When Iowa Marched South With Sherman

General Sherman's troops cut a path of destruction in
their march to the sea

Sherman’s army marched out of Atlanta like a fire breaking loose.

The rails were twisted into knots. Warehouses burned. Smoke hung over the city for days. When the columns finally moved east in November 1864, they carried sixty days’ rations, little hope of supply from behind, and orders that shocked the country. William Tecumseh Sherman was cutting himself loose and living off Georgia.

 

Iowa men were deep in it from the start. They marched in the heart of Sherman’s army, not on the edges. Iowa regiments filled the ranks of the XV and XVII Corps, the hard-used western infantry Sherman trusted most. These were the same men who had fought at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Atlanta. Now they were being asked to march hundreds of miles through enemy country and make the Confederacy feel the war.

 

The Fifteenth Iowa Infantry, part of the XV Corps under Major General John A. Logan, stepped off with the rest. The Eleventh, Thirteenth, Sixteenth, Thirty-first, and Thirty-second Iowa followed in long blue lines. Sherman said his western troops “had learned that war was not an affair of posts, but of movement,” and Iowa regiments were exactly the men he meant.

 An Iowa soldier wrote home that the army moved “like a great machine,” with wagons creaking, bands playing, and skirmishers pushing out ahead. The Davenport Democrat told readers the March was “no reckless raid,” but a calculated blow meant to “break the backbone of the rebellion by marching straight through it.”

 

Sherman's troops tearing up the railroad tracks

The land paid the price. Foraging parties fanned out daily. Fences vanished. Smoke rose from barns and mills. An Iowa private said they “lived better on the march than we ever did in camp,” listing sweet potatoes, chickens, and fresh pork taken from the countryside. The Burlington Hawk-Eye told readers that Sherman’s army was “eating Georgia clean as it goes,” and added, “This is war stripped of its gloves.”

 

Sherman made no apologies. “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Iowa soldiers understood exactly what he meant. One letter reprinted in the Dubuque Herald said the March was meant to “make the people see the war as we have seen it for three years.”

 

The first real resistance came at river crossings and crossroads towns. Confederate cavalry harassed the columns, snapping at wagons and burning bridges. Iowa regiments were often thrown forward to drive them off. Near Griswoldville, Iowa, troops helped smash a foolish Confederate attack against fortified Union positions. An Iowa newspaper said the enemy “charged bravely and died uselessly,” a grim lesson repeated across Georgia.

 

By early December, the army closed in on Savannah. Swamps replaced farmland. Roads vanished under water. Men waded waist-deep through black mud. A soldier said, “The ground itself seems to fight us.” The Muscatine Journal said Iowa men were marching “through water, fog, and fever,” but were “as steady as ever.”

 

Savannah fell without a major fight. Sherman offered it to Lincoln as a “Christmas gift,” along with cannons, cotton, and the city itself. Iowa regiments marched into town lean, filthy, and victorious. One soldier said Savannah felt “too clean for men like us” after weeks in the swamps.

 

The march, however, was only half over. In early 1865, Sherman turned north into the Carolinas. If Georgia had been punishment, South Carolina was reckoning. Sherman admitted the destruction there was worse, and Iowa troops were again in the center of the columns. The Iowa State Register told readers the army was moving “through the very cradle of secession,” and doing it with purpose.

 

General William Tecumseh Sherman

Sherman praised the discipline of his Western regiments during the worst of it. “The men were full of confidence,” and though destruction followed them, the army never dissolved into chaos. Iowa officers echoed that pride. One regimental commander said his men could be “turned loose in the heart of the enemy and still be soldiers.”

 

At Bentonville in March 1865, the war came roaring back in full force. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston struck Sherman’s left wing hard, hoping to crush a part of the army before the rest could come up. Iowa regiments were among those hit first.

 

The fighting was sharp and close. Woods, swamps, and fields exploded with musket fire. An Iowa soldier said the noise was “one solid roar from daylight till dark.” The Davenport Gazette reported Iowa troops “held stubbornly under repeated assaults,” and the ground was “thick with fallen timber and fallen men.”

 

Sherman rushed reinforcements forward and slammed the Confederate attack to a halt. The Battle of Bentonville was the last major fight of the campaign, and it ended Johnston’s hopes of stopping the march. An Iowa officer wrote afterward, “The enemy struck hard, and was struck harder.”

 

By the time Sherman reached Goldsboro and linked up with Union forces from the coast, Iowa regiments were worn thin. Shoes were gone. Uniforms were rags. Yet morale was unbroken. A soldier wrote simply, “We know now how this will end.”

 

Sherman knew it too. In his memoirs, he reflected on the men who carried him from Atlanta to the sea and through the Carolinas. He praised the western troops who could march, fight, forage, and keep discipline all at once. Iowa soldiers fit that description perfectly. They had learned war the hard way and carried those lessons across half the Confederacy.

 

Back home, Iowa newspapers struggled to explain what the March meant. Some worried about the destruction. Others defended it fiercely. The Burlington Hawk-Eye said Sherman’s path showed “the shortest road to peace may be the hardest one to walk.” The Dubuque Herald said, The rebellion is being crushed under marching feet.”

 

When Johnston surrendered in April 1865, many Iowa soldiers were still on the road. They had marched nearly a thousand miles through enemy country and helped end the war without another Vicksburg or Petersburg.

 

Sherman’s March was not clean. It was not gentle. It was decisive. For Iowa, it was a proof of something already known in the ranks but still being argued in print. Iowa men were not just filling regiments. They were shaping how the war was fought. They marched where they were told, burned what they were ordered to burn, fought when the enemy appeared, and kept moving until the Confederacy broke.

 

An Iowa soldier summed it up best in a letter home. “We have marched the rebellion thin. There is not much left to march through now.”