The Jeffersonian

Sherman's Duplicated Plans,

The following anecdote of the war we do not remember to have seen before:

" Sherman on his march towards Atlanta, constantly astonished the rebels with the facility with which he restored the railroad bridges they destroyed at his approach.

They would annihilate a bridge just before he arrived, and the next morning there it was again, just as it was before they touched it. At last a light dawned upon them. The original plans for the bridges had all been furnished from Cleveland, Ohio, and before Sherman started he took those plans, had each bridge duplicated in all its timbers and iron work, took the pieces in a 'shook' state on his trains, and so when he found a bridge gone he had nothing to do but to get its mate out of the freight cars, bolt it together and put it up. This thing worried the rebels a good deal when they found it out. One day they proposed to destroy the Dalton tunnel to hinder Sherman's march, but an exasperated rebel said, ' What in the nation's the use? That d-d Sherman has probably brought another one along with him from Cleveland!'"