NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
March and April 1864
From The Missouri Democrat, Monday, March 7, 1864.
FROM MEMPHIS.
Particulars of Sherman’s Late Expedition.
[Special Dispatch to New York Tribune.]
WASHINGTON, March 4.—A dispatch dated Memphis, just received this evening, gives some new and interesting details of Sherman’s movements. The dispatch says, after having reached Meridian, Sherman sent out scouts to feel the ground and ascertain whether Logan, who had stared for Florence to meet him, and Smith and Grierson, on whose cavalry he relied to prosecute his march to Selma, were advancing.
Three days elapsed before he received any answer, but as his army had but limited rations, he, by a rapid movement which disconcerted the rebels, suddenly turned his back upon Selma and Mobile, and marched toward Logan who had already advanced to meet him, and by an audacious stroke of strategy placed himself at a distance of about 100 miles from Johnston’s flank, now menaced by his advance.
The dispatch says the rumor concerning an attack on Mobile and Selma by Sherman was simply meant to divert public attention from the real object of the expedition, which [illegible] at an invasion of Georgia, somewhere between Trenton and Lafayette.