General William T. Sherman Arrives in Savannah at the end of his March to the Sea

The recipient was apparently on board a vessel off the coast with Edwin Stanton and this letter comes with a fragment of the Confederate flag that had flown over Fort Fisher, given by Secretary Stanton to him

 

Our first flag fragment in decades and just the second letter of Sherman from Savannah we’ve ever had

 

“a piece of the rebel flag from Fort Fisher. Presented to Edward Mintura on the spot by Mr. Stanton”

 

Only a handful of letters have ever reached the public market of Sherman written in Savannah; we found none in at least the past 3 decades

In the spring of 1864, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant conferred with his generals in order to devise a strategy to bring the Confederate war machine to its knees. Gen. William T. Sherman was charged with three armies totaling some 100,000 men: the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Tennessee, and the Army of the Ohio. His primary objective was to capture and neutralize the city of Atlanta, which was a major railroad center, supply depot, and manufacturing hub for both Georgia and the Confederacy. The ensuing campaign and siege occupied most of the summer, with Sherman finally forcing a surrender on September 2. There was jubilation at the North. From Atlanta Sherman hoped to “March to the Sea,” destroying Georgia’s resources and denying them to the Confederacy. In a November 6 telegram to Grant, he argued that to every onlooker, the destruction of Georgia’s economic and industrial potential would be “proof positive that the North would prevail in the war. Far more than a mere display of brute force, Sherman’s wager would prove to be equal parts political and psychological. On November 10, following Sherman’s orders, Union troops began torching buildings that were of military or industrial value in Atlanta. By the following day, soldiers were setting unauthorized fires, and the flames spread to business and residential districts. Within a week, some 40 percent of the city was in ashes. On the morning of November 16, Sherman set out for the coast at the head of roughly 62,000 men. Atlanta smoldered in his rear. The two wings of Sherman’s army then began their trail of destruction that would continue through Georgia. Georgia was a wreck by the time Sherman arrived at the terminus – Savannah – in early December. On the night of December 20–21 his Confederate garrison prepared to evacuate. They quietly abandoned their trenches and crossed into Confederate-held South Carolina. On December 21 Savannah’s mayor formally surrendered the city to the Union. For Sherman’s part, he made immediate contact with the U.S. Navy before sending the following telegram to President Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.” For decades after the war, Sherman’s men gathered at reunions, always singing the popular song, Marching Through Georgia.

In 1864, Wilmington, North Carolina, protected by Fort Fisher, was one of the Confederacy’s last remaining major ports on the Atlantic open to blockade runners, and was the chief supply line for General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles reintroduced the idea of a joint operation against Wilmington to the Secretary of the War, Edwin Stanton. An attempt to capture the fort in December failed. Admiral David Dixon Porter was appointed by President Lincoln to command a second assault on Fort Fisher. The USS Malvern was the command ship of his fleet. As part of a joint operation, he recruited Sherman for the land assault who assigned Gen. Alfred H. Terry to the field command. On January 4, 1865, the second expedition to capture Fort Fisher embarked from Bermuda Landing in Virginia. On January 12, they headed for Fort Fisher. Arriving that night, Porter and Terry prepared to commence their attack the next day. At dawn on January 13, 8,000 Federal soldiers landed above the fort as the Navy began its bombardment. Sailors were landed on the 15th and drew fire. This diversion allowed the army to breach the walls of the fort. By 10 p.m., the fort was in possession of the Federal forces. The Confederates started a retreat, and when Federal infantry caught up with them, General Terry accepted the formal surrender of the fort.

Secretary of War Stanton soon arrived at Fort Fisher and while aboard the USS Malvern was presented with the surrendered Confederate flag by Gen. Alfred Terry in the presence of Admiral David Porter. This according to the book, “Confederate Goliath.”   Stanton also referenced the gifting of the flag in a letter acknowledging it. Stanton traveled with many figures from NY, from which port he left, among them Edward Mintura, a N.Y. shipbuilder who supplied transport ships to the Union fleet essential to the second assault on Fort Fisher.

Autograph letter signed, on his military letterhead, Savannah, GA, January 15, 1865, to shipbuilder Edward Mintura, who had sent him a congratulatory box of wine. “I did not get your note till you had gone. The box of wine came promptly. I thanks you kindly for it. And especially for the cordials expressions of friendship that accompanied it.” This letter has been in a private collection for more than 30 years.

In a note at bottom in another hand, almost certainly that of Mintura, it states that attached is “a piece of the rebel flag from Fort Fisher. Presented to Edward Mintura on the spot by Mr. Stanton, Secretary of State [War].” Mintura kept it in with Sherman’s letter to him. It is sewed in, a practice primarily adopted in prior to the turn of the 20th century.

There are two rarities in this group. You very seldom see letters of Sherman from Savannah, the terminus of his March to the Sea, this being just the second we’ve had since we started this business in the late 1980s. Second, it’s been decades since we had a Civil War flag fragment, no less one with such good provenance and import.