Aug., 1864. |
Aug. 28. |
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to the enemy in cavalry.
I suspended the execution of my orders for the time being, and directed General Kilpatrick to make up a well appointed force of five thousand cavalry, and to move from his camp about Sandtown, during the night of the 18th, to the West Point road, and break it good near Fairborn; then to proceed across to the Macon road and tear it up thoroughly; to avoid, as far as possible, the enemy's infantry, but to attack any cavalry he could find.”
1 Sherman hoped this expedition would obviate the necessity of the contemplated grand movement of the army, and leave him in better position to take advantage of the result.
Kilpatrick made the prescribed movement with strict fidelity to orders.
When he reached the Macon road, a little above Jonesboroa, he was confronted by Ross's cavalry.
These he routed, and drove through Jonesboroa, when he began tearing up the track and destroying other of the railway property.
He had done but little mischief, when a brigade of infantry and some cavalry came up from the south, and compelled him to desist and fly. Making a circuit eastward, he again struck the road at Lovejoy's, below Jonesboroa, where he was met by a large force.
Through the opposing cavalry line he dashed, capturing and destroying a four-gun battery, excepting a single piece that he took with him, and securing and carrying away seventy prisoners. Sweeping around eastward again, he reached Decatur on the 22d,
and on the same day proceeded to Sherman's Headquarters.
Kilpatrick declared that he had so much damaged the Macon railway, that it would be useless to the Confederates for ten days. But Sherman was not satisfied that the expedition would produce the desired result, so ha renewed his order for a movement of the whole army.
The siege of Atlanta was raised on the night of the 25th, and all munitions of war, supplies, and the sick and wounded men, were sent to Sherman's intrenched position on the Chattahoochee, whither the Twentieth Corps (General Slocum's) marched for their protection.
In the grand movement that followed, the Fourth Corps (Stanley's) was on the extreme left, nearest the enemy.
The Army of the Tennessee (Howard's) drew out and moved rapidly in a circuit to the West Point road at Fairborn, where the Army of the Cumberland (Thomas's) came into position just above Howard's at Red Oak, and the Army of the Ohio (Schofield's) closed in upon Thomas's left, only a short distance from the strong Confederate works covering the junction of the roads at East Point.
So quietly, secretly, and quickly, were these movements performed, that Hood was not informed of them until Sherman was thoroughly at work
destroying the West Point railway over a distance of twelve miles.2 To that business the Union commander devoted
1 General Sherman's official report, September 15, 1864.
2 “Twelve and one-half miles were destroyed, the ties burned, and the iron rails heated and tortured by the utmost Ingenuity of old hands at the work. Several cuts were filled up with the trunks of trees, with logs, rock and earth, intermingled with loaded shells, prepared as torpedoes, to explode in the case of an attempt to clear them out.” --Sherman's Report.
In an interesting narrative of the services of the First District of Columbia Cavalry, while it was in the division of General Kautz, kindly furnished me by Colonel D. S. Curtiss, a member of that regiment, and the most conspicuous leader of charges upon railways in the business of destroying them, a vivid account is given of the methods employed in effectually ruining the roads. In his account of Kautz's raid from Bermuda Hundred, by way of Chesterfield Court-House [see page 328], Colonel Curtiss says, speaking of the destruction of a railway track: “It was done by detailing the men, dismounted, along the track, with levers, who lifted it up. All moved uniformly at the word of command, turning over long spaces, like sward or land-furrows: Then knocking the ties loose from the rails, the former were piled up, the latter laid upon them, and a fire kindled under, which, burning away, soon caused the rails to bend so badly as to be unfit for use. In this way many miles were quickly destroyed, at various places, on our march.” When there was time, the heated rails were bent around trees, and some were twisted into what the raiders called “Jeff Davis's neck-ties,” as seen on page 239.
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