Gen. Sherman Had No Mercy For
Civilians, Not Even Women

For the offense of weaving Confederate tent-cloth and spinning stocking yarn, Sherman shipped hundreds of southern women North, never to be heard from again.

By Patsy M. Boyette
Olde Kinston Gazette
August 1999

Union General William T. Sherman had a ruthless policy to destroy everything he could in order to eradicate the south. This included disabling the railroads, burning whole towns, killing crops, stealing livestock, even destroying items which could be used to rebuild later.

Sherman had no mercy for civilians who could not defend or provide for themselves once his troops had done their damage. The destruction was so massive that it literally brought the south to its knees, forever changing its fortunes and way of life.

From Georgia on to South Carolina, Sherman's troops marched, indiscriminately burning and pillaging. South Carolina, "the cradle of succession," was particularly hated by the Union troops and received their full wrath. By the time he marched into North Carolina, the populace was well aware of the damage that Georgia and South Carolina had suffered and awaited Sherman with trepidation. Fort Fisher had fallen and Wilmington had been occupied by Union troops since February. Now with Sherman undoubtedly at the door, North Carolina mustered her strength for the destruction that Sherman had doled out in South Carolina.

While still in South Carolina, Sherman found out that Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who had replaced Gen. Beauregard as commander of Confederate forces in the Carolinas, had been ordered by Gen. Robert E. Lee to "concentrate all available forces and drive Sherman back." Only North Carolina lay between Sherman's forces and those of Gen. U.S. Grant's in Virginia. Johnston's goal was to prevent Sherman from uniting his army with Grant's.

Sherman began marching toward Fayetteville on March 6, 1865. From there, he planned to continue on to Goldsboro.

Johnston learned of Sherman's trek to Goldsboro on March 18^th and immediately decided to intercept the head of the left Union column at Bentonville, a small town about twenty miles west of Goldsboro. The resulting Battle of Bentonville was the last major Confederate offensive of the war. The battle lasted for three days and initially was going well for the Confederates, who had the Union troops surrounded. On March 20^th, however, Sherman's right wing arrived and crushed the Confederate's hope of victory. Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 26^th, effectively ending the Civil War in North Carolina.

Sherman's victory over the south was tainted with a legacy of destruction, but perhaps one of his cruelest acts took place in Georgia. As he was raging through Georgia, cutting a swath from "Atlanta to the sea," Sherman came upon three Confederate mills operating in Roswell, Georgia. Roswell, near Atlanta, sat in Sherman's path as he was wreaking his savagery. Local women worked the mills because the men of the area were fighting in the war.

According to Peggy Sheppard of the Andersonville Welcome Center, these women often took their children with them to the mills because they had no one to care for them while they worked. In addition to cloth, the mills were making Confederate uniforms in 1864 when Union troops advanced toward the village of Roswell.

A Frenchman managed the mills and had attempted to save them by flying a French flag. The Confederate seal was stamped on all the merchandise produced at the mills, and this evidently had not escaped the attention of Sherman. Gen. Kenner Garrard was ordered by Sherman to burn the mills and charge the women with treason. He was further instructed to ship them north.

The women workers were unfortunate to be caught in Sherman's grasp. As prisoners of war, they and their children were shipped by wagon to Marietta, Georgia where they were interred briefly. There they were joined by approximately 100 women taken from another textile mill, the Sweetwater Factory.

A reporter who witnessed the women being taken into the vacant buildings of the Georgia Military Institute in Marietta on July 9, 1864, wrote: "Think of it! Four hundred weeping and terrified Ellens, Susans, and Maggies transported, in springless and seatless army wagons, away from their lovers and brothers of the sunny South, and all for the offense of weaving tent-cloth and spinning stocking yarn!"

All of the women were later put into box cars on a train and carried north. They had been allowed to take nothing from home with them except some clothing.

The mystery of what happened to the mill women began in Kentucky. It is known that some were imprisoned in Louisville and some were possibly just abandoned there. It is also believed that some were made indentured servants and others were possibly sent to Indiana.

According to Atlas Editions, while the women were still in Marietta, Gen. George H. Thomas inquired of Sherman as to what to do with them. Sherman's reply was "They will be sent to Indiana..." to "earn a living there where they won't do us any harm."

Only a few scattered documents exist to reveal their fate. An ad in a Louisville paper gives a possible clue: "Families...wishing seamstresses or servants, can be suited by applying at the refugee quarters on Broadway, between Ninth and Tenth."

A novel titled "The Roswell Women" is based on the story of these women. The author, Frances Patton Statham, wrote the book in 1987 and it is currently being reissued. Statham uses old diaries, Sherman's orders written in the field and northern newspaper accounts to piece together their possible fate. There is no indication that any made it back to Georgia. Taken from their families and their homes, these women were casualties of the war in a particularly cruel sense.

Statham calls the women's journey a "trail of tears," and says their "voices are still silent, for history has turned up no personal accounts written by the women themselves."

Statham will be signing copies of her novel at the Andersonville Historic Fair on October 2 and 3, 1999. The fair is held annually in the Civil War village of Andersonville, Georgia, site of the controversial Confederate prisoner of war camp. For more information, call Peggy Sheppard at 912-924-2558.