Diary of Orrin Brown, on Smith’s Plantation northeast of Millen – southeast of Waynesboro, Georgia
Sunday–Dec. 4th
And then we had to go on Picket till daylight, we had Orders to march again this morning at 7AM, we marched about 16 miles today and went into camp at about 9 PM, we were guarding the train today.
Kilpatrick’s cavalry was positioned north of the 14th Corps at this point operating on the far left flank. On the morning of the 4th, with two infantry brigades from Baird’s division of the 14th Corps in support, they closed in on Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry at Waynesboro. Kilpatrick and Wheeler had clashed here in the town named after the Revolutionary War’s Mad Anthony Wayne, on the 26th of November, before the attack at Buck Head Creek. Thinking still that Sherman was moving on Augusta, Wheeler fell back to the north. Kilpatrick reached his real objective, the bridges at Brier Creek, and burned them before joining the rest of the column near Sylvania, Georgia, on their continued march to Savannah.
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