The Horse Holder

During the siege of Atlanta in the American Civil War, General Sherman ordered a series of Union cavalry raids behind Confederate lines to destroy railroad facilities and cut off the source of supplies to Atlanta to force the surrender of the city. One of those raids was led by General Stoneman, who not only planned to lead five thousand Union cavalrymen to destroy a railroad works but also planned to then continue south to Macon, Georgia. Once there, he intended to capture the city along with its notorious Camp Oglethorpe prison and free the fifteen hundred Union officers imprisoned there. Macon, Georgia, is approximately 160 miles south of the Union lines along the Chattahoochee River just north of Atlanta. If successful, Stonemans raiders would then have to fight their way back north to the Union lines and somehow manage to bring fifteen hundred weak and sick men along with them. This is the story of one young soldier from Illinois who took part in that raid and what happened to him and his three squad mates as they tried to make their way back to the Union lines and safety. Traveling at night and hiding by day, progress back north will be much slower and much more dangerous than the original ride south to Macon. Failure on their part will either end in death or imprisonment in the notorious Andersonville prison.

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