Sherman at Decatur

Sherman's two army corps converged on Decatur on 12 February 1864, and most of the county seat burned. Local accounts differ on which corps set the fires. Sherman spent the night in a double log house whose owner, a woman not named in local accounts, agreed to feed him and his aides. Pistol shots woke him. One account has him taking cover in a corncrib while his staff drove the Confederate cavalry off. The house stood on a lot that now adjoins the telephone company. Foraging parties stripped nearly every road leading into town.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dunn's Falls Water Park — 22 mi
  A 65-foot waterfall on the Chunky River built in the 1850s by an Irish immigrant, with a working water wheel and an 1857 grist mill, south of Meridian.
• Highland Park Dentzel Carousel — 23 mi
  The last two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in the world, in its original carousel house in Meridian's Highland Park, a National Historic Landmark since 1987.
• Old Neshoba County Jail — 23 mi
  The 1955 jail in downtown Philadelphia where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were held on June 21, 1964, hours before they were murdered.
• Chahta Immi Cultural Center — 24 mi
  The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians' own museum and cultural center at Pearl River, with basketry, artifacts and the tribe's guidance on what visitors may see.

More markers nearby

• Medgar Evers — steps away
• Grierson's Raid — 8.8 mi
• Confederate Hospital — 8.8 mi
• Ross Alexander Collins — 16 mi