I Percorsi delle Armate del Generale Sherman Attraverso le Aree Umide del South Carolina (1865)

The march of General Sherman’s armies through Georgia and South Carolina during the U.S. Civil War is remembered primarily through the plundering and devastation by his armies in Sherman’s quest to end the war. Conversely, little is known about the individual paths his five armies made through the South Carolina wetlands and rivers. This article offers a summary of the paths across the wetlands made by the five union armies under General Sherman’s command in South Carolina. This description was derived from the memoirs of Sherman and a historic map. A geographic information system (GIS) database of wetlands and rivers representing the landscape in 1865 was constructed through the modification, on a historical base, of the contemporary National Wetlands Inventory database. An analysis of the intersection between the armies’ paths and wetlands of South Carolina was conducted. The results of an integrated geo-historical approach show how the armies’ paths experienced, on average, about 20% of their journey on wetlands, with a preponderance for swamps with forests and shrubs. The cavalry trekked over the least amount of wetlands as the cavalry traveled the farthest inland from the coastal plain characterized by numerous wetlands.