Sherman's Mississippi Campaign (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 148 parently chose a thematic organization because the dates of composition could not be determined. They suggest that their format is in keeping with the intent of the author herself, who avoided specific references to place and time and sought to give her stories a timeless quality. For readers interested in locating Flake White in her own place and time, the editors provide a short introduction that includes a description of their sources and methodology, as well as some very limited biographical information and analysis of Weeden’s work as an expression of Victorian culture. The introduction also contains a brief history of the Louisville Christian Observer, the Old School Presbyterian newspaper that was Weeden’s primary venue for publication. Fisk and Riley do not attempt to analyze Weeden’s theological views or the effects of the post-war era on her thought, although the writer’s own disparaging references to social change and industrialization indicate that she found the developments of the late nineteenth century dehumanizing (see pp. 25, 128, 134). The introduction contains some awkward grammar. The editors write, for example, that Weeden’s subjects had “amazingly nothing to do with slavery” (p. x). The book has footnotes, but no index or bibliography . Weeden derived her pseudonym from a white pigment that had been used for centuries to give paintings a luminous quality; Fisk and Riley suggest that Weeden’s own heart “glows” in the same way from the Flake White writings (p. xi). Their goal in publishing this book has been to make Weeden’s ideals and sensibility more accessible to the reading public . On the whole, they have succeeded. SARA S. FREAR Auburn University Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign. By Buck T. Foster. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. xii, 215 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0-8173-1519-5. Buck T. Foster’s Sherman’s Mississippi Campaign chronicles the often overlooked but important Meridian campaign of William T. Sherman in 1864. While Sherman biographies have increased in recent years, they have neglected the effects of the Meridian campaign on the strategic thinking of the Union general. This study rectifies that omission. According to the author, two seminal factors influenced Sherman’s thinking in regards to the Meridian campaign. First, Sherman wanted to eliminate Confederate threats from the Mississippi interior against A P R I L 2 0 0 7 149 the Union-held Mississippi River; Confederate raids on river traffic endangered Union communications in the region. Second, Sherman had noticed the ability of Grant’s army to live off the countryside during portions of the Vicksburg campaign and he envisioned a larger scale use of that tactic in the future. Thus Sherman formulated a plan to launch an operation against the transportation center of Meridian. He would move quickly, living off the countryside. This traffic would bring the war to the civilians on the Confederate home front, deny the region’s resources to the enemy, and hinder the Confederate ability to wage war. By terrorizing civilians, he hoped to break civilian morale, expecting some southerners to see the futility of rebellion and voluntarily return to the Union. Foster maintains that the Meridian campaign was a dress rehearsal for the larger Georgia and Carolinas campaigns in the subsequent months. To implement his design, Sherman utilized approximately twenty- five thousand men including most of the Seventeenth Corps under the able leadership of James B. McPherson and most of the Sixteenth Corps under the less able leadership of Stephen A. Hurlbut. They departed from Vicksburg while a large cavalry contingent of almost seven thousand under William Sooy Smith simultaneously departed from northern Mississippi to join the column. Sherman envisioned a deeper probe into Alabama if all went well at Meridian. To oppose Sherman, the Confederates had a small force under Leonidas Polk. Polk, a poor commander, had only two divisions under William W. Loring and Samuel G. French. They were not enough and Polk requested reinforcements from Joseph Johnston’s force in Georgia. Johnston initially resisted and transfered two much-needed divisions to Mississippi too late to influence...