[Doug64]

November 8, Tuesday

At Chicago, not finding Thomas Henry Hines at the house where he was staying—and is being hidden by the house’s residents—officers relieve the guard this evening and Hines slips out of the house and Chicago and makes his way to Cincinnati, where he hides with friends. Fearing that an uprising might still occur, commanders request and receive reinforcements from other Army posts in the Midwest. In the coming days, troops and detectives will arrest and interrogate nearly 100 men in the city and downstate Illinois towns; their stories will confirm that the conspiracy aimed to release the POWs in Camp Douglas. During this crisis, Chicagoans go to the polls today—Election Day—to cast their ballots.


The time is at hand for selecting the next President of the United States. In the last days of October there was repeated, throughout the Army of the Potomac and the other farflung armies of the Union, an unprecedented scene: soldiers in the midst of a protracted civil war voting, in an orderly manner, on whether to retain in power their commander in chief. Their ballots were collected and sent to their home states so that the votes can be counted today. The voters have to choose between a popular former army commander who promises peace—George McClellan—and a controversial, much-misunderstood country lawyer, often portrayed as a bumbler, who vows to fight the war to its conclusion. By a large majority, soldiers and civilians alike vote for Abraham Lincoln with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee as Vice-President. Lincoln, the Republican or Union candidate, receives 2,330,552 popular votes to Democrat Major General George B. McClellan’s 1,835,985, giving Lincoln a plurality of 494,567 and over 55 percent of the total vote. In the electoral vote Lincoln and Johnston receive 212, while McClellan and George H. Pendleton of Ohio get 21, carrying only Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey. New York is close. In the military vote Lincoln really triumphs, with 116,887 to 33,748 for McClellan, although these ballots don’t change any state result. General Grant sends to Washington a telegram of congratulation, not just for the victory but for the way in which it is achieved: “The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won.” Hours later, Grant sends another telegram—a portent of what the victory will mean—“All the troops now in the North will be hurried to the field.”

In a day or two McClellan will write that he is resigning from the Army and, as to the election, “For my country’s sake I deplore the result....” He disclaims personal disappointment. Some Confederates say the election simply proves that the Federal policy of subjugation is popular in the North. McClellan may have once been a popular general, but that and discontent with the war wasn’t sufficient to overcome the basic strength of the incumbent, nor the disapproval among many Democrats of their own platform. The Republicans and Unionists have increased their strong majority in the House to over two-thirds and retained a heavy plurality in the Senate.

President Lincoln spends the evening at the War Office getting telegraphic election returns. Early the following morning he responds to a serenade and says that the election result “will be to the lasting advantage, if not to the very salvation, of the country.”

[Potemkin]

President Lincoln spends the evening at the War Office getting telegraphic election returns. Early the following morning he responds to a serenade and says that the election result “will be to the lasting advantage, if not to the very salvation, of the country.”

It is difficult not to agree with him. The election result was a deliverance for the American nation.

[Doug64]

It is difficult not to agree with him. The election result was a deliverance for the American nation.

Agreed. I’ve only seen one writer suggest that McClellan’s election wouldn’t have resulted in a Confederate victory, Irving Stone (I think) in the excellent book They Also Ran, about the men that lost presidential elections. Irving’s assessment that McClellan would have followed through with his insistence that he would push the war through to victory, and that he would have been a better general at a distance, might well be true, but Irving missed the fact that any election that gave the presidency to McClellan would also likely have given Congress back to the Democrats and they wouldn’t have been so inclined.

[Doug64]

November 9, Wednesday

The Federal XXIII Corps is going through Nashville on its way to reinforce the IV Corps at Pulaski, in expectation of a move into Tennessee by Hood. Meanwhile, on the Tennessee River in Alabama, Hood’s men skirmish at Shoal Creek and near Florence. Otherwise Federals scout around Devall’s Bluff to Searcy, Arkansas, and send an expedition from Memphis to Moscow, Tennessee. Forrest continues toward Corinth, Mississippi.

While election returns are still coming in, assessment of the results begin, with the usual afterthoughts and speculations.


Though Grant has changed his mind about Sherman’s proposed march to the sea, he has had a new problem to solve. He has argued so effectively against Sherman’s scheme that President Lincoln was now dead set against it. Grant now had to alter Lincoln’s thinking, too. He sent a message to the President that “Sherman’s proposition is the best that can be adopted.” His subordinate’s scheme is admittedly risky, but Sherman and his army would be “hard to corner or capture.” No other Union general has proven himself such a master of maneuver, Grant argued. If Sherman thinks that he can march from Atlanta to the sea, then he almost certainly can. The President is swiftly persuaded. Having at last found a pair of generals who will and can both move and fight, Lincoln is inclined to give these officers a free reign. “Whatever results, you have the confidence and support of the Government,” wires Major General Henry Halleck, Army Chief of Staff, from Washington.

At Kingston, Georgia, with permission to launch his march to the sea, Sherman issues portentous orders. He organizes his army into a right wing consisting of the XV and XVII Corps under O.O. Howard and a left wing with the XIV and XX Corps under Major General H.W. Slocum. There will be no general train and only a bare minimum of wagons. “The army will forage liberally on the country during the march.” If they meet resistance from inhabitants, army commanders “should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless....” and, furthermore, horses, mules, wagons may be appropriated freely. Sherman is about to plunge deeper into Georgia, toward the sea. He has long been urging such an expedition with another force to come in from the coast to meet him. Hood is in northern Alabama, and Sherman thinks he has provided Thomas with sufficient force to halt Hood’s expected invasion of Tennessee.

[Doug64]

November 10, Thursday

Sherman in Georgia continues preparing to move back toward Atlanta, destroy the railroad and other bases, and set out on his own. Forrest, back at Corinth, Mississippi, from his successful west Tennessee foray to Johnsonville, is about ready to join Hood—and one of the strangest scenes in the history of warfare is about to unfold. Two major armies that have been locked in combat and maneuver for months now prepare to march in opposite directions, each with an objective that has nothing to do with the other.


Jubal Early, still trying to make a show of opposition in the Shenandoah Valley, moves north from New Market toward Sheridan. However, his force is far too small to have any impact. A Federal scout probes near Memphis and a skirmish breaks out at Neosho, Missouri.

In response to another election victory serenade, Lincoln says, “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence, in great emergencies.... We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” He points out that the election in the midst of civil war shows “how sound, and how strong we still are.” Now he calls for unity in “a common effort, to save our common country.”

[Doug64]

November 11, Friday

Federals at Rome, Georgia, destroy bridges, foundries, mills, shops, warehouses, and other property of use to the enemy, and start off for Kingston and Atlanta. The railroad in and about Atlanta and between the Etowah and the Chattahoochee is ordered destroyed, garrisons from Kingston are sent to take up the rails from Resaca back toward Chattanooga.


Action includes skirmishes at Shoal Creek, Alabama; at Russellville, east Tennessee; at Manassas Junction and near Kernstown, Virginia; and a two-day Federal scout from Springfield, Missouri, to Huntville and Yellville, Arkansas.

At a Washington Cabinet meeting the sealed document disclosing Lincoln’s doubts about the election and pledging Cabinet members to support the President-elect after the election is opened. This was signed, unread, by the Secretaries on August 23rd.

[Doug64]

November 12, Saturday

Sherman’s army now stands “detached and cut off from all communication with the rear.” Four corps totaling 60,000 infantry, plus about 5,500 artillery, are ready for one of the great military adventures. Sherman begins to concentrate his force toward Atlanta. Since receiving Grant’s permission to carry out his long-planned march to the sea, he has ordered most of the immense stockpile of supplies at Kingston, Georgia, hauled back up to Chattanooga, leaving behind only what will fit in 2,500 light wagons. He has instructed the army’s surgeons to examine every man with any history of illness—and officers every horse—to be sure they will be able to make it all the way to Savannah. The sick are sent back to Chattanooga and Nashville.

Before leaving Kingston, Sherman also sends a last message to Grant, explaining once again the purpose of this extraordinary expedition. “If the North can march an army right through the South,” he wires, “it is proof positive that the North can prevail.” He signs off with humor: “I will not attempt to send couriers back, but trust to the Richmond papers to keep you well advised.” In addition, Sherman has a last-minute exchange of telegrams with General George Thomas in Nashville. Thomas is finally satisfied that he has enough men to hold off the Confederate army that is heading toward him across the Tennessee River. Indeed, Thomas has grown belligerent. He would “ruin” General Beauregard, he wires Sherman, “unless he gets out of the way very rapidly.” And he wishes Sherman Godspeed: “I am now convinced that your success will fully equal your expectations.” Sherman hurriedly replies “Dispatch received,” then instructs his telegraphers to cut the wires. No countermanding orders can reach him now. The last trains roll northward, the engineers tooting their whistles and waving. Behind them bridges are burned and tracks ripped up. In Atlanta, Captain Orland Poe, the Federal army’s chief engineer, is busy demolishing railroad stations, warehouses, and factories with a battering ram of his own design—a 21-foot-long iron bar hanging by a chain from a 10-foot-high sawhorse.


Far to the north, in the Shenandoah Valley, action picks up briefly as Early’s and Sheridan’s men fight at Newton or Middletown, and at Cedar Creek and Ninevah, Virginia. Out in Missouri, troops skirmish near Centreville.

[Doug64]

November 13, Sunday

Confederates in the Shenandoah move back to New Market and a good portion of Early’s force detaches to strengthen the siege lines at Richmond and Petersburg. Since June, Early has marched some 1,670 miles and fought 75 engagements of one kind or another. The 1864 Valley Campaign will suffer by comparison to Jackson’s campaign in 1862, but, considering the condition and size of the Confederate force and the strength of Sheridan’s opposition, it has been a memorable attempt to bring the war closer to the North.


As happens so often these days, conflict with Amerinds flares, this time at Ash Creek near Fort Larned, Kansas. In Missouri, Federals carry out a four-day scout against guerrillas in Pemiscot County.

[Doug64]

November 14, Monday

Sherman’s 60,000 men are in and around Atlanta, preparing to depart for the coast. The cavalry of Judson Kilpatrick has already started toward Jonesborough and McDonough. Slocum takes the XX Corps out to Decatur and Stone Mountain, burning bridges and tearing up railroads, as other units go to work in Atlanta itself. Sherman wants to make sure that Atlanta’s military, manufacturing, and communications facilities can’t be immediately reactivated by the Confederates.

Meanwhile, Thomas is getting his troops in Tennessee into position, with John M. Schofield commanding two corps in Pulaski, south of Nashville. Near Florence, Alabama, Hood prepares for his northward march and waits for Forrest to come in from Corinth, Mississippi.

A skirmish near Russellville, Tennessee, marks John C. Breckinridge’s operations in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee. Otherwise there is a minor brush on Cow Creek, Kansas.

President Lincoln accepts the resignation of Major General George C. McClellan and names Sheridan to the permanent rank of Major General in the Regular Army. Lincoln writes Stephen A Hurlbut in Louisiana that there appears to be “bitter military opposition to the new State Government of Louisiana.” He calls for cooperation by Federal officers with the new civil government.

[Doug64]

November 15, Tuesday

As most of Sherman’s men move out from Atlanta, others finish laying waste to the city. Captain Poe and his men put Atlanta’s industrial area to the torch. The inferno spreads, especially after the flames leap through an oil refinery and then ignite some shells left in the wreckage of the arsenal; the shells explode and hurl streamers of flame into the sky, setting other buildings on fire. From a headquarters window, Henry Hitchcock watches “immense and raging fires lighting up whole heavens—first bursts of smoke, dense, black volumes, then tongues of flame, then huge waves of fire roll up into the sky; presently the skeletons of great warehouses stand out in relief against sheets of roaring, blazing, furious flames—then the angry waves roll less high, and are of a deeper color, then sink and cease.” Sherman has ordered that only Atlanta’s business and industrial areas be destroyed. No dwellings would be torched and no fires started at all until he reached the city to supervise. Arsonists are to be shot on sight. But in fact civilian looters have been ransacking and then burning empty buildings since the 11th. Now more dwellings go up as sporadic looting continues and the flames spread from the industrial area into some residential neighborhoods. The Herald’s Conyngham will report seeing soldiers batter down the doors of houses with rifle butts; steal tobacco, whiskey, and other goods; then set fire to the structures. Such lawlessness might be worse if not for Sherman and some of his officers spending much of the night patrolling the streets, scaring off groups of would-be looters.

Sherman is caught in a paradox that will last the whole campaign. He and most of his men shrink from carrying out war on the Confederacy’s civilian population. But Sherman’s aim is destruction—to teach the South a painful lesson in the futility of continuing the conflict. And the march across Georgia will bring out the worst in some men who, let loose on the countryside, will revel in the chance to plunder and set fire to farmhouses and mansions for the sheer pleasure of watching the buildings burn.

Light skirmishing between militia and cavalry break out near Atlanta at Jonesborough, East Point, near Rough and Ready, and at Stockbridge. Otherwise the action is near Collierville, Tennessee, and at Clinton, Louisiana.

[Doug64]

November 16, Wednesday

As the last fires die out in Atlanta, Sherman and the army’s rearguard leave the city, passing through 200 acres of ashy desolation. Sherman, his black, braidless hat jammed on his head, rides his favorite horse, Sam. On a hill to the east he draws reign to look back at the smoldering ruins behind him, smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall. Captain Poe estimates that 37 percent of Atlanta is destroyed; the business and industrial sections are gone, but a majority of the residences are standing and most of the churches survived. The people of the city will rebound quickly from the tragedy: Within three weeks a post office will be open, newspapers will be published, rebuilding will have begun, and there will be an adequate supply of food. Atlanta is battered but far from dead. As soon as Sherman turns his horse’s head to the east, leaving Atlanta behind, his mood brightens remarkably. For the first time in his military career, he is completely on his own; whatever happens in the weeks to come will be his doing and his alone, and this independence invigorates him.

As the men trudge along, bands play rousing marches. Row upon row of gun barrels glisten in the blazing Georgia sun and wagons topped with white canvas snake away into the dusty distance. Almost 62,000 soldiers are on the move, 55,000 of them on foot, 5,000 on cavalry horses, and 2,000 riding caissons or the artillery horses that pull the army’s 65 guns. Each infantryman carries forty rounds, and the wagon trains hold another 200 rounds per man; ammunition cannot be replaced, and Sherman is determined not to run out. The wagons also carry four pontoon bridges, for there are rivers to be crossed. Rations, however, are meager for so ambitious a march: only twenty days’ worth of salt pork, hardtack, coffee, salt, and sugar. And there are only five days of oats and corn for the livestock—just enough to get the animals through the clean-picked area around Atlanta and into the fertile country beyond. Altogether it is a lean outfit. It is also a youthful army, most of the men under voting age, and largely a Western outfit. Of the army’s 218 regiments, 185 are from the farmlands of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and other parts of the Midwest. Only 33 regiments had been raised in eastern states. Perhaps because so many of the troops are farmboys, their manners are informal. Disciplined in combat, they are free and easy on the march or in bivouac. Their leader can hardly insist on spit and polish. Sherman occasionally dresses in full uniform, but normally he wears an old blue coat and low-quarter shoes.

The men love him, for they know he values their lives: Sherman always prefers to outflank an enemy rather than make a bloody head-on attack. But now he will have to move constantly, because the army and its animals will exhaust the food and forage of the countryside as they go. He must make it to the sea and gain a coastal foothold so that he can be resupplied by the Navy. He has told Grant that the supply ships should look for him between Hilton Head and Savannah “around Christmastime”—which leaves him only six weeks to march 275 miles. He is embarked on what The British Army & Navy Gazette calls “one of the most brilliant or one of the most foolish things ever performed by a military leader.” If he fails, adds the London Herald, he will be “the scoff of mankind.”

Sherman has four corps. He divides them into wings of two corps each, which will march to the sea on separate but roughly parallel routes. The northern wing—XIV and XX Corps of the old Army of the Cumberland, commanded by Major General Henry W. Slocum—will head due east from Atlanta toward the town of Augusta. The southern wing, made up of XV and XVII Corps under the leadership of Major General Oliver O. Howard—the old Army of the Tennessee—will take a southeasterly course toward Macon. Sherman hopes that whatever forces the Confederates manage to muster in his front will rush to defend these important rail junctions. Then, after a week or so of marching, the two wings will change course and veer toward each other, converging on Milledgevill, Georgia’s capital. Sherman’s plan—a huge double feint—is designed to confuse the enemy and skirt Confederate strongholds. The two-pronged advance will serve other purposes as well. It will afford each wing more room for foraging and avoid the crowding and delays that would inevitably result if the army moved as one column. And the deployment will enable the army to cut a broad swath of destruction perhaps sixty miles wide through central Georgia.

Sherman starts out riding with the two corps of Henry Slocum’s northern wing, soon to be styled the Army of Georgia. Slocum, a 37-year-old New Yorker and West Point graduate, is a prickly character; he had been posted to the Western Theater after heated disagreements with General Joseph Hooker, his superior officer in Virginia. Sherman likes Slocum, however, perhaps because his personality—which combines a lively sensibility with brusque military professionalism—seems much a reflection of Sherman’s own. One of Slocum’s two subordinate commanders is Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis, in charge of XIV Corps, an Indianan with a deadly temper that isn’t improved by the usual incredulous response to his name. Leading XX Corps is a luxuriantly bearded brigadier general named Alpheus S. Williams. Williams has proved himself a capable officer in a dozen important battles in Virginia and the West.

The southern wing of the army is less capably commanded. Its leader, Oliver O. Howard, was put in charge of the Army of the Tennessee back in July when its brilliant and beloved leader, Major General James McPherson, was killed in the Battle of Atlanta. Although a trained professional—West Point, class of 1854—and an efficient organizer, Howard has proved himself an indifferent leader of men and a lackluster battlefield commander. It was his XI Corps that was surprised and routed by Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack at Chancellorsville last year. And Howard’s devout Christian beliefs—his men have dubbed him “Old Prayer Book”—cannot have recommended him to Sherman, who is distinctly a skeptic in religious matters. But Sherman doubtless admired Howard’s personal courage: He lost his right arm leading a charge at Fair Oaks in 1862. Besides, if all goes according to plan, neither wing of the army will have to fight a major battle on the way to Savannah; the objective is to keep the troops moving, and Howard can do that. Howard’s corps commanders are both men of considerable experience. Major General Peter J. Osterhaus, leading XV Corps, is a German immigrant with a Prussian military education. At the head of XVII Corps is Major General Francis Preston Blair Jr., a bluff, energetic Missourian, a former Congressman and chief of the House Military Affairs Committee. Blair has just returned to the army after working in Lincoln’s campaign for reelection.

Riding well ahead of Howard’s wing, and screening the advance, is the 5,000-man cavalry division commanded by a daring but sometimes foolhardy young brigadier general named Hugh Judson Kilpatrick. A small, arrogant man with a lantern jaw and oversized sideburns the color of sand, Kilpatrick has earned the sobriquet “Kill Cavalry” for his habit of wearing out his troopers and their mounts on long rides and getting them slaughtered in furious charges. He had been an ardent amateur actor when he was at West Point and is theatrical in everything he does, including the fervent pursuit of women. In a fight, however, Kilpatrick can be a formidable adversary. If attacked suddenly, Major General Jacob D. Cox, who observed Kilpatrick during the Atlanta Campaign, will write, “he was quite capable of mounting bareback the first animal, horse or mule, that came to hand and charging in his shirt at the head of his troopers with a dare-devil recklessness that dismayed his opponents and imparted his own daring to his men.” General Sherman sums it up: “I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition.” Kilpatrick’s men are ready, their horses rested and well fed, as they ride southeast down Georgia’s roads, leading Howard’s infantry columns toward Macon. Already, the Federal troopers have met their counterparts, lean veteran horsemen in faded gray. The Confederate cavalrymen have thrown up a succession of roadblocks—at East Point, Rough and Ready, Jonesboro, Stockbridge, and Lovejoy’s Station—in attempts to slow the Federal advance. But there are simply too many Federal horsemen and they come on with too much force.

The leader of the Confederate cavalry lacks Kilpatrick’s dramatic flair but is otherwise the Union general’s match in every way. Major General Joseph Wheeler, a 28-year-old West Pointer, has gained the respect of officers on both sides for his superb leadership of the Army of Tennessee’s cavalry. He weighs about 120 pounds—“a very small, very erect man, dressed in grey, wearing a crimson sash and a large black plumed hat.” He rarely smiles and seems always to be in a hurry. Wheeler likes to fight and so do his rough, undisciplined men, who sometimes provoke as much terror among Southern civilians as the enemy. Wheeler commands a force of 3,500 troopers. Most of the time the men are scattered widely, hovering around the Union columns, ahead and behind, impotent to stop the Federal advance but quick to snatch up stragglers, whom they often kill with little compunction.


On the Tennessee River front in northern Alabama, skirmishes occur along Shoal Creek. Forrest brings his cavalry in from Corinth, Mississippi, to join Hood at Tuscumbia and Florence. In east Tennessee, Breckinridge’s Confederates skirmish at Strawberry Plains before pulling back into southwest Virginia. There is a skirmish near Lee’s Mill, Virginia; plus several Federal expeditions: through tomorrow from Barrancas to Pine Ridge, Florida; through the 23rd from Brookfield to Salisbury, Missouri; and through the 25th from Cape Girardeau to Patterson in Wayne County, Missouri. The expeditions are designed to counter guerrilla activities, for Federals can’t occupy in force the vast territory they have cleared of major Confederate armies. Through the 18th Federals scout from Devall’s Bluff to West Point, Arkansas.

[Doug64]

November 17, Thursday

While Sherman’s troops head east and south toward the Georgia coast, taking four routes to confuse the enemy (not that there’s much in the way of an enemy to confuse), John Bell Hood seems to be frozen in place. The Confederates and their commander reached Tuscumbia in the northwest corner of Alabama by the 1st, intent on crossing the Tennessee River and striking north toward Nashville. But then have come three weeks of frustrating delays. Hood decided that he had to wait for Nathan Bedford Forrest and his 6,000 troopers to arrive to spearhead the advance. But Forrest was off on his raid on Johnsonville in central Tennessee. When Forrest’s horsemen turned southward at last, they were bogged down by rain and mud and they have only recently reached Hood’s camp. Now, badly needed supplies that should have arrived by rail from Corinth, Mississippi, have been delayed because of damage to the Memphis & Charleston line. Finally, more fierce storms have turned Hood’s camps and routes of march into quagmires.

The postponements have driven General P.G.T. Beauregard, Hood’s superior, to frenzies of impatience. Hood’s invasion plan has always depended for success on striking the Union forces in Tennessee before they are fully organized. Beauregard has repeatedly urged Hood to get started, even if it means doing so without Forrest’s cavalry. But then Beauregard recalled Napoleon’s maxim, better one bad general than two good ones. Today he leaves Hood to his own devices and heads east toward Macon, Georgia, in an attempt to help the Confederates there devise a plan for stopping Sherman’s march.


Slocum’s northern wing of Sherman’s army marching through Georgia, followed by an ever-growing column of liberated Blacks, marches on the lovely little town of Madison, where roses and dahlias are in bloom. As slaves cheer, the troops set fire to the depot and a slave-pen, including the whips and paddles found there, and resume their march to the east, roses woven into garlands for their hats and thrust into the barrels of their rifles. Soon the lead brigades come to a large plantation owned by a man named Farrar. He is away—most of the able-bodied men have hurried off, much to the amused contempt of the slaves—but Mrs. Farrar is there. The Farrar slaves tell Major Henry Hitchcock they have been habitually punished by flogging not only with straps but also “with hand-saws and paddles with holes—and salt put in the wounds.” They also tell him of a famous “track-hound” (bloodhound) at the next house, nearby, used to hunt runaways. The hound, a large red dog, is shot by Sherman’s order, to the great glee of the Farrar slaves. The Federal soldiers form a special hatred for such tracking dogs, knowing that slaveowners use the animals to hunt not only runaway slaves but also escaping Federal prisoners of war. The troops kill these dogs whenever they come across them and frequently kill house pets as well. They also manage to acquire a stunning number of animals—dogs, cats, gamecocks, goats, donkeys, racoons, possums, and even pigs—as pets of their own, so that soon every company has a mascot.


A small affair does occur at Towaliga Bridge, Georgia. Meanwhile, skirmishing increases in northern Alabama, with fighting near Maysville and New Market. Breckinridge’s Confederates skirmish at Flat Creek, east Tennessee. Federal expeditions operate from Brashear City to Bayou Portage, Louisiana, and from Little Rock to Fagan’s Ford on the Saline, Arkansas.

President Lincoln tells a Maryland committee, according to a Washington paper, that he is gratified at the election results and that it confirms “the policy he had pursued would be the best and the only one that could save the country.”

President Davis writes to a group of Georgia state senators expressing strong objection to any suggested possibility of separate state action for peace negotiations.

[Potemkin]

President Davis writes to a group of Georgia state senators expressing strong objection to any suggested possibility of separate state action for peace negotiations.

So much for "states' rights", eh?

[Doug64]

So much for "states' rights", eh?

So far as I know, neither the US nor the CS constitutions allow states to carry out independent foreign relations, states right are about domestic affairs. Not that those haven't taken a hit throughout the war, on both sides ...

[Potemkin]

So far as I know, neither the US nor the CS constitutions allow states to carry out independent foreign relations, states right are about domestic affairs. Not that those haven't taken a hit throughout the war, on both sides ...

Indeed. But the Southern revisionist historians who came after the Civil War and tried to justify it on something other than the right to own slaves, claimed the Civil War had been all about states' rights. Yet, judging by its actions and its policies during the Civil War, the Confederacy cared as little for such matters as the United States did.

[Doug64]

Indeed. But the Southern revisionist historians who came after the Civil War and tried to justify it on something other than the right to own slaves, claimed the Civil War had been all about states' rights.

The war was caused by Southern concerns over a states' right, anyway--singular. Of course afterward they had to broaden the areas of concern to hide which one was preeminent. But as Bruce Catton once commented, while there were other areas of disagreement between North and South, none of them were important enough to shoot each other over.

Yet, judging by its actions and its policies during the Civil War, the Confederacy cared as little for such matters as the United States did.

While I can't point to anything specifically, I have the feeling that Davis received more blowback from his state governors than Lincoln did, and that with the South more unified than the North.

[Doug64]

November 18, Friday

Sherman’s army marches generally between the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers in Georgia. Sherman himself is with the left wing. Heavy storms and other factors have delayed Hood’s advance into Tennessee, but he is now about to begin. Skirmishing flares at Fayette, Missouri, and Kabletown, West Virginia.

President Davis tells General Howell Cobb at Macon to “get out every man who can render any service even for a short period” to oppose Sherman and to employ Blacks in obstructing roads.

[Doug64]

November 19, Saturday

Governor Joe Brown of Georgia calls for men between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five to oppose Sherman, but to no significant avail. President Lincoln orders the blockade lifted at Norfolk, Virginia, and Fernandina and Pensacola, Florida.

Federals fight Amerinds near Plum Creek Station, Nebraska Territory, and a skirmish takes place at Duckett’s Plantation near Paint Rock River, Alabama. A Union expedition moves from Terre Bonne to Bayou Grand Caillou, Louisiana.

The CSS Florida, unlawfully captured by the USS Wachusett in Brazilian waters on October 7th, is severely damaged by a collision with an army transport.

[Doug64]

November 20, Sunday

Sherman’s advancing army skirmishes with cavalry, militia, and “pickup” troops at Clinton, Walnut Creek, and Griswoldville, Georgia. As Kilpatrick’s Federal cavalry approach Macon, Wheeler concentrates about 2,000 of his horsemen for the defense of the city. Four miles from Macon’s outskirts, the dismounted Confederate troopers dig in behind a set of earthworks to await a Federal attack. Kilpatrick doesn’t disappoint them, his men attacking Wheeler’s line with convincing fury. Kilpatrick then pulls back, well satisfied that he has fooled the enemy into thinking that the rest of Sherman’s army is poised to attack the place. For his part, Wheeler is sure that his spirited defense has helped save Macon, where even now a number of Confederate leaders are gathering, intent on concerting some plan that will stop or at least slow the Federal advance. Governor Joseph Brown has come from Milledgeville; former Governor Howell Cobb has also arrived, along with Robert Toombs, a onetime Confederate secretary of state. Ready to help Wheeler defend Macon is Major General Gustavus W. Smith with his Georgia militia, about 3,000 sketchily trained volunteers, many of them boys and overage farmers. General William Hardee has come from Savannah to take command of these inadequate defensive forces, and Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, a veteran of Lee’s army in Virginia, has arrived to examine the gloomy situation and report to Richmond.

Howell Cobb meets Taylor at the Macon railroad station and reports that yesterday Sherman’s main body was a dozen miles away. Taylor suspects not. Had Sherman intended to attack Macon, he tells Cobb, “you’d have seen him last night. He’d have come before you had time to finish the works or move your stores.” Sherman, sure enough, doesn’t attack Macon. His failure to appear there throws the Confederates into a quandary. Their only hope of delaying the Federal march is now to concentrate what slender forces they possess: Wheeler’s cavalrymen, Gustavus Smith’s militia, and a few other isolated detachments. But where should they prepare to make a stand? None of the officers nominally in charge take any decisive action. General Braxton Bragg, Chief of Staff, in Richmond, issues no orders and neither does General Beauregard, whose attention is divided between Georgia and John Bell Hood’s Confederate advance into Tennessee to the west. General Hardee, ranking officer on the scene, recognizes, as does Richard Taylor, that Sherman has merely feinted toward Macon and that his real objective is either Augusta or Savannah. Hardee leaves Macon for the coast, ordering General Smith to avoid battle and to march his pitiful little band of militiamen straight for Augusta to help in its defense.

After threatening Macon, Howard’s wing circles to the northeast; the Federal army’s other wing, under Slocum, approaches Covington on its feint down the Georgia Railroad toward Augusta. Both wings are moving steadily and efficiently. Skirmishers are in advance, flankers are out, and foraging parties are ahead gathering supplies from the rich plantations. They are expected to make fifteen miles a day; to corduroy the roads where necessary; to destroy such property as the corps commander designates, and “to consume everything eatable by man or beast.” Foraging parties—about twenty to thirty men under an officer—are sent out every morning by each regiment. The officers are mounted and usually so are their men, most of them riding horses or mules that have been picked up along the way. The mounts give the foragers greater mobility to sweep the countryside for provisions—and to escape should they encounter strong detachments of Wheeler’s cavalry. The officers know the route the main column will take during the day and where to rejoin it at sundown. They also have a good idea of where other foraging parties are headed. If one gets into trouble, the others nearby will close in on the sound of firing.

Sherman’s standing orders are to “forage liberally on the country,” seizing “whatever is needed by the command.” He expressly forbids trespassing in “the dwellings of inhabitants,” however, and also instructs the foragers to discriminate “between the rich who are usually hostile, and the poor and industrious, usually neutral or friendly. In either case, the troops are to leave behind “a reasonable portion” of a family’s food “for their maintenance.” The men enthusiastically follow Sherman’s order to forage liberally. But they tend to flout those instructions that urge restraint. A party, swooping down upon a farm or plantation, cleans out the smokehouse, kills all the chickens and hogs, empties the corncribs and oatbins, seizes the flour supply, and commandeers any delicacies it finds, such as crocks of butter or honey. These edibles are loaded on whatever carts or wagons come to hand. The troops then round up any livestock they want. The more vengeful foraging parties slaughter the rest. In any case, many a farm or plantation family finds it has precious little left to eat. Trespass in the Southern homes is also common. All too frequently the troops ransack homes, smashing and pilfering drawers and cabinets. The foragers also search yards and garden plots for boxes containing jewels, silver, or choice foodstuffs that the owners have buried. Any freshly turned earth is quickly investigated. The troops use ramrods or bayonets to probe for valuables. Sometimes slaves volunteer to reveal their owners’ hiding places, and envious neighbors are known to do the same. Occasionally the troops, sure of finding treasure, find something else. A party of Minnesotans shout with joy when a ramrod, probing a freshly dug spot, thumps on something solid. They eagerly uncover a wooden box and open it—only to fall back from the stench of a dead dog. “It looks like poor Curly will get no peace,” a woman says. “That’s the fourth time he’s been dug up today.” For their amusement, the foragers frequently snatch clothes and family heirlooms that are of little practical value. Soldiers are seen returning from foraging expeditions dressed in regimentals from the Revolutionary War, complete with tricorn hat and wig. Others come back decked out in low-necked evening gowns, or in beaver hats and old-fashioned swallow-tail coats. For many of the men the entire march is prime sport.

Still, there are dangers in foraging. Small details surprised at their work by detachments of Wheeler’s cavalry have to fight furiously to escape. if captured, the Federals are often summarily executed. During the march, the bodies of at least 64 Union soldiers are found hanged, shot in the head at close range, or with their throats slit, often with signs pinned to their uniforms reading “Death to all foragers.”

The women of Georgia are generally frightened by the foragers, but many remain proudly defiant. “Our men will fight you as long as they live,” a woman standing with her children tells Federal soldiers, “and these boys’ll fight you when they grow up.” An Iowa soldier will remember a young woman who cried, “You can kill us, but you can’t conquer us.” The soldiers believe Southern women are the real impetus behind the war. An Ohio colonel hears one of his men lecture a farmwoman: “You urge young men to the battlefield where men are being killed by the thousands, while you stay home and sing The Bonnie Blue Flag; but you set up a howl when you see the Yankees down here getting your chickens. Many of your young men have told us that they are tired of the war and would quit, but you women would shame them and drive them back.”

The wealthier Georgia landowners lose more than their livestock and provisions. They lose in many cases their slaves. It is at Covington that the army first experiences an outpouring of Blacks—an occurrence that will become familiar as the march continues. Black men and women, old, young, children, elders with gray hair, all come out to greet the men they see as their liberators. They come laughing, crying, cheering, shouting, and praying. They have been told that Federal soldiers make it a practice to burn Black men and drown their women and children, but now they show no fear. A Michigan drummer boy remembers a woman throwing her arms around him and crying, “They told us this here army was devils from hell but praise the Lord, it’s the Lord’s own babes and sucklings.” Another soldier hears a slave cry out with ringing fervency at the sight of the US flag, “My God, did you ever see such a pretty thing!” Sherman is welcomed as the deliverer promised in the Bible. “I have seen the great Messiah and the Army of the Lord!” one white-haired man shouts. Sherman will recall that “the Negroes were simply frantic with joy. Whenever they heard my name, they clustered about my horse, shouted and prayed in their peculiar style which had a natural eloquence that would have moved a stone.” Sherman asks one elderly slave if he understood about the war. The man nodded. He had been looking for the “angel of the Lord” since he was a child. He knew, he continued, that the Federals professed to be fighting for the Union, but he supposed slavery was the real cause of the war—and that if the Union was victorious, he would be free. “I asked him,” Sherman will recall, “if all the negro slavers comprehended this fact, and he said: they surely did.” The slaves turn out by the thousands to meet the Federals. They wait at every crossing, they line the roads, and they pour through the camps at night, bringing provisions, information, and adoration.


Federals skirmish with Amerinds near Fort Zarah, Kansas.

[Doug64]

November 21, Monday

Hood at last starts his army for Tennessee. Despite the delays, he still dreams of the sort of lightning offensive that Stonewall Jackson managed in the Shenandoah Valley. After smashing the Federals in middle Tennessee, Hood would drive on to Nashville, capture Union stores, and recruit Southern sympathizers as he goes. At the least, this campaign should force Sherman to turn in pursuit, backtracking out of Georgia. At best, it might—or so Hood imagines—reverse the course of the war. In fact, the Confederates’ extended stay at Tuscumbia has lengthened the odds against them while yielding few benefits. Rations are still in short supply. Some troops are barefoot; most are clothed in tattered uniforms. And now winter is here—it is sleeting this morning as Hood’s army sets out from Florence on the north bank of the Tennessee River. Still, the men are in remarkably good spirits. Many are natives of Tennessee and they are heading home. After crossing into Tennessee, the men cheer as they are given a welcoming speech by Governor-in-exile Isham Harris, riding as an aide to Hood. The troops are in an optimistic mood for another reason. Hood has implied that he won’t fling them against strong, entrenched enemy forces as he has done in the past. The general has vowed, writes Captain Samuel T. Foster of Granbury’s Texas Brigade, “that we will have some hard marching and some fighting, but that he is not going to risk a chance for defeat in Tennessee. That he will not fight in Tennessee unless he has an equal number of men and choice of the ground.” In short, the men won’t be wasted in attacks that have little chance of success.

With Forrest and his cavalrymen riding ahead and covering the right flank, the Confederate infantry slog northward in three columns. Farther west, on the left, is a corps led by Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, as experienced officer who has fought in most of the western war’s roughest battles, including Shiloh, Stones River, and Chickamauga. On the right marches the corps under the command of Lieutenant General Alexander Stewart, also a veteran of virtually every battle in the west. Advancing between these two corps is the third, headed by Stephen Dill Lee, a West Pointer from North Carolina and the youngest lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. After a march of about seventy miles, the three corps—twelve divisions in all—are to rendezvous at a village called Mount Pleasant. Reunited, they will form an army of 38,000 men, counting Forrest’s cavalry, backed by 108 guns. This strong, compact force will then move another dozen miles eastward to Columbia, a town of vital strategic importance. There the Franklin & Columbia Turnpike—the main road running north to Nashville—crosses the Duck River. On the turnpike thirty miles south of Columbia, at Pulaski, sit two Federal corps under the command of Major General John Schofield—roughly 30,000 men sent back from Atlanta by Sherman to help defend Tennessee. Hood’s purpose is simple: to seize Columbia and trap Schofield south of the Duck River, thus preventing him from joining the army being assembled by Major General George Thomas in Nashville. If Hood can get between the two armies with his force, which is larger than either, he can attack one and defeat it, then turn on the other. Such a brilliant double victory, as Hood sees it, would shatter all Federal opposition in Tennessee. The trick is to reach Columbia first, before Schofield can move.

Hood’s long delay at Tuscumbia has been a boon to General Thomas. When Thomas first arrived in Nashville late last month, he found Federal detachments scattered all over southern Tennessee and northern Alabama: 5,000 men at Chattanooga, 5,000 at Murfreesboro, 4,000 at Decatur. Only about 10,000 troops plus quartermaster personnel defended his Nashville headquarters. Sherman had ordered two divisions to hurry east from Missouri, but they had been delayed. Thomas busied himself pulling some of these units together while his small and poorly mounted cavalry force was being reorganized by a whip-cracking young brigadier general named James H. Wilson, who has most recently commanded a cavalry division under General Philip Sheridan in the Army of the Shenandoah. While Thomas has been involved in strengthening his position at Nashville, he has left Schofield at Pulaski, about 75 miles to the south. Evidently Thomas thinks that once Hood begins his expected advance, Schofield will be able to hurry northward on the Columbia Pike to help repel the Confederates’ advance.

The force at Pulaski, made up of Schofield’s own XXIII Corps and Major General David S. Stanley’s IV Corps, is for the most part capably led. Stanley had been an effective cavalry leader before being promoted to command of an infantry division and then a corps. The small army’s division commanders are also experienced officers, especially Major General Jacob D. Cox, a former lawyer and politician from Ohio, and Brigadier General Thomas Wood, a West Point graduate and a hard fighter. The least admired of the Federal officers at Pulaski is Schofield himself. A plump, ambitious man of 33, he feels that his career hasn’t advanced with the speed his abilities deserve; he is known for trying to gain advantage by blackening the reputations of others with insidious complaints to Washington. Stanley detests him—after the war he will call him a liar and a fool. Schofield in turn habitually condemns General Thomas for excessive caution.

In fact, it is Schofield who has a ready nose for danger—and by mid-November he is sniffing peril in the air. He had known Hood well at West Point and fears the impetuous Confederate general’s penchant for swift attacks. Further, he feels himself in an exposed position at Pulaski. It is fortunate for Schofield that he foresees trouble. Alexander Stewart’s Confederate corps reaches Lawrenceburg, twenty miles west of Pulaski and halfway to Columbia, before Federal cavalry scouts report that Hood is on the move. Schofield immediately orders his troops to break camp in the morning and head northward.


President Lincoln writes a letter to be known the world over, although the original manuscript will disappear. To Mrs. Lydia Bixby he writes that he has learned that she is the mother “of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

“I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” The President’s eloquence is misplaced, for only two sons have been killed, two are said to have deserted, and the fifth will be honorably discharged. But the sentiment is real.