Toward that end, Hood marched west and north to close on the Tennessee border. Soon he was well out of Georgia, with Sherman between him and the heart of the state. But Sherman quickly reversed course, returned to Atlanta and, on November 15-16, moved his armies out of the city in two large columns, or wings, on routes both east and southeast. Hood was not in position to pursue.

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Beauregard was hoping Hood’s surge into Tennessee might eventually draw Sherman back, but he took an important step to bolster the defenses in central Georgia. In early November he freed up the cavalry assigned to Hood under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler by replacing it with the Tennessee-based command of Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Wheeler’s units were then sent south into the region between Atlanta and the all-important manufacturing center of Macon. Sherman, however, had begun his march before that transfer was completed.

With Hood out of the picture, Wheeler’s troopers, Georgia state militia, and garrisons in Macon, Augusta and Savannah—perhaps 15,000 men altogether, supplemented by an un­known number of small irregular units—remained to oppose Sherman’s 60,000 Federals. In Macon, Maj. Gen. Howell Cobb, a Georgia state officer, remained in charge, but Augusta and Savannah both fell under Hardee’s control. On November 16 Beauregard ordered Taylor to proceed immediately to Macon and take charge.

To slow down Sherman, Beauregard instructed Taylor to “cut and block up all dirt roads in advance of him, [and] remove or destroy supplies of all kinds in his front” while Wheeler’s cavalry harassed his flanks and rear.

Beauregard sent another message to General Cobb, who was with the Georgia militiamen falling back toward Macon from forward positions just south of Atlanta. Cobb was advised to prepare Macon for a siege. In the midst of all the complicated planning for his Tennessee invasion, Hood added his bit to the mix. He advised Wheeler: “If Sherman advances to the south or east destroy all things in his front that might be useful to him, and keep a portion of your force constantly destroying his trains.”

Had it been aggressively pursued, the last suggestion could have caused Sherman real problems. Even though he was counting on foraging to keep his army supplied, Sherman had hedged his bets by filling 2,500 wagons with a 20-day supply of bread; 40 days’ of sugar, coffee and salt, as well as three days’ of animal feed. Moving with the lengthy wagon trains were 5,000 cattle, representing a 40-day beef supply. This long logistical tail was Sherman’s weak point.

It seemed too that “General Weather” was wearing Confederate gray. Just a few days out from Atlanta, Sherman’s men were pummeled by a series of rain and snow storms that slowed the wagons to a crawl. Fearing what would happen if Wheeler’s men got loose among the Yankee supply trains, Sherman’s wing commanders allotted whole brigades and even divisions to the role of protecting them.

Further complicating matters were a series of significant rivers requiring pontoon bridging—natural congestion points that an alert and aggressive enemy could exploit. The prospect greatly worried Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick, commanding Sherman’s cavalry, who retorted later: “Was there no enemy to oppose us? Yes, yes! Sufficient, if concentrated in our front, to have disputed the passage of every river and delayed us days and days, which of itself would have been fatal.”

Problems abounded for the Rebels, too. Both Beauregard and Taylor were held up by the Confederacy’s decrepit transportation network. In a pinch, Beauregard summoned Hardee from Savannah to take charge in Macon, with Hardee arriving just as the first elements of Union Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s Right Wing began appearing north of the city.

Before Hardee reached Macon, it was every officer for himself. The militia field commander, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, then at Forsyth, determined that the best place for his citizen-soldiers was “in the fortifications at Macon, leaving the outside work to the cavalry.” Wheeler was also getting plenty of advice in lieu of concrete missions. With his units being asked to help protect Macon as well as slow Sherman, the frustrated cavalryman sent an urgent request to Richmond on November 17 asking to be directed to someone “who knows the course they desire pursued.” He never received a clear answer to his query.

Hardee entered Macon on November 19 to grim news: The enemy was close and in strength. There was more bad news. An investigation of Savannah’s landside defenses revealed them to be weak. Hardee told the garrison commander “to press Negroes if you need them.” No effort was to be attempted to save the state capital, Milledgeville, which the Federals finally occupied on November 22.

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