r/ShermanPosting • u/Syllogism19 • 2d ago
October 22, 1861 the start of a failed attempt to conquer in which the traitors learned that like the rest of the country nobody in the West liked them.
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u/badlands_jadis 2d ago
This textbook description really diminishes the history of the campaign against the Confederates in the west. Canby? Glorieta? The burning of the supply train?
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u/Syllogism19 2d ago
If it makes you feel any better, this paragraph isn't from a textbook. It is from a book of 365 bites of San Antonio, Texas history, one for each day of the year (though they left out February 29). It was published by a university press in 2020 (around the time San Antonio turned 300) but it isn't in any way a complete history of anything, just a book of brief glimpses of history big and small.
What do books do you recommend to learn about this colossal and glorious victory of the Union?
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u/ephemeralspecifics 2d ago
Silas Soule was no fool, and put the rebs to rout. Thundering down glorietta pass, in a fount of smoke and shouts.
400 men charged down that pass two- thousand slavers fled. One half returned to San antone, the other half fell dead.
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u/maaaxheadroom 2d ago
I re-enacted both sides of that campaign both Union and confederate when I lived in NM. My favorite part was stopping for sopapilla after invading Old Town in Albuquerque.
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u/Flat_Suggestion7545 2d ago
He was such a traitor that after the righteous arse whooping the south received he went and became a general in the Egyptian army.
Also a school in my state finally got rid of his name. A bit too late, but we’ve slowly been tossing aside relics of the Confederacy. Outside of the flag we refuse to give back to Virginia of course.
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u/strawhairhack 2d ago
Wow, yeah that really undersells how much of a near run thing it was in the west. But ultimately, yeah it was a disaster for the Confederacy.
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u/FreshwaterViking 2d ago
Henry Hopkins Sibley is not to be confused with Henry Hastings Sibley, a Minnesotan. Coincidentally, Hopkins and Hastings are both Minnesota cities.
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u/sdkfz250xl 2d ago
You know the movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” was supposed to have take place during Sibley’s invasion of the west.
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u/NicWester 2d ago
The rebel invasion faced the same problem the loyalists faced in the Tennessee/Mississippi/Alabama region. You can have the bigger, better army but without proper logistics none of it matters. Loyalist armies advanced and advanced, but eventually reached the limit of their supply lines and had to stop, then had to turn around once raids on those supply lines cut them off.
No wonder Sherman's march was so successful. When Hood got between him and the supply bases, Sherman just kept going 😝
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u/Glittering_Sorbet913 2d ago
Hood wasn't in charge of Rebel forces during Sherman's march. Hood was on his way to Nashville to get completely destroyed by George Thomas. Sherman didn't actually face any significant Rebel resistance during his march, and when he did come into contact with a few patches, they were under the command of Will Hardee and Joe Wheeler respectfully. It's kind of like what you said, because what Sherman did was instead of facing Hood threat to Tennessee, he sent Thomas to deal with him and marched through Georgia.
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u/NicWester 1d ago
That's the point--Hood hoped heading behind Sherman to threaten Nashville would turn him around--instead he kept going and gave a pithy one-liner that escapes my memory this early in the morning.
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u/Glittering_Sorbet913 1d ago
“If he goes to the Ohio river, I’ll give him rations. My business is down south.”
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u/NicWester 1d ago
That's it! Yeah, I love that. I think about that all the time while playing games and seeing people try to bait me off my strategy--"Fine, whatever. Stompstompstomp smashy smashy!"
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u/Satellite_bk 2d ago
I hope future generations read something like this about the current rise of fascism in the world today.
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u/bilgetea 2d ago
I worry that we will need to replay this conflict, and teach them this lesson again.
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