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12. Napoleon’s “Old Guard” Never Fought Harder: July 16–September 21, 1863
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12 Napoleon’s “old Guard” Never Fought Harder July 16–September 21, 1863 During the first full week of the summer of 1863, a season that proved invaluable to the Federal war effort, the Army of the Cumberland swept Braxton Bragg’s force from its Tullahoma encampment in middle Tennessee in a series of brilliant maneuvers. General William rosecrans followed this campaign several weeks later with another movement designed to flank the Confederates out of Chattanooga. This effort ended along the banks of Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia, after which both Florida brigades became attached to Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. General marcellus Stovall’s unit steamed back to Tennessee via rail and Colonel robert C. Trigg’s Brigade, along with the Army of east Tennessee, abandoned its namesake region to join forces with Bragg. During the last days of a disastrous summer, these men would engage in one of the most ferocious and confusing battles of the war. For the Floridians, some became heroes, some became veterans, and many fell as casualties. None who fought there would forget the carnage that was Chickamauga. Nearly two weeks after rosecrans’s Tullahoma Campaign ended successfully and Grant’s force captured vicksburg, Joseph e. Johnston’s position at Jackson was growing precarious. in giving his reasons for evacuating the town to Jefferson Davis, Johnston informed the president that “Sherman . . . would concentrate upon us the fire of nearly two hundred guns. it was also reported that the enemy had crossed Pearl river in rear of their right flank.” Because of these developments , on July 16 Johnston had informed his subordinates that “in the opinion of the commanding general, the safety of this army renders necessary retrograde movement.”1 That night, Johnston’s tired army evacuated Jackson; the soldiers shuffled eastward , their faces illuminated by pyres of cotton bales and munitions that had been set afire to prevent them from falling into yankee hands. The soldiers also passed engineers deploying torpedoes meant to delay any yankee pursuit. The Department of the West’s troops’ initial destination was Brandon, only ten miles from their former position; from there, Johnston informed Jefferson Davis that he intended “to hold as much of the country as i can, and to retire farther only when compelled to do so.”2 remaining at Brandon only a few days, General Johnston finally halted his withdrawal near morton, a Southern mississippi railroad town in the central part July 16–September 21, 1863 135 of the state that consisted of “half dilapidated and deserted stores” and “pretty little houses.” General Sherman, “due to the intense heat, dust, and fatigue of the men,” resolved not to follow the rebels in force and dispatched only a single division to continue the pursuit to Brandon. Sherman decided instead to use the bulk of his troops to ensure “Jackson is destroyed as a military point.” During the last two weeks of July, while the yankees devastated the railroads near the capital and demolished anything of value to the Confederates, the Department of the West’s troops pitched their tents near Hurricane Creek.3 The Floridians spent one month of their three-month mississippi exile encamped at Camp Hurricane. Washington ives favorably compared their central mississippi campsite to Florida, describing the landscape as “covered with growth of pine and black jack, very little grass growing in the intervals between the trees” and “with the surface generally rolling.” The pleasant scenery was only one of the benefits that the soldiers found in their new bivouac. Samuel Pasco wrote in his diary that Stovall’s Brigade “now have very fine water and the hill we are on gives us a fine breeze though there is very little shade.”4 Thanks to their successful performance at Jackson, the Floridians’ morale remained high even though they wore ragged clothes and subsisted on the same poor fare as atTullahoma.Washingtonivescriticizedthepoundofbeefandcornbread the soldiers received as their daily ration as “barely enough to sustain life.” He pointed out that “if the sugar and molasses which was burnt at murfreesboro and Jackson had been issued to the men, we would have some now.” like the area around Tullahoma , the farms near morton offered little relief. An officer serving in the 60th North Carolina described the region as “poor and thinly settled but few of the people have provisions enough for their families, and so of course, it is a bad chance for a soldier to do any foraging.” The hard campaigning had also taken a toll...