272 
Indiana University 
It required about 130 carloads of provisions daily for his army, 
and both cars and locomotives had to be seized at Louisville 
and sent to him.'" Everything had to be carried over a single- 
track railroad approximately 500 miles long, and most of this 
had to be rebuilt for as fast as Johnston retreated he destroyed 
as much of the track as possible and burned the bridges."^^ 
The troubles were not all on Sherman’s side for the equip- 
ment on the Confederate railroads was so poor by this time 
that the movement of trains was very uncertain.^" Even fuel 
was so scarce that full trains could not be pulled, and as a 
consequence baggage and artillery horses were in poor con- 
dition for such a strenuous campaign.'^® 
In this campaign Sherman learned the valuable lesson of 
bringing up and storing immense quantities of supplies in order 
that the breaking of his line of communications for a few days 
might not handicap him.'^ In the light of this experience, he 
collected immense stores at Atlanta before starting on his 
famous march to the sea, and then ordered sixty miles of track 
back of him destroyed to prevent the Confederates using it.^® 
The fall of Atlanta was a terrible blow to the Confederacy."^® 
It was not only a very important manufacturing center, but it 
was the key to the network of railroads extending to all parts 
of the Gulf states, and the cutting of these lines meant the loss 
to the Confederacy of the resources of extensive areas. In 
the campaign around Atlanta and on his march thru Georgia, 
Sherman destroyed more than 265 miles of railroad and 
rendered useless to the Confederacy 1,103 miles in the state of 
Georgia alone."^^ 
After the capture of Savannah, so serious was the trans- 
Rossiter Johnson, The Fight for the Republic (New York, 1917), 267. 
Schouler, History of the United .States, VI, 311 ; Sherman’s Memoirs, II, 398 ; Davis, 
Short History of the Confederate States of America, 420 ; Autobiography of Oliver O. 
Hoivard, I, 503. 
As early as May 31, 1863, it required an hour and ten minutes for a train on 
which General Bragg and Colonel Freemantle were riding to travel eight miles because 
the rails were so bad. Freemantle, Three Months in the Southern States, April-June, 
1863, 127. 
Johnston, Narrative and Military Operations during the Late War betiveen the 
States, 278. 
Pollard, The Lost Cause, 579. 
Pratt, Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 35, 36 ; Davis, Short History of 
the Confederate States of Amei'ica, 431, 432. 
Pollard, The Lost Cause, 581 ; Davis, Short History of the Confederate States of 
America, 423. 
Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, V, 20 : C. 
Mildred Thompson, Reconstni.ction in Georgia, in Columbia University Studies, 1915, Vol. 
LXIV, 24-26. 
