On a cold, damp, foggy Sunday, November 20, 1864, after passing through Covington and Newborn over the previous two days, Union Major General William T. Sherman, traveling with Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis's 14th Corps, reached Shady Dale, which Major James A. Connolly had imagined as a town but found instead to be a 7,600-acre plantation with about 250 slaves. Its 75-year-old owner, Matthew Whitfield, had fled before the Federals arrived. Connolly saw the plantation's slaves pour from fifty whitewashed cabins to watch the soldiers, and one said it looked like the whole world was coming. Soldiers watched celebratory dancing and singing, then, after learning the slaves had received little meat and had to forage in the woods for themselves, vowed to strip the plantation of all food and livestock not needed by the army. Within the next hour, Whitfield's plantation lost an estimated $50,000 worth of possessions. Following Sherman's orders to forage liberally on the country, Federal soldiers collected abundant food from recently harvested crops and from livestock untouched by earlier summer cavalry raids, including turkeys, chickens, geese, beef cattle, sheep, and swine. John Van Duzer, chief telegraph officer, wrote that he had just feasted on one of the finest meals he had eaten since leaving home. Local women, often alone on their farms and fearing starvation, pleaded to Sherman and his officers for mercy, but he usually replied that the people of the South had brought the war upon themselves and must now pay the penalty. Sherman and his officers later wrote that such scenes weighed heavily on their minds. After leaving Shady Dale, the Federal 14th Corps continued toward Milledgeville and camped that night near Eatonton Factory about eight miles southeast, and the next morning many of Shady Dale's slaves followed behind the Federal columns, with numerous soldiers having a follower carry his knapsack.