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I start in about three days with seven, thousand men to Meridian via Pontotoc. Demonstrate on Decatur, to hold Roddy. W. SOOY SMITH, Brigadier-General, Chief of Cavalry, Military Division of the Mississippi. MAYWOOD, ILLINOIS, July 9,1875 General W. T. SHERMAN, Commander-in-Chief, United States Army. SIR: Your letter of July 7th is just received.
In this we failed utterly, because General W. Sooy Smith did not fulfill his orders, which were clear and specific, as contained in my letter of instructions to him of January 27th, at Memphis, and my personal explanations to him at the same time.
General J. D. WEBSTER, Chicago, Illinois DEAR GENERAL: General W. Sooy Smith feels aggrieved and wronged by my account of his part in the Meridian campaign, in my "Memoirs," pages 394, 395, and properly appeals to me for correction. I have offered to modify any words or form of expression that he may point out, but he asks me to completely change the whole that concerns him.
We at once set to work to destroy an arsenal, immense storehouses, and the railroad in every direction. We staid in Meridian five days, expecting every hour to hear of General Sooy Smith, but could get no tidings of him whatever. A large force of infantry was kept at work all the time in breaking up the Mobile & Ohio Railroad south and north; also the Jackson & Selma Railroad, east and west.
At Memphis I found Brigadier-General W. Sooy Smith, with a force of about twenty-five hundred cavalry, which he had by General Grant's orders brought across from Middle Tennessee, to assist in our general purpose, as well as to punish the rebel General Forrest, who had been most active in harassing our garrisons in West Tennessee and Mississippi.
We reached our camps on the 27th of July. Meantime, a division of troops, commanded by Brigadier-General W. Sooy Smith, had been added to my corps. General Smith applied for and received a sick-leave on the 20th of July; Brigadier-General Hugh Ewing was assigned to its command; and from that time it constituted the Fourth Division of the Fifteenth Army Corps.
A chief part of the enterprise was to destroy the rebel cavalry commanded by General Forrest, who were a constant threat to our railway communications in Middle Tennessee, and I committed this task to Brigadier-General W. Sooy Smith.
I was to take the Sixteenth Corps, which was then located on the line of the Nashville and Decatur road, together with about 10,000 cavalry that General William Sooy Smith had concentrated near Nashville, and sweep down through Alabama, Northern Mississippi, and Western Tennessee, attacking any forces of the enemy that might be met, and destroying all the railroads and provisions that had been stored in that country, this with a view of making it difficult for any of the confederate armies to again occupy the territory, so as to enable Sherman and Grant, when the spring and summer campaign came on, to utilize all the Union troops that had been occupying that country.
He spent several days in Meridian in thoroughly destroying the railroad to the north and south, and also for the purpose of hearing from Sooy Smith, who he supposed had met Forrest before this time and he hoped had gained a decisive victory because of a superiority of numbers. Hearing nothing of him, however, he started on his return trip to Vicksburg.
We reached our camps on the 27th of July. Meantime, a division of troops, commanded by Brigadier-General W. Sooy Smith, had been added to my corps. General Smith applied for and received a sick-leave on the 20th of July; Brigadier-General Hugh Ewing was assigned to its command; and from that time it constituted the Fourth Division of the Fifteenth Army Corps.
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