December 22 · This Day in America
For thirty-two days the North has heard nothing. Sherman's army marched out of burning Atlanta and into Georgia and simply vanished — sixty thousand men cutting a swath to the sea, living off the land, leaving ruin behind them. Then, on December 22, 1864, the silence breaks with a telegram: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton." The March to the Sea is over; the Confederacy has been cut in two. It was a hard, cruel campaign, and the South would not forget it. But to a war-weary North it landed like the first sure sign that the long agony was finally bending toward an end — and that the Union would, after all, hold.
Source: www.battlefields.org
Also on this day · 1944
Encircled by German armor in the Ardennes, the freezing, outnumbered 101st Airborne receives a formal demand to surrender Bastogne. General Anthony McAuliffe reads it, and his entire written reply is one word: "NUTS!" The bewildered German officers had to have it explained. The 101st held. Four days later, Patton's tanks broke through, and the Battle of the Bulge began turning the Allied way.
Source: archivesfoundation.org
“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”Gen. William T. Sherman, telegram to Abraham Lincoln, 1864