Sherman's Mississippi Campaign

Preface

Civil War journalist-turned-historian Orville J. Victor, in his four-volume history of the Civil War, argued: “The march of [William T.] Sherman through central Mississippi to the Alabama state line was in execution of a masterly design, but little understood at the time, and one which did not receive the notice its importance merited.”1 This is still very much the case today. Few scholars appreciate the importance of the campaign in the scheme of the war, and Civil War enthusiasts have an inaccurate image of it. During February and March 1864 in Mississippi, Sherman ¤rst attempted to use hard war on a large scale, and his expedition had a long-term impact on the war’s outcome. Sherman’s experiences in his march across the Magnolia State shaped and solidi¤ed his style of warfare for the rest of the con®ict. This was indeed his dress rehearsal for hard war. Only a handful of publications consider the Meridian campaign in any depth. Richard McMurry’s 1975 Civil War Times Illustrated article discusses the short-term impact of Sherman’s march but is too brief to provide an overall view of the campaign and its repercussions. Only one book-length study exists. Marjorie Bearss’s Sherman’s Forgotten Campaign, published in 1987, provides a blow-by-blow account of the march; however, it does not offer readers any overall analysis. The work is helpful to those who study battle¤eld tactics and marching orders, but its pages do not provide insight into the long-term importance of the Meridian campaign to the war or its participants. Preface Publications concerning hard war, total war, or modern warfare sometimes mention this campaign. Two of the best examples are Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones’s How the North Won the War (1983) and Mark Grimsley’s The Hard Hand of War (1995). Each monograph appreciates the expedition as the beginning of the Federal army’s new, harder style of warfare, but neither provides detail into exactly what Sherman learned here or what the overall signi¤cance of the campaign was. Both publications cover their subject well, Hattaway and Jones with the changing of Federal strategy and Grimsley with the modifying of Federal attitudes toward Southern civilians in the war, but they do not create a complete picture of Sherman’s campaign. Similarly, Sherman biographies give this campaign little attention. For example, John F. Marszalek’s Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (1993) devotes only ¤ve pages to it, while Michael Fellman’s Citizen Sherman (1995), Stanley P. Hirchson’s The White Tecumseh (1997), and Lee B. Kennett’s Sherman : A Soldier’s Life (2001) barely mention it. In this work I try to provide readers with a thorough, analytical study that explains the development of Sherman’s unique style of warfare, including his attitudes toward civilians, slaves, soldiers, destruction, tactics, and planning. I attempt to show how his style of ¤ghting evolved and what role the Meridian campaign played in that evolution. Sherman did not develop his style of warfare in a week or even a year. It took the entire course of the war to change him from a commander who sought to exclude civilians from the con®ict to a leader who actively searched for ways to terrorize Southern civilians into giving up their cause without injuring their person. In the ¤rst three years of the war, Sherman went from protecting Southern civilians and their property to believing that these citizens were ultimately responsible for the war and had to be convinced to stop supporting it. He had spent much time in the South as a U.S. Army of¤cer and as superintendent of what later became Louisiana State University. He had many Southern friends and thus had an attachment to the South and its people. Sherman sought, therefore, a way to end the war with as little bloodshed as possible. His entire war experience, particularly as Ulysses S. Grant’s subordinate, provided him with battle¤eld savvy and tactics to do just that. While Sherman was in Memphis in 1862 and 1863, guarding the important river town and the Mississippi River, he battled constantly with guerrilla and Confederate cavalry units operating in Mississippi and Tennessee. After x / Preface exhausting all conventional methods for dealing with these threats, he began to strike at the local Southern towns, which he considered the supply bases for...