The Carolinas Campaign 1865

In January of 1865 William Tecumseh Sherman leads an army of sixty thousand across the Savannah River and enters South Carolina for a march intended to lay waste to the Palmetto State. Seen by Sherman’s troops as the great instigator of the war South Carolina would now reap what it had sown four years earlier when it was the first of the southern states to secede from the Union.

Spanish moss laden Live Oaks trees line the drive to the Tomotley Plantation in Beaufort County, SC

The 420 mile journey would be longer and more treacherous than Sherman’s recent March to the Sea. The winter rains would require his armies to bridge every river and corduroy nearly every road they would cross during the march. Like his recent excursion through Georgia the friction match would replace the rifle as the standard infantry weapon.

In fact all across the South Union armies were campaigning and bringing the last vestiges of the Confederacy to heal. In the early spring of 1865 Union and Confederate troops would fight the final battles of the Civil War.

Click the link below to see the images and story of Sherman’s Carolina march:

The Carolina Campaign