the day at Fort McAllister, recognizing them as the very men he had commanded years earlier, first as a division leader at Shiloh, then as a corps commander during the Vicksburg campaign. With the fort's fall clearing his supply route at last, Sherman turned his attention toward besieging and ultimately seizing Savannah, an objective he would accomplish before Christmas arrived.