"Encourage the militia in all manner of ways. I know the poorer classes, the working men, are Union, and I would not mind the croaking of the richer classes. Their power is passing from their hands, and they talk of the vulgarity of the new regime; but such arguments will be lost on you. Power and success will soon replace this class of grumblers, and they will gradually disappear as a political power."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MERIDIAN RAID. -A NEW COMMAND.

MCPHERSON'S Seventeenth corps was still at Vicksburg; part of Hurlbut's sixteenth corps, with Smith's and Grierson's divisions of cavalry, at Memphis. Lieutenant-General Polk, who commanded the Confederate forces in Mississippi, was at Meridian with French's division, and had Loring's division at Canton; Forrest was, with twenty-five hundred irregular cavalry, in the northern part of the State; Cash's and Whitfield's brigades of cavalry patrolling from Yazoo City, along the Big Black to Port Gibson; and Wirt Adams' brigade doing similar duty in the rear of Port Hudson and Baton Rouge.

To the Army of the Tennessee was assigned by General Grant the duty of keeping open the Mississippi River and maintaining intact our control of the east bank.

Sherman decided to do this by occupying prominent points in the interior with small corps of observation, threatening a considerable radius; and to operate against any strong force of the enemy seeking to take a position on the river, by a movable column menacing its rear. To destroy the enemy's means of approaching the river with artillery and trains, he determined to organize a large column of infantry and move with it to Meridian, effectually breaking up the Southern Mississippi railway; while a cavalry force should move from Memphis to meet him, and perform the same work with respect to the Mobile and Ohio railway.

Brigadier-General William Sovy Smith, chief of cavalry on General Grant's staff, was placed in command of all the cavalry

of the department, and instructed to move with it from Memphis on or before the 1st of February, by way of Pontotoc, Okalona, and Columbus, to Meridian, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, so as to reach that place by the 10th. General Smith was specially instructed to disregard all small detachments of the enemy and all minor operations, and striking rapidly and effectually any large body of the enemy, to be at his destination precisely at the appointed time. Simultaneously the Eleventh Illinois Volunteers and a colored regiment, under Colonel Coates, of the former regiment, with five tin-clad gunboats under Lieutenant-Commander Owen, were sent up the Yazoo to ascend that stream and its tributaries as far as possible, so as to create a diversion and protect the plantations on the river; and Brigadier-General Hawkins was directed to patrol the country in the rear of Vicksburg towards the Big Black, and to collect some fifty skiffs, by means of which detachments of two or three hundred men might be moved at pleasure through the labyrinth of bayous between the Yazoo and the Mississippi, for the purpose of suppressing the depredations of the horde of guerillas then infesting that region.

Having made all these arrangements, Sherman himself, with two divisions of the Sixteenth Corps under Hurlbut, two divisions of the Seventeenth Corps under McPherson, and a brigade of cavalry under Colonel E. F. Winslow, Fourth Iowa Cavalry, marched from Vicksburg on the 3d of February. The expedition moved out in two columns, Hurlbut's corps by Messenger's, McPherson's along the railway. The former met the enemy at Joe Davis' plantation, the latter at Champion Hills, on the 5th, and for eighteen miles kept up a continual skirmish, without delaying the march of the troops, and entered Jackson the same night; thus entirely disconcerting the enemy's plan, which was at that moment in process of execution, of concentrating at that place Loring's and French's divisions, and Lee's division of cavalry. On the 6th, both columns being united, and McPherson taking the lead, crossed the Pearl River on a pontoon

bridge captured from the enemy the day before; on the 7th marched into Brandon; on the 8th reached Live Creek, five miles west of Morton; and on the 9th entered Morton, where McPherson's corps halted to destroy the railways for five miles around, and Hurlbut took the advance. From this point the troops moved by easy marches, with no greater opposition than the annoyance of foraging parties and stragglers by the enemy's cavalry hovering on the flanks, through Hillsboro' and Decatur to the Tallahatchie River, twenty-five miles west of Meridian, where the road was found obstructed by felled trees. Leaving the trains under sufficient guard, Sherman pushed on over these obstructions for the Ocktibbeha River, where he found the bridge burning; but in two hours the troops had built a new one, and at three and a half o'clock on the afternoon of the same day entered Meridian, with slight opposition. French's and Loring's divisions, of the Confederate troops, with General Polk in person, had evacuated the place during the morning and the preceding night, Lee's cavalry covering their retreat; and all the locomotives and cars, except one train found burning, had been removed towards Mobile and Selma. It was evidently impossible to overtake the enemy before they should cross the Tombigbee. The army therefore rested on the 15th, and on the 16th commenced the destruction of the railways centring in Meridian. The depots, storehouses, arsenals, offices, hospitals, hotels and cantonments in the town were burned, and during the next five days, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clambars and fire, Hurlburt's corps destroyed on the north and east sixty miles of ties and iron, one locomotive, and eight bridges; and McPherson's corps, on the south and west, fifty-five miles of railway, fifty-three bridges, 6,075 feet of trestle-work, nineteen locomotives, twenty-eight steam-cars, and three steam sawmills. Thus was completed the destruction of the railways for one hundred miles from Jackson to Meridian, and for twenty miles around the latter place, in so effectual a manner that they could not be used against us in the approaching campaigns.

The cavalry, under General W. Sovy Smith, had not arrived. As was afterwards learned, that officer had not left Memphis until the 11th of February; and had proceeded no further than West Point, from which place he turned back on the 22d, and rapidly retraced his steps to Memphis.

Ascertaining that the enemy's infantry had crossed the Tombigbee on the 17th of February, and hearing nothing of Smith, on the 20th General Sherman ordered McPherson to move slowly back on the main road, while he himself, with Hurlbut's corps and the cavalry, marched north, to feel for Smith. Sherman moved through Marion and Muckalusha-Old-Town to Union, whence he dispatched Colonel Winslow with three regiments of cavalry to Philadelphia and Louisville, fifty miles distant, towards Columbus, on the road by which Smith was expected to come; while the main body moved to Hillsboro', where, on the 23d, it was joined by McPherson's corps. On the 24th the army continued the march on two roads, and on the 25th and 26th crossed the Pearl River at Ratchcliffe Ferry and Edwards' Station, and bivouacked near Canton, leaving a division at the crossing to look for the cavalry. From Louisville, Colonel Winslow sent out two scouts to seek for Smith, and, swinging round through Kosciusko as ordered, rejoined the army at Canton, without news of the missing cavalry. The return march was unmolested.

About one thousand white refugees, four hundred prisoners, five thousand negroes, three thousand animals, and a large number of wagons, were brought in by the troops on their return. Our total loss was in killed, twenty-one; wounded, sixty-eight; missing, eighty-one; total, one hundred and seventy. During the entire expedition, the army subsisted chiefly upon the stores belonging to the enemy, and such as were found in the country. In spite of the failure of the cavalry, the isolation of Mississippi, which was the main object of the expedition, was accomplished, and after marching from three hundred and sixty to four hundred and fifty-three miles, and driving the enemy out of the State, within four weeks the army returned in better health and condition than when it