November 20, 1864---"Damned Yanquis!"

NOVEMBER 20, 1864:      

Rebel forces in Georgia led by General Joseph Wheeler C.S.A. stand and fight at Clinton, Walnut Creek, East Macon, and Griswoldville, all trying to delay or divert Sherman’s March To The Sea which has entered its fifth destructive day. The skirmishes are brief, loud, and ineffective. 

After the war, Wheeler returns to service with the United States Army, and as an old man leads troops in Cuba (including Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders) during the Spanish-American War. Wheeler, who is suffering from incidents of dementia by 1898 sometimes forgets whether he is fighting the Spaniards or the Yankees. 

Joshua Hill, once a U.S. Senator and friend of the Sherman-Ewing family, now a C.S. Senator, asks “Cump” Sherman to spare his hometown of Madison, Georgia. Sherman agrees not to burn the town, but it is heavily looted as Union troops pass through.