Meridian

Between February 14 and 20, 1864, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led the Union Army of the Tennessee on a march from Vicksburg, Mississippi, toward Meridian, seizing the latter city and leaving substantial destruction behind him. Historians tend to regard this operation as a forerunner to the later March to the Sea, also called the Savannah campaign, since Sherman's route across Mississippi and his return trip left a wide corridor of ruin through the central part of the state.

Supporting the main advance were two additional columns. One, under Brigadier General William Sooy Smith, had several objectives: crushing the Confederate cavalry force commanded by Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, keeping open lines of communication with Middle Tennessee, and freeing up troops stationed along the Mississippi River so they could join the Atlanta campaign instead. Preserving those communication lines meant safeguarding the Mobile and Ohio Railroad as well. The other supporting force, led by Colonel James Henry Coates, pushed northward along the Yazoo River and held Yazoo City, Mississippi, for a brief period.

Background

Following the fighting at Chattanooga, Sherman's Union troops made their way back to Vicksburg before turning east with Meridian as their objective. That city mattered greatly as a rail hub, and it also contained a Confederate arsenal, a military hospital, a stockade for prisoners of war, and the offices of several state departments.

Taking Meridian was Sherman's goal, and he intended to continue on toward Selma, Alabama if conditions allowed. Beyond this, he sought to pressure Mobile sufficiently that Confederate commanders would need to strengthen its defenses. On February 3, 1864, Sherman departed Vicksburg leading the bulk of his army, some 20,000 troops. At the same time, he directed Brig. Gen. William Sooy Smith to bring 7,000 cavalrymen down from Memphis, Tennessee, traveling south through Okolona, Mississippi, along the route of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, so that this force could join him at Meridian.

March to Meridian

Facing this advance, Confederate President Jefferson Davis pulled in troops from other localities to meet the danger. Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk, commanding Confederate forces in the region, gathered several commands together near Morton, Mississippi. With only around 9,000 men at his disposal and badly outnumbered, Polk chose against engaging Sherman's infantry directly. Instead he sent his cavalry north under Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Lee to join forces with Forrest, aiming to strike at Sooy Smith's cavalry as it advanced, hoping to wipe out that portion of the Union army. His infantry commanders, meanwhile, received flexible instructions permitting withdrawal whenever circumstances called for it.

Sherman, marching toward Meridian, staged a series of diversionary movements elsewhere in the state so Polk could not be certain where the real blow would land. He also arranged for Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks, who led the Department of the Gulf out of New Orleans, Louisiana, to position vessels as though an assault on Mobile were imminent. This kept Confederate reinforcements tied down at Mobile rather than rushing to defend Meridian. Adding to Polk's uncertainty, Sherman dispatched gunboats and foot soldiers up the Yazoo River as another distraction.

Lee's horsemen clashed with Sherman's column at intervals along the way. The closer Sherman got to Meridian, the tougher the opposition became as Confederate units joined together, yet his advance continued without interruption. On February 14, Polk pulled his forces out of Meridian and retreated toward Demopolis, Alabama. The withdrawal was executed with careful timing and skill: nearly all supplies at both Meridian and Enterprise were rescued, with the sole exception of corn still in the shuck, and virtually every piece of shop equipment and rolling stock, apart from eight or ten railcars, was carried off to safety. Sherman's troops entered Meridian on the very day Polk's men departed.

Smith's troubles

Polk pressed Forrest and Lee to bring down Sooy Smith, arguing that success against him would spell doom for Sherman's entire force. In his own words, cutting Smith off from gathering forage and supplies would leave Sherman's men to starve, a fate he considered just as ruinous as defeat on the battlefield. Smith's advance toward Meridian never succeeded, for Forrest's men blocked his path at West Point, Mississippi, and drove him into retreat toward Tennessee. Spotting the withdrawal, Forrest ordered his men in pursuit and overtook the fleeing column at Okolona, Mississippi. There, on February 22, 1864, Confederate forces dealt Smith another blow, sending him fleeing at a faster pace and wiping out Sherman's left flank for the remainder of the campaign.

Destruction of Meridian

On February 14, 1864, Sherman's forces arrived at Meridian. He had no idea yet that Smith had already been beaten at West Point, nor that another defeat awaited him at Okolona, so he lingered there hoping Smith would show up, finally abandoning the wait on the morning of February 20 and heading back toward Vicksburg. During those days of waiting, he instructed his men to erase the town from existence, tearing up rail lines and setting fire to large portions of the surrounding area. The tally of destruction included 115 miles of track, 61 bridges, 6,075 feet of trestle work, twenty locomotives, twenty-eight railcars, and three steam sawmills. Once the Union column moved on, residents found themselves without food for several days, though no one had been physically harmed during the raid itself. Surveying what remained of Meridian's warehouses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and military camps, Sherman is said to have remarked that the place, along with its depots and storehouses, simply no longer existed.

Polk offered a very different account to President Davis. He claimed that General Lee's cavalry had pressed Sherman so tightly that his men could never spread out to forage properly, and cited as proof that a herd of his own hogs had traveled east within six miles of the Union line the entire way and reached safety untouched. According to Polk, Sherman lost all the rolling stock belonging to the railroads between the Pearl and Tombigbee Rivers, along with the valuable supplies that had been stored at depots along those lines. He added that repair crews were already at work rebuilding the damaged track and that he intended to push that effort hard. By his estimate, roughly fifty miles of road had been wrecked, radiating outward from Meridian along four separate lines. Polk's laborers finished restoring the railroad by March 24, 1864, prompting the Memphis Daily Appeal to remark that the speed of fixing the Mobile and Ohio line rivaled Northern efficiency itself.

Leaving Meridian and moving west through Canton, Mississippi, Sherman remained ignorant of what had befallen Smith and spent this stretch of the march searching for him. Only upon returning to Vicksburg did he learn the truth about Smith's defeats. Though he had wrecked significant Confederate rail and transport infrastructure, he was not able to push his campaign further into Alabama. Later, in his 1885 Memoirs, Sherman insisted he had never planned to march on Mobile, pointing to a January 31 letter he wrote to General Banks from Vicksburg before setting out for Meridian, which he said proved he meant only to maintain the appearance of a coming land assault on Mobile, having already promised Banks he would be back in Vicksburg by March 1.