Located in the eastern part of the state, the town was the junction of the Mobile and Ohio and the Jackson and Selma Railroads and a logistical center for the Confederates. In February, it became a focal point of a relatively forgotten campaign led by Maj. William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman hoped that this raid would not only deprive the Confederates of the use of the railroads, but to wreak havoc on the agricultural resources supplying the enemy between Vicksburg and Meridian in the hopes of neutralizing any enemy threat to Union commerce and movement along the Mississippi River.
You may register for the symposium here. The next several days were spent tearing up the railroad as well as destroying anything of value that could be used by the Confederates in the town. By March 6, they were safely back in Vicksburg. Today, there is a local Civil War Trail of Meridian and its vicinity. The rails would invariably bend from 30 to 40 degrees. When the middle section of the rail had become red hot and malleable, Union soldiers would man each end and twist the heated section around trees or telegraph poles, thus giving the appearance of either a Bow or Neck Tie.
Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address. Sign me up! Emerging Civil War. Skip to content. But when troops tore up the rails and then moved on, Confederate troops and workers would slip right back in and fix the rails within hours or days.
So, soon after Sherman began his drive toward Atlanta and what would eventually lead to his March to the Sea, he issued a new special order to his army. The soldiers usually did this by building the bonfire as described in the order and then wrapping the rails all the way around a tree. Twisting the rails around something allowed them to do the deed without having to heat the rails quite as hot. And while bent instead of twisted rails could be repaired, the rails on the trees were bent around back onto themselves, incorporating a small twist and leaving a tree in the middle of it.
Well-twisted rails had to be sent back to a foundry to be melted down, and the South simply did not have enough foundry space and manpower to do that for the majority of the damaged rails. This new tactic would sideline some rail lines for the duration of the war. Some would be rebuilt relatively quickly. The photo clearly shows that those rails have been bent, not twisted as Sherman ordered they would.
Sherman's neckties were a railway-destruction tactic used in the American Civil War. Named after Maj. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army , Sherman's neckties were railway rails destroyed by heating them until they were malleable and twisting them into loops resembling neckties, often around trees.
Since the Confederacy had limited supplies of iron, and few foundries to roll the rails, this destruction was very difficult to repair. They were also called Sherman's bow ties, [1] Sherman's hairpins or Jeff Davis hairpins. The neckties were created in accordance with an explicit order from Sherman in his Atlanta Campaign , dated July 18, After three days, only one Confederate railroad line leading into Atlanta remained intact.
Not all rail destruction followed Sherman's order; in May , Arthur Fremantle wrote in his diary that near Jackson, Mississippi, he saw piles of bent rails on cold embers, but does not say they were twisted. On the left of this photo by G.
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