Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Middle Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, 1863–1865 275
cent of their casualties in the entire raid. The Western and Atlantic Railroad, its
damaged stretches soon repaired, was safe for the time being. 38
Meanwhile, Sherman’s armies continued to menace Atlanta. They seized the
city’s remaining rail outlet and cut the last telegraph wire on 31 August, causing
Hood’s force to withdraw to the south the next day. Still, Hood sought to disrupt the
federal supply line and force Sherman out of northern Georgia. On 11 September, he
sent a telegram to Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, recently appointed to command Confederate
troops in Alabama and Mississippi: “Hasten [Maj. Gen. Nathan B.] Forrest and
get him operating upon Sherman’s communications. It is all-important.” Two days
later, Taylor replied that Forrest had his orders and would move north soon. 39
The 14th USCI had been patrolling the railroads that ran into Chattanooga from
the west and north as part of a 3,500-man force sent to protect the railroads from
Wheeler’s cavalry. On 1 September, the men clambered into boxcars for the 130-mile
ride to Murfreesborough, which they reached at midnight. They did not see Chattanooga
again for twelve days, by which time they had traveled though the country
around Pulaski, Tennessee, and Athens, Alabama, “a scout of . . . over 500 miles
travelling by rail and foot,” Chaplain Elgin wrote. “And in all this time my Regt.
did not fire a shot. . . . The expedition results in forcing Wheeler to leave our communications
and retreat south of the Ten[nessee River]. In all other respects dull and
fruitless.” Uneventful as it may have been, the expedition had achieved its purpose. 40
Union generals were fully aware of the importance of railroads and were as
keen to protect their own supply lines as they were to destroy those of the enemy.
Earthworks and blockhouses with garrisons of various sizes dotted rail lines, especially
at points where Confederate raiders might burn one of the trestles that spanned
waterways and valleys. Staff officers in the Department of the Cumberland included
a major whose title was inspector of fortifications and two lieutenants who served as
assistant inspectors of blockhouses and railroad defenses. In mid-September 1864,
the garrisons on the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad at Athens, Alabama, and Sulphur
Branch Trestle, ten miles to the north, consisted of about twelve hundred officers
and men. Eight hundred of them belonged to companies drawn from three USCI
regiments: the 106th, 110th, and 111th. 41
Forrest’s Confederates numbered about forty-five hundred. Four hundred of
them marched on foot, expecting to get mounts as soon as they were able to rout
a large enough body of federal cavalry. The column drew near Athens late in the
afternoon of 23 September. As the troopers exchanged shots with Union pickets, the
garrison commander, Col. Wallace Campbell, arrived by rail with a party of one hun-
38 OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 1, pp. 619–20; pt. 2, pp. 506 (quotation), 508–09; pt. 3, pp. 957, 961.
W. Elgin Jnl, 18 Aug 1864 (“This was”), W. L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor; Edward G. Longacre, A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007), p. 170; Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last
Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 165.
39 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 2, pp. 778, 831 (“Hasten Forrest”); Anne J. Bailey, The Chessboard
of War: Sherman and Hood in the Autumn Campaigns of 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2000), pp. 19–20; Thomas E. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), pp. 456, 464–65.
40 OR, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 2, p. 497; NA M594, roll 207, 14th USCI; Elgin Jnl, 1 and 12 Sep 1864
(quotation).
41 OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, pt. 1, pp. 508, 520, 523, 535; NA M594, roll 216, 110th and 111th USCIs.