- 28 Feb 2022 13:00
#15214939
February 29, Monday
Informing General Halleck of the outcome of the Meridian Campaign, Sherman states: “My movement to Meridian stampeded all Alabama. Polk retreated across the Tombigbee and left me to smash things at pleasure, and I think it is well done.... We broke absolutely and effectually a full hundred miles of railroad ... and made a swath of desolation fifty miles broad across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget.” After listing his spoils, which include “some 500 prisoners, a good many refugee families, and about ten miles of negroes,” he announces that the destruction he has wrought “makes it simply impossible for the enemy to risk anything but light cavalry this side of Pearl River; consequently, I can reduce the garrisons of Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez to mere guards, and, in fact, it will set free 15,000 men for other duty. I could have gone on to Mobile or over to Selma,” he adds, “but without other concurrent operations it would have been unwise.” Privately, however, in a companion letter to his wife, he confesses his regret that Smith’s nonarrival has prevented him from applying what his foes are calling “the Sherman touch” to Alabama.
Polk takes no such gloomy view of the prospect in Mississippi. Though he can scarcely deny the all-too-evident validity of Sherman’s boast of having “made a swath of desolation fifty miles wide across the State of Mississippi which the present generation will not forget,” he doesn’t agree with his adversary’s further assertion that the east-central portion of the state can be written off as a factor in the conflict. The bishop has already notified Richmond that “I have already taken measures to have all the roads broken by him repaired and shall press that work virgorously.” Press it he will. Summoning to his Demopolis headquarters President Samuel Tate of the Memphis & Charleston Railroad, he puts him in general charge of the restoration, with full authority to requisition both property and labor. Tate is a driver. Despite a crippling shortage of rails and spikes—not to mention the inevitable objections of planters to the impressment of such of their slaves as haven’t gone off with Smith and Sherman—within twenty-six days he will have the Mobile & Ohio back in operation, from Tupelo south to Mobile Bay, along with the Alabama & Mississippi, from Meridian to the Tombigbee. The Southern will take longer, mainly because of administrative complications, but within another five weeks it too will be open, all the way to the Pearl.
But that is later. At the moment, Sherman’s pronouncement: “My movement cleared Mississippi at one swoop, and with the railroad thus destroyed the Confederacy cannot maintain an army save cavalry west of the Tombigbee,” seems to him irrefutable. He is back in Vicksburg, having come ahead of his infantry, which he has left marking time in Canton, “with orders to remain till about the 3d of March”—he is still hoping W. Sooy Smith will turn up—“and then come into Vicksburg leisurely.” Pleased by the added destruction of several miles of Mississippi Central, north of Jackson—together with 19 locomotives, 28 cars, and 724 carwheels, which helps to ease his disappointment that Polk managed to save the rolling stock on the other roads within his reach—he proudly announces: “Everything with my command was successful in the highest degree.” That this is hardly an overstatement is evidenced by the anguished protests of his opponents and victims, soldiers and civilians, some of whom report that damage at a larger figure than his own. South Carolinian Stephen Lee, for one, charges the raiders with “burning 10,000 bales of cotton and 2,000,000 bushels of corn and carrying off 8,000 slaves, many mounted on stolen mules.” He estimates the overall loss at five million dollars, of which “three fourths was private property,” and asks rhetorically: “Was this the warfare of the nineteenth century?” Sherman isn’t inclined to dispute the statistics, and he has already given his answer to Lee’s question. This is indeed the warfare of the nineteenth century, at any rate as he intends to practice it, and he is not only proud of what has been accomplished by this first large-scale application of the methods that have aroused Lee’s moral indignation; he is also looking forward to the time when he can apply those methods elsewhere, perhaps even in the angry young cavalryman’s native state, where the provocation had begun. First though will come Georgia; Mississippi has been something of a warm-up, a practice operation in this regard, just as perhaps Georgia in turn will be a warm-up for the Carolinas.
Lincoln approves the congressional act reviving the grade of lieutenant general. It is clear that Congress and the President have Major General Ulysses S. Grant in mind for this promotion, highest rank in the Army since Washington. Retired General Winfield Scott was lieutenant general by brevet only.
In Virginia, Kilpatrick’s cavalry pushes south from the Rapidan, riding through last night and all this day, skirmishing at Beaver Dam Station near Taylorsville. The weather deteriorates and the sky rains ice, chilling the cavalry’s fervor. With night comes absolute darkness; the sleet falls harder and low branches stiffened by ice torment the troopers. They ride down blind paths, running into trees or one another. Some of the horses go down, not to rise again, and the men begin to understand why their commander’s nickname is “Kill Cavalry.”
Riding west after separating from Kilpatrick, Colonel Dahlgren’s party picks up a Black youth named Martin Robinson, who says he can lead the raiders to a ford on the James River. But when the Federals reach the chosen place, they find the river too swollen to cross. Young Dahlgren, in a burst of anger, orders the guide hanged on the spot. Unable to cross, the troopers continue eastward down the James on the wrong side, now far behind schedule.
Elsewhere fighting breaks out on Redwood Creek, California; near Canton, Mississippi; and at Ballahock on Bear Quarter Road and at Deep Creek, Virginia. In West Virginia Federal troops operate until March 5th against Petersburg and destroy saltpeter works near Franklin. Cavalry under Custer fight skirmishes at Stanardsville and Charlottesville on their raid into Albemarle County, Virginia. In Missouri a two-week Federal expedition moves from Rolla to Batesville, Arkansas. In a prelude to the Red River expedition, a Union naval reconnaissance operates until March 5th on the Black and Ouachita rivers of Louisiana.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke