On the road to Atlanta – Capturing Sherman!

Today’s post is short but fascinating:

One Federal casualty proved especially notable, causing a moment of astonishment in the Confederate ranks. On the morning of July 7th, 1864, with both armies still on the north bank of the Chattahoochee River, Col. Francis Sherman of the 88th Illinois, Howard’s chief of staff, mistakenly rode into the picket line of Brig. Gen. John Adams’s Mississippi Brigade, of Loring’s Division. General Sherman had traversed that same area earlier, which was in a “dense woods,” and where the Union IV Corps skirmishers had not yet connected with Palmer’s XIV Corps line. “He could hardly realize where he was,” recalled Howard, “when he saw the rifles pointed right at him, and heard a clear-cut command to surrender. As his name was Sherman the rumor ran through the Confederate army that the terrible ‘Tecumseh’ had been captured,” though it was soon determined that he was not that Sherman. Lieutenant William E. Sykes, the 43rd Mississippi’s Adjutant, briefly interviewed the despondent Federal, who stated “that all their Generals have the highest admiration for Gen. Johnston as a military leader. They acknowledge that they fear him.” Sherman wrote that he was subsequently “put in confinement in Atalanta in an enclosure of half an acre in a dirty barrack building” holding “five officers and sixty men.” Howard lamented that “no officer could have been more missed or regretted . . . than he. Our picket line was completed, but this did not relieve us from the chagrin caused by the loss, which slight care might have prevented.”[1]

Sherman was moved to Macon, location of an officers’ prison, where as the ranking prisoner he took command of about 1,500 men. Most of these, he noted, were from “the Potomac Army, But few officers rec’d from Sherman’s army at this point.

Exchanged in October, 1864, Sherman ended up with the Army of the Potomac, serving as an AIG for the Cavalry Corps. He was present at Appomattox. After the war he returned to Chicago.

[1]C. Knight Aldrich, ed., Quest for a Star The Civil War Letters and Diaries of Colonel Francis T. Sherman of the 88th Illinois (Knoxville, TN: 1999), 124-25; Howard, Autobiography, 1: 600; “Dear Wife,” July 9, 1864, William E. Sykes Letters, Mississippi State University, Starkville. Hereafter, MissU.