Marching with Sherman: Dutchess County's 150th Regiment In 1900 and 1901, the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle published Reverend Edward O. Bartlett's first person account of his experiences as a Civil War chaplain serving in Dutchess County's 150th Regiment. Portions of Bartlett's narrative cover the dramatic events from May of 1864 to May of 1865 when the 150th Dutchess County Regiment served in Sherman's legendary "march to the sea" before turning northward to secure the surrender of North Carolina, South Carolina and the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia.
In April of 1864, as Sherman readied his army of 98,797 men for the march to take Atlanta, Bartlett was invited to accompany an officer paying a call on General Sherman. Edward O. Bartlett: [Chattanooga, Tennessee] "I had never seen Sher-
man, not even his picture. I had heard of him as the hero in many hard fought battles, and so was not prepared to see a most gaudily dressed soldier. He was arrayed in a brand new suit that looked so bright and blue in contrast with his immense white vest, that I thought he was `ragged out,' as the college boys used to say, for some special occasion. It was the first and only time during the war that I saw an officer disfigured by a white vest. His form, not his face, was not unlike Abraham Lincoln. I think they must have been very nearly the same height, and their clothes had very much the same style, or want of style, as though their tailor had cut their garments by looking at their shadows and then had stood at a distance and thrown them on. Sherman was ten years the junior of the president, who at that time was fifty-five. Thus Sherman was forty-five when he began the march to the sea. He was six feet or over in height, angular, slightly stooping. Whenever I saw him afterwards he was on horseback, riding in a very careless way, his head and body making a seesaw motion opposite to that of the horse I
