[The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman Vol. II. by William T. Sherman]@TWC D-Link bookThe Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman Vol. II. CHAPTER XXI 19/101
Habitually we started from camp at the earliest break of dawn, and usually reached camp soon after noon.
The marches varied from ten to fifteen miles a day, though sometimes on extreme flanks it was necessary to make as much as twenty, but the rate of travel was regulated by the wagons; and, considering the nature of the roads, fifteen miles per day was deemed the limit. The pontoon-trains were in like manner distributed in about equal proportions to the four corps, giving each a section of about nine hundred feet.
The pontoons were of the skeleton pattern, with cotton-canvas covers, each boat, with its proportion of balks and cheeses, constituting a load for one wagon.
By uniting two such sections together, we could make a bridge of eighteen hundred feet, enough for any river we had to traverse; but habitually the leading brigade would, out of the abundant timber, improvise a bridge before the pontoon-train could come up, unless in the cases of rivers of considerable magnitude, such as the Ocmulgee, Oconee, Ogeechee, Savannah, etc. On the 20th of November I was still with the Fourteenth Corps, near Eatonton Factory, waiting to hear of the Twentieth Corps; and on the 21st we camped near the house of a man named Mann; the next day, about 4 p.m., General Davis had halted his head of column on a wooded ridge, overlooking an extensive slope of cultivated country, about ten miles short of Milledgeville, and was deploying his troops for camp when I got up.
There was a high, raw wind blowing, and I asked him why he had chosen so cold and bleak a position.
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