BA004138
Sandersville, GA
Sherman’s troops entering Sandersville. From Harper’s Weekly
On the eve of the Civil War, Sandersville was a dusty village nestled in east-central Georgia. With a population of about five hundred people, the hamlet was a typical small Georgian settlement with roots in the colonial period.
When Sherman arrived in the village on November 25, he found only a handful of wooden shops, a few homes, three brick buildings, and a courthouse square. A Confederate cavalry unit under Joe Wheeler launched a brief defensive action, and Union prisoners taken from rebel stockades were massacred. Federal troops led by Sherman, however, brought superior force to bear on the town, compelling the defenders to quit Sandersville altogether on November 26. The triumphant Union general, who had frequently visited brutality and suffering upon civilians--ranging from freed blacks to ardent Confederate sympathizers--his army had encountered during the campaign, allowed his men to raze the courthouse ("a handsome Greek Revival building of stuccoed brick"), the local jail, and the railroad depot in the adjacent town of Tennille. Like so many other parts of Georgia, Sandersville was simply another refrain in Sherman's anthem to total war.
Sources: An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad By Claude Andrew Clegg, III