WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN'S CHRISTMAS GIFT AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR
The most famous Christmas gift of the Civil War was sent by telegram from William Tecumseh Sherman to Abraham Lincoln on December 22, 1864:
"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton." The gift, of course, was not the guns, the ammunition, or the cotton, but the beginning of the end of the Civil War.
For nearly six weeks, nothing was heard from Sherman's army. Finally, just before Christmas, word arrived that Sherman's army was outside Savannah. A Union officer reached the coast and found a Union warship that carried him to Washington, D.C., to personally deliver news of the success. Sherman wired Lincoln with the message.
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