previous next
[411] South Carolina, to be there about the time you would reach Columbia. He could either have drawn off the enemy's cavalry from you, or would have succeeded in destroying railroads, supplies, and other material which you could not reach. At that time the Richmond papers were full of accounts of your movements, and gave daily accounts of movements in West North Carolina; I supposed all the time it was Stoneman. You may judge my surprise when I afterward learned that Stoneman was still in Louisville, Kentucky, and that the troops in North Carolina were Kirk's forces.

In order that Stoneman might get off without delay, I told Thomas that three thousand men would be sufficient for him to take. In the meantime I had directed Sheridan to get his cavalry ready, and as soon as the snow in the mountains melted sufficiently, to start for Staunton, and go on and destroy the Virginia Central road and the canal. Time advanced, and he set the 28th of February for starting. I informed Thomas, and directed him to change the course of Stoneman towards Lynchburg, to destroy the road in Virginia as near to that place as possible. Not hearing from Thomas, I telegraphed him about the 12th [March] to know if Stoneman was yet off. He replied that he had not yet started, but that he, Thomas, would start that day for Knoxville to get him off as soon as possible. . . . Sheridan has made his raid with splendid success, so far as heard. I am looking for him at White House.

Thus Stoneman was first ordered to co-operate with Sherman in his march through South Carolina; but Sherman passed through the state before Stoneman started. He was then directed to move into

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
George Stoneman (7)
George H. Thomas (4)
John Sherman (2)
Tuesday Sheridan (2)
Kirk (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
February 28th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: