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transforming
itself into an army of the East, moved from sunset to sunrise,
through a territory rich in all things wherein the theories of
statisticians have declared it poor. Food in gardens, food in
cellars, stock in fields, stock in barns, poultry everywhere,
appeared in the distance, disappeared in the presence, and was
borne away upon the knapsacks and bayonets of thousands of soldiers.
A new El Dorado, too, was this heart of the South.
Money – bright gold, shining silver – plucked from closets, and
stockings, and burial places by the roadside, enriched the invaders.
The soldier has his shims – the tail-feathers of peacocks drooped
and scintillated along the moving columns, from the crests of
infantrymen and troopers.
Jokes, laughter and songs, and the tasting of the
sweets of honey and sorghum, relieved the weary tramp, tramping
over fields, roads and bridges. The cavalry swept the pathway
of guerrillas; the clang of the hoofs and sabres resounded through
the glens to right, to left and in the front. Swift and terrible,
and not always just, were the strokes of their arms and the works
of their hands. Pioneers along a march of desolation forty miles
in width and three hundred in length, their labor was too swift
to be discriminating.
The great army – over the lands and into the dwellings
of the poor and rich alike, through towns and cities – like a
roaring wave, swept and paused, reveled and surged on. In the
daytime the splendor, the toil, the desolation of the march; in
the nighttime the brilliancy, the gloom, the music, the joy and
slumber of the camp. Memorable the music that "mocked the
moon" of November on the soil of Georgia; sometimes a triumphant
march, sometimes a waltz, again an old air, stirring the heart
alike to recollection and hope. Floating out of throats of brass
to the ears of soldiers in their blankets and Generals in their
tents, these tunes hallowed the eyes
of all who listened. Sitting before his tent in the glow of a
camp fire one evening, General Sherman let his cigar go out, to
listen to an air that a distant band was playing. The General
turned to one of his officers: "Send an orderly to ask that
band to play that tune again." A little while and the band
received the word. The tune was "The Blue Juniata,"
with exquisite variations. The band played it again, even more
beautifully than before. Again it ceased, and then, off to the
right, nearly a quarter of a mile away, the voices of some soldiers
took it up with words. The band, and still another played a low
accompaniment; camp after camp began singing; the music of "The
Blue Juniata" became for a few minutes, the oratorio of half
an army. Back along the whole wide pathway of this grand march,
from border to coast, the eye catches glimpses of scenes whose
poetic images an American, five years ago, would have thought
never could have been revived from the romantic past. Pictures
swarm in fields and glens, and by the banks of rivers. A halt
at high noon beside a village, a besieging of houses by the troops,
soldiers emerging from the doorways and backyards, bearing quilts,
plates, poultry and pigs, beehives attacked, honey in the hands
and smearing the faces of the boys, hundreds of soldiers poking
hundreds of bayonets in the corners of yards and gardens, after
concealed treasures; here and there a shining prize, and shouting
and scrambling, and a merry division of the spoils. In the background,
women with praying hands and beseeching lips unheeded. Night
near a railroad depot – a roar of fires, a shouting of voices,
thousands of men ripping up ties and rails, heating them, twisting
them, casting them down, axes at work, the depot buildings and
wood piles a blaze, a truly picturesque and tumultuous scene.
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