Confederate General John Bell Hood, marching through northern Alabama with some 39,000 soldiers and en route to a planned invasion of western Tennessee, today arrives at Decatur, Alabama. Here he encounters some 3,000-5,000 Union soldiers defending entrenchments, two forts and a rifle pit, in addition to two Federal gunboats patrolling the Tennessee River. Needing to…
Today a great fire engulfs the southwest Georgia town of Americus, a Confederate hospital town housing thousands of soldiers and located near Andersonville Prison. Two city squares in the downtown district are destroyed by the fire, which causes damages of over $3,000,000. The lost buildings include many businesses, hospital buildings, warehouses and storerooms. Among the…
In and around the battlefronts of Atlanta and Petersburg (and nearby Richmond), anticipation and apprehension is in the air. News of the Union victory in Mobile Bay is filtering out. With the shuttering of the port of Mobile, the Federals have further tightened their encirclement around the South. The strangling of the Confederacy involves that…