SHERMAN’S MISSISSIPPI CAMPAIGN. (University of Alabama Press, 2006) By Buck T. Foster.
After taking Vicksburg in 1863, Grant and Sherman struggled to get the Union high command to approve of their desire to initiate a Mobile campaign, which would not happen until 1865. In a compromise of sorts, Grant and Sherman got permission for Sherman’s Mississippi campaign. But if Mississippi could be completely in Union hands, it might make a move on Mobile academic and force the Union high command’s hand in approving it. But there might even have been an opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Grant wrote Sherman telling him that once he reached Meridian and cut the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, that he was to return, “unless the opportunity of going to Mobile with the force he has appears perfectly plain.”
But Sherman would have to be quick as by the time his campaign moved out in early 1864, part of his force he promised to have back in time for Bank’s Red River campaign.
Sherman’s relatively unknown Mississippi campaign did not amount to much militarily. The railroads were fixed within a few months of the end of the campaign. Mississippi still continued to harbor rebel cavalry and tie down valuable Union troops and resources along the Mississippi River.
As the author points out, the campaign was “Sherman[s] first major attempt at hard war.” It was a testing ground for his March to the Sea. He cut lose from his supply lines, lived off the land, and brought the war to Southern civilians. As a correspondent with Sherman wrote to the New York Tribune, “The work of destruction was most thoroughly done. The houses of prominent rebels were burned. Every horse and mule that could be found was seized upon”everything of edible nature was levied upon” thousands of blacks can into our lines. The railroad track was torn up, and every wagon, bridge, and depot was burned.”
The progression away from the “conciliatory” nature of the conflict to “hard war” has already been extensively documented by Mark Grimsley and others. Foster’s book attempts, and I think succeeds, in placing Sherman’s Mississippi campaign within the catena of hard war. It was the final stage of development in the evolution of his new style of warfare.
There’s a very clear progression that explicitly shows the Union’s changing attitude toward the execution of the war: 1862, Curtis in Arkansas; 1863, Grant in western Mississippi; and 1864, Sherman in eastern Mississippi.
