"Shannon’s Scouts vs. Sherman’s Armies" Topic

"By late January 1865, the death knell was tolling loudly for the Confederacy. It was a month after the fall of Savannah, Ga., the finale to Union Gen. William T. Sherman's March to the Sea. On Jan. 21, as his army rested in Savannah, Sherman penned a letter to Gen. James H. Wilson, commander of the federal cavalry. Using his typically brash and cocksure language, Sherman congratulated Wilson and himself on the success of the march. "I Knocked daylight through Georgia, and in retreating to s[outh] like a sensible man I gathered up some plunder and walked into this beautiful City," Sherman wrote, "whilst you & Thomas gave Hood & Forest (sic) a taste of what they have to Expect by trying to meddle with our Conquered Territory."
The two Union generals were already preparing the second phase of their master plan: the Carolinas Campaign. Sherman would march north through North and South Carolina, while Wilson would sweep west across Alabama. They intended to combine forces with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's armies in Virginia and finally face Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Petersburg, Va. But while the Confederates were still staggering from their losses in Georgia and might have felt the noose tightening, they didn't plan on acquiescing to Sherman. They had a few final tricks in mind.
If the Confederates couldn't defeat the Union armies head to head, they still could fall back on the sort of fast-moving cavalry tactics at which they had so often excelled. Rebel commanders ordered Capt. Alexander May Shannon to gather an elite group of 20 to 30 men from a crack Texas cavalry regiment to go on high-risk scouting missions around Sherman's forces – if not to defeat them, then at least to slow and weaken them before they got to Grant…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand