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of a joint operation with Union forces operating out of New Orleans to capture Columbus, Georgia, a hundred miles south of Atlanta on the Chattahoochee River, site of one of the Confederacy’s most productive arsenals. With Columbus, and aconnection south to a supply source secured, Sherman then imagined a thrust farther into central Georgia. Six days later Grant wondered if Sherman might better move to capture Augusta, 150 miles east of Atlanta, site of the Confederate Powder Works, the South’s largest propellant manufacturer. Sherman was willing but worried about logistics. He remained fixed on the need for a secure base of supply along the eastern side of Georgia before he would commit to cutting loose from Atlanta.
    By September 12 Grant and Sherman were back to square one. Sherman learned that he could expect no help from New Orleans, while Grant admitted that he lacked the strength to take and hold a supply depot in eastern Georgia. The lieutenant general did feel that a small force might be detached from Virginia to close the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Well, Sherman replied, if you had enough surplus assets to close Wilmington, you could use them instead to capture Savannah. “If once in our possession…,” he argued, “I would not hesitate to cross the State of Georgia with sixty thousand men, hauling some stores, and depending on the country for the balance.” Sherman saw how he could threaten Macon with its busy ordnance factories so that once the enemy reinforced there, he could swing up to capture Augusta against weak opposition. “Either horn of the dilemma will be worth a battle,” Sherman concluded.
    (Even as he was progressively refining his strategic ideas for the military operation, Sherman was seeking political accommodations that might ease the way. His grand objective all along had been to knock Georgia out of the war. The defeat of Hood in battle and Atlanta’s capture had been important steps in that direction. Hardly had Sherman settled in the Gate City than he was trying to talk the state’s leaders into leaving the Confederacy. Working through a trio of prominent Georgians who were against continuing the war, Sherman sent a message to Governor Brown offering to “spare the state” from further destruction and paying for supplies requisitioned by his men. The quid pro quo was that Brown “would issue his proclamation withdrawing his State troops from the armies of the Confederacy.” Brown replied with a public statement, noting that he and Sherman “would have power to bind no one by any compact we might make,” and besides, the proud people of Georgia would “never treat with a conqueror upon her soil.” Thus ended Sherman’s first foray into high-stakes politics.)
    The Plan—–Hood, Beauregard, and Thomas
     
    In every scenario he had imagined so far, Sherman had moved his army from one established supply base to another. He just could not conceive any operation of consequence unless Grant gained control of Savannah and its waterways. In typical Sherman fashion, his recognition of its importance to his evolving scheme elevated its significance on the national level. The Confederacy’s leaders, he told Grant, “may stand the fall of Richmond, but not of all Georgia.”
    Suddenly, the intellectual stimulation of debate and discussion was interrupted by movements of the enemy. On September 24, a major Confederate cavalry force, led by the fearsome Nathan Bedford Forrest, challenged Union control of the Tennessee River by capturing the garrison at Athens, Alabama, in the northeast corner of the state. Forrest’s move posed a direct threat to middle Tennessee. Then, on September 29, Hood (now with Jefferson Davis’s blessing) began to march his army counterclockwise around Atlanta. By October 3 his infantry were wrecking the Federal depots at Acworth and Big Shanty, smack on Sherman’s supply line. Two days later a division of Hood’s army tried to capture the