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Chapter 7
LAST MISSISSIPPI OPERATIONS
During Marion Baxter?s furlough to Mississippi City, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred with the 20th Regiment. It, together with the rest of Gen. Loring?s Division, was stationed near Canton, where reasonably comfortable winter quarters had been established. Huts, makeshift cabins, tents with stovepipes -all made some sort of contribution to the comfort of officers and men. They also contributed a multitude of ingenious designs, each attesting to the Southern soldier?s genius for protecting himself against the elements.
Pvt. Baxter slipped back easily into the routine of Company E and the companionship of his fellow soldiers from the Mississippi coast. Life in camp that January 1864 took on more of the qualities of garrison life than a campaign. There was of course guard duty and picketing, drills and fatigue details, and a dozen other items that made soldiering what it had always been. But for the most part it was a quiet and uneventful life, with Yanks and Rebs seeing little or nothing of each other.
But this lull of no contact changed abruptly when Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman on Feb. 3, 1864, began to move his Federal troops out of Vicksburg for a strike at Meridian, some 120 miles due east. Meridian, although its population numbered fewer than a thousand, was likely the most important single city in Mississippi still in Confederate hands. Here the Southern Railroad of Mississippi meets the north-south line of the Mobile and Ohio, while from the east comes the Alabama & Mississippi Railroad. Numerous shops served the railroads, and in addition, there were huge warehouses packed with military supplies. Equally important were the ammunition magazines and the hospitals. Sherman reasoned that capture and destruction of Meridian and of as many miles of railroad track as possible would virtually put the Confederate forces out of business in Mississippi.
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