On Monday, November 28, 1864, while elements of the Federal 20th Corps were destroying sections of the Central Railroad of Georgia at Bartow, also known as Speir's Turnout, Major General William T. Sherman traveled with his army's 17th Corps under Major General Francis P. Blair, Jr. After camping that night at New Hope Methodist Church, Sherman and the 17th Corps marched past Tarver's Mill and just south of Bartow the following day along the Savannah road. They covered a total of seventeen miles on November 29, stopping in a forest of tall pines, where the camps of nearly 12,000 Federal soldiers stretched for about two miles along the road, mostly on its north side for easier access to nearby Rocky Creek. Major Henry Hitchcock of Sherman's staff, who kept a diary during the March to the Sea, wrote on the night of November 29 that the campaign's success there rested on marching through pine barrens country with good sandy roads, fine pure air, no difficult hills, wagon trains well up, abundant forage, and a superb camp in an open grove of large pine trees with convenient, clear water and soft pine straw and wire grass. The next morning, Wednesday, November 30, the march continued east along the Savannah road.