Atlanta is not the only thing on Union General William T. Sherman‘s mind. While capturing the strategic city is his uppermost objective, Sherman’s thoughts also drift further southward. In particular, the general is troubled at the reports he is hearing out of Andersonville Prison, an open air prison camp in southwest Georgia housing nearly 30,000…
Since the Union capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi this past summer, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman has focused his attention eastward to Meridian, another strategic town in Mississippi. Slowly but surely and through a veil of feints and unusual maneuvers, Sherman has confused Confederate defenses in the ensuing months. Today the Union general and his army finally…
Union Gen. Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts is commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. Butler is hated among white Southerners for his distinction of authoring the designation of fugitive slaves in Union controlled-territory as “contraband,” an order he had issued in May 1861 while commanding the Department of Eastern Virginia. While prior…