FEBRUARY 14, 1865:
Having had him destroy John Bell Hood’s Confederate
Army of Tennessee, Ulysses S. Grant today orders Major General George Thomas of
the now relatively inactive Army of The Cumberland to strike south from
Tennessee into Alabama. Grant’s ultimate goal is to wreck the industrial base
of Columbus, Georgia.
The
little river town on the eastern bank of the Chattahoochee River, powered by
the waters of Coweta Falls, has become a major center of Confederate industry.
Columbus is the prime
city of what is newly known as “the industrial heartland of the Confederacy,” what
we would call today a “Little Rust Belt” area stretching across central
Georgia, Alabama and eastern Mississippi. Built up just since the onset of the war, this
area is rich with natural resources, holds many factories, and has a local
population extremely loyal to the Confederate cause. It is also one of the last
remaining areas of the South that has not been ruined by the war.
The Army of The
Cumberland cuts this heartland right down the middle, destroying what is left
of the South’s small industrial base. The devastation wrought causes the local
economy to collapse for decades, but in the short term what was left of the Southern
war machine seized up, dealing yet another fatal blow to the Old South.
