Elevated Tent Camps

—March to the Sea Heritage Trail —

On Friday, December 9, 1864, the more than 11,000 troops of Union Major General Francis P. Blair, Jr.'s 17th Corps approached Pooler, Station No. 1 on the Central Railroad. Major General William T. Sherman noticed a column of soldiers marching in a field rather than in the road. Upon inquiring he learned that a horse carrying an officer in the Federal 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment had stepped on a "torpedo" (land mine) in the road, killing the horse and blowing a foot off of the cavalryman. "This was not war, but murder," Sherman later wrote, and it made me very angry." By his order, Confederate prisoners were made to walk in the road with picks and shovels "to explode their own torpedoes or to discover and dig them up." Ten more were found, but none exploded. Sherman and the 17th Corps reached and made camp at Pooler later that day. Savannah was only nine miles away.

Desiring to get a close look at Savannah's defenses, the next morning General Sherman rode forward with his staff on the Louisville road. They stopped in a dense wood of oak, pine and cypress (the location of Tom Triplett Community Park). Standing in a railroad cut, Sherman looked toward Savannah and saw a Confederate artillery battery about 800 yards away. He later wrote, "I could see the cannoneers preparing to fire, and cautioned the officers



near me to scatter, as we would likely attract a shot. Very soon I saw a white puff of smoke, and, watching close, caught sight of the ball as it rose in its flight, and finding it coming pretty straight, I stepped a short distance to one side." However, a black man crossing the track was struck in the head and killed as the cannon ball ricocheted off the ground. Sherman surmised, "we all concluded to get out of that railroad-cut."

After Major General Josep A. Mower's division of the 17th Corps found a continuous Confederate trench line a mile to the south General Sherman determined a siege of Savannah was inevitable. He made camp in these woods from December 10th through 15th, planning his army's further actions. Hundreds of small mounds are still in the woods around the park, made by Federal soldiers to keep their tents, cooking sites, and pathways out of the water that collected when Confederates flooded the surrounding rice fields.

During the next two days the other three infantry corps in General Sherman's army reached the area. The 20th Corps touched the Savannah River on the army's left, the 14th Corps continued south to its right, the 17th Corps stretched from the area of the Savannah and Ogeechee Canal to west of Dean Forest Road and Salt Creek, while the 15th Corps was positioned further south to the Little Ogeechee River. Savannah was



completely invested by December 12, 1864.

[Photo captions]
Background: Savannah Ga. and Vicinity, in December 1864
Bottom left: Union Major General William T. Sherman
Middle top left: "Rebel prisoners...taking up the torpedoes"
Middle top right: Confederate "torpedoes" (land mines)
Middle bottom: The Savannah and Ogeechee Canal - 16.5 miles in length
Top right: Union Major General Joseph A. Mower

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