Question. Of course, natchez does the same thing. But i have another question. In 1863, confederate troops went out of their way, in fact, arrived late at gettysburg, because theyre busy burning down Thaddeus Stephens house. Chasing free blacks all over pennsylvania and rounding them up. Is there anything equivalent in shermans march that says does his army target politicians house, do they march out of their way just to seek revenge against particular politicians and are they rounding up any white confederates and enslaving them . No, i wouldnt say they go out of their way, but sherman takes a particular delight, and he has a long passage about it in his memoirs about camping for a night in georgia, and freeing cobbs slaves. And the next one that comes in for a lot of destruction, the South Carolina poet simms. They destroy his house. I read a diary that soldiers were dismayed, because its one thing if they sort of trash the house, but they burn a lot of the books in simms library, an
Libraries, and there are lots of things that you can dig out of that volume. But by the spring of 1862, the powder works quickly constructed by incorporating the industrial capacity of much of the south by having the individual parts of the factory produced in different places, including some of the incorporating wheels, the big what you can kind of think of as grinding wheels in nashville, the drive shaft in the incorporating House Building which was in segments, which is almost 300 feet long, was cast in segments in chattanooga, and then shipped by rail to augusta and assembled in the complex. There was a refinery for refining, removing impurities from the principal component of gunpowder at that time, potassium nitrate. And then large cooling magazines, and also storage magazines. And the complex was laid out essentially so that all the materiel progressed from downstream to upstream, and the finished product, and also the most dangerous part of the product was also located furthest
To maintain tight control and lipity explains defined foraging parties and centralized distribution systems, chaos could ensue, and the army could really descend into a sort of armed mob engaging in pillage and so forth. So whats interesting is that you would have expected lipity to use shermans march as his examples as hes making this complicated case. He doesnt. He actually goes back to napoleons russian campaign. In fact, though, he doesnt ignore the march when hes talking about how an army can descend into chaos. Thats where he uses napoleon. He actually defends shermans march and he claims at first that when seizing Household Goods the men carefully discriminated between and this is actually the language from shermans orders, discriminated between the rich who were generally hostile to us meaning the union, and the poor and industrious who were usually friendly or at least neutral, and he describes sherman as having this very organized system with rules and receipts, and he explai
Mike and some of the staff are oh, my goodness, we even recruited craig into distributing handouts. I should get a picture of this. I have a historian friend who once had trace adkins as a sound man at an event. I have a Naval Academy professor as a map handerouter. Thats kind of like bob creek as an easel in the western theater. Bob brian, i do thank you for the introduction. As brian noted, my day job is staff historian at chickamauga military park. Even though im here today, just as a selfinterested historian and citizen, and learner, because ive enjoyed making a few notes about things already yet again from richard and now craig. And look forward to hearing steves talk in a few minutes. And im not here today as a National Military park employee, but because i think the place that i work is an important Historic Site in the shaping of our nation, i couldnt miss an opportunity of hawking my day job. Chickamauga and chattanooga military park. I know a lot of you have discovered out in
And had the federal authorities not arrested him, put him in a cell at fort monroe, clamped him in irons and made a martyr out of him, he would have been denounced through much of southern history. But they turned him into the man who was persecuted for the white south but made him a hero. Even so, postwar confederates did not like to air their dirty linen in public and most of them did not do so. Johnston was also praised in the writings of his federal opponents. William t. Sherman had good things to say about johnston in his memoirs published in 1875. U. S. Grant had good things to say about johnston. I mean, after all, grant said i worried more when joe johnston was in command in front of my army than when robert e. Lee was. I dont know if grant actually said that or not, but if he did, that alone should take his reputation down many notches. Because among other things, johnston almost never commanded troops in front of grants army. Only for a few weeks in january and february 1864