Wheeler, Wheeler, Wheeler...I've heard that name.
"Wheeler's command drove the Federal advance from Sandersvile after a brief skirmish and settled in the town for the night. This rare, if temporary, success inspired a Sandersville lynch mob to murder some ofWheeler's captives. A mob appeared near midnight -- probably a band of Confederate troops -- pushed aside the frightened guards, carried the Federal prisoners into a nearby field, and shot them down."
--Sherman's March" p. 75, by Burke Davis
"As they had in the previous case of the unknown girl raped by federal soldiers near Aiken, Wheeler's troopers took immediate and impulsive revenge. Galloping along a country road in tbe tracks of bluecoat raiders, the rebel troopers overtook the supposed rapists, killed them at once, cut their throats and left the bodies at the roadside bearing a sign: THESE ARE THE SEVEN.
This incident opened a new phase of grim retribution between the armies. Almost daily, other Federal soldiers were found at the roadside, within plain view of the blue columns, lying with slashed throats. General Slocum reported finding twenty-one bodies of his soldiers tumbled into a ravine.
On February 22, eighteen of Killpatrick's men were killed in this way aad some of the bodies bore crudely lettered messages: DEATH TO FORAGERS. In an effort to halt the murders, Sherman ordered his commander to kill a Confederate prisoner for each such Federal corpse they found, and the impulse to revenge became official army policy.
Sherman realized that his bummers and foragers had prompted the executions by the Confederates, and told his generals: "If our foragers commit excesses, punish them yourself, but never let an enemy judge between our men and the law."
Kilpatrick sent a message to Wheeler describing the murder of eighteen soldiers, all of whom, he said, had been slain after their surrender: "Unless some satisfactory explanation is made to me before sundown, February 23, I will cause 18 of your men, now my prisoners, to be shot at that hour, and if this cowardly act is repeated, I will not only retaliate . . . but there shall not be a house left within reach of my scouting parties on my line of march . . . I know of no other way to intimidate cowards."[ Wheeler agreed to investigate]...Kilpatrick agreed to take no further action at that time, but ended the exchange with a threat that any further murders would be avenged.
--"Sherman's March" pp 187-88 by Burke Davis.
Walt