Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 28) inflict more punishment of the state’s population. The Meridian expedition was a tuneup for his march through Georgia nine months later. “I got back from Meridian yesterday, and am now hurrying down to see General Banks as to some of the details of the expedition against Shreveport,” he wrote on February 29: My movement to Meridian stampeded all Alabama. [Lieutenant General Leonidas] Polk retreated across the Tombigbee and left me to break railroad and smash things at pleasure, and I think it is well done. Weather and everything favored me, and I do not regret that the enemy spared me battle at so great a distance out from the river. It would have been terrible to have been encumbered with hundreds of wounded. Our loss was trifling, and we broke absolutely and effectually a full hundred miles of railroad at and around Meridian. No car can pass through that place this campaign. We lived off the country and made a swath of desolation 50 miles broad across the State of Mississippi, which the present generation will not forget. There were twenty-two regiments in the contingent from Sherman’s army commanded by A. J. Smith in the Red River campaign. Nineteen of the twenty-two as well as their commander had returned from the Meridian expedition less than two weeks before they boarded transports in Vicksburg. Apparently, these soldiers brought their newly-acquired, hard attitude toward war with them to Louisiana. “The inhabitants hereabout are pretty tolerably frightened,” Brigadier General T. Kilby Smith, one of A. J. Smith’s division commanders and a veteran of the Meridian expedition, wrote to his mother from Alexandria during the trip up river. “Our Western troops are tired of shilly shally, and this year will deal their blows very heavily. The people will now be terribly scourged. Quick, sharp, decisive, or if not decisive, staggering blows will soon show them that we mean business.” If Kilby Smith and his men felt that way before the battles at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, we can only imagine how they felt after the retreat to Alexandria. A. J. Smith’s troops had the prerequisites needed to burn Alexandria — a good opportunity and a bad attitude, but these two factors alone can not excuse what happened. Where was the military discipline that should have kept these men in line? During the Red River campaign they were not serving under Sherman, and Banks had issued a specific order against the wanton destruction of Alexandria. “You are hereby directed MUTINY IN THE RANKS the rear of the column on its march.” Banks’s order was clear and precise, but, apparently, it had no effect. The main reason for the lapse was that Banks left town long before the rest of the army pulled out, and his absence was compounded by another development that did not bode well for Alexandria, the loss of Banks’s ability to command. The humiliating end to a campaign that began with such high hopes had angered and demoralized the men, and now they hooted at Banks behind his back when he rode by. For his part, Banks had lost his composure, and the men were quick to notice. “Gen. Banks is awfully scared,” a Union soldier wrote to his sister from Alexandria. The erosion of Banks’s authority was especially true among to detail a force of 500 men from your command to protect the town of Alexandria when the army shall leave its present position, and to bring up the rear guard, taking every precaution possible to [prevent] any conflagration or other act which would give notice to the enemy of the movements of the army,” Banks had informed his Chief of Cavalry on May 9th. “Officers of responsibility and character should be selected for this duty,” he added, “and they should be notified that the will be held responsible for the acts of the men under their command. They will occupy the town until all persons connected with the army have left it, and then cover the officers and men in the contingent from Sherman’s army. A. J. Smith had chaffed under Banks’s direction throughout the campaign, but Banks’s control over Smith and his men had evaporated when Banks had issued orders at Grand Ecore to continue the retreat to Alexandria. When Smith heard of Banks’s decision, he could not believe that the army was going to retreat again. He was accustomed to serving under Grant and Sherman and could not stomach Banks’s timidity. Smith found himself becoming more and more angry, and one evening he encountered two of Banks’s division commanders, Major General William B. Franklin and Brigadier General William H. Emory, along with some officers of lower rank. 28 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008
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