What would you have done had you been Hood or another general in the West?
If I was Hood I would have shadowed Sherman deep into Georgia and attempted to counter attack him near Savannah while his supply lines were at his longest.
Grant gets his war off to an auspicious start today in 1861
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On the 7th November 1861 Brigadier General Grant fought and claimed victory in a small battle, his first in the Civil War, at Belmont, Missouri.
He had taken 3000 men on river boats from Cairo, Ilinois, in a very hush hush operation and disembarked 9 miles above Columbus, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi. His men cheered when they realised there were being taken South into combat and not up the Ohio.
The Southern commander, the former Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana and West Pointer and good friend of the Confederate President, dispatched a Tennessean by the name of Gideon Pillow with 2500 Southern troops to stop him.
The Southern troops were routed and the situation only rescued when reinforcements in the shape of another Tennessee General, Ben Cheatham appeard with another 2500 men.
Grant withdrew. Both sides claimed victory.
The Northern soldiers gained experience and gave their President Lincoln his first real victory of the war.
Casualties were about 600 apiece. -
Go Grant! Southerners should have got an Anglican minister to command I guess :D
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