Sherman at Wesleyan Hall, November 1863

By: Kurt Vetters

Few names stir stronger emotions in Civil War memory than Federal General William Tecumseh Sherman. His 1864 campaigns through Georgia and South Carolina left a trail of destruction so complete that his own words to General Ulysses S. Grant still echo: “I can…make Georgia howl.”(1)

The roots of that devastation reached northwest Alabama months earlier. In April 1863, Union Generals Grenville Dodge and Francis Cornyn swept across the region with troops from Missouri and Kansas—men hardened by the brutal guerrilla warfare of their home states. Their passage through north Alabama brought widespread ruin, including the burning of LaGrange College on April 27, 1863.(2)

Later that year, after the Confederate victory at Chickamauga and the siege of Union forces in Chattanooga, Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee was ordered to move rapidly from Mississippi to Georgia. Delayed south of the Tennessee River after the Battle of Little Bear Creek in October, Sherman redirected his march northward through Florence. He arrived in November 1863, establishing his headquarters on the grounds of Wesleyan College while his army crossed the river. General Dodge’s command was the last to reach the city.

Wesleyan’s president, Robert Young, had reason to fear the worst. He knew Dodge’s men had burned LaGrange earlier that year, and he worried the same fate awaited Wesleyan.(3) Tensions were already high: two of Sherman’s headquarters clerks had been kidnapped by Confederate guerrillas only days before and returned unharmed only after Sherman issued stern threats to Florence’s civic leaders.

Determined to protect his campus, Young approached Sherman directly and requested a written guarantee of safety, something he could show Dodge as the troops passed through. Sherman agreed. His letter spared Wesleyan from destruction, preserving the campus for generations to come.

Citations

1. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Volume 39, Part 3, 162.

2. Oscar Jackson, “The Colonel’s Diary; Journals Kept Before and During the Civil War by the Late Colonel Oscar L. Jackson...Sometime Commander of the 63rd Regiment O. V. I.,” Internet Archive, 1922, 92-93.

3. “Reminiscences: Robert Anderson Young,” Internet Archive, Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Barbee & Smith,1900, 80-81.