Kilpatrick had just cause to feel concern. His failure resulted in his transfer from Virginia to the Western theater, where he was assigned to a cavalry command under Major General William T. Sherman. It was a demotion of sorts, and Kilpatrick could not delude himself into believing otherwise.

When he went west, Kilpatrick was no longer the cocky, self-assured firebrand he had been the year before. He had tasted defeat and censure, and they had been bitter pills indeed. Nevertheless, he did his best to fit comfortably into Sherman’s command. Soon after joining his new division, he used it to spearhead the Federal drive through Tennessee and into Georgia, over Taylor’s Ridge to Buzzard Roost and through Snake Creek Gap to Resaca, Georgia.

In battle outside Resaca, in May, he had his first large dose of action in the West. There he was so badly wounded that he was forced to leave the field and return north for recuperation.

But through three years of war, he had not learned how to relax from campaigning. He returned to duty in July, against his doctor’s orders, when he heard that Sherman had crossed the Chattahoochee River and was moving on Atlanta.

By the time he returned to the field, his commander was in the city, after General John Bell Hood’s Confederate Army of Tennessee had abandoned it in retreat. Because his wound prevented him from riding horseback, Kilpatrick commandeered a carriage and rode alongside his troopers, shouting orders from the front seat. From the carriage he even conducted a raid against the Confederateheld Atlanta-Macon Railroad.

On August 18 Kilpatrick, now able to ride again, led another raid against Rebel communications south of Atlanta. He marched his division and some auxiliary units to the railroad between Jonesborough and Griffin, destroyed some miles of track, and then was challenged by enemy cavalry, who pushed his force to Lovejoy’s Station. Arriving there on August 20, he found Rebel infantry sitting across his path. Nearly surrounded, Kilpatrick mustered some of the spirit that had won him a strong reputation earlier in the war. He faced his troopers about, charged, and in the words of one historian, simply rode over the Confederate cavalry to safety.

Sherman was not pleased, however, with the scanty accomplishments of the raid. While he did not censure Kilpatrick personally, he relied more heavily than ever before on his infantry to catch and overwhelm Hood. At first Sherman planned to defeat Hood by separating him from his lines of communication and supply. Then he decided to turn his back on the Confederate commander and with a part of his army push east across Georgia to Savannah and the coast, burning out the state. He sent Major General George H. Thomas’ Army of the Cumberland back into Tennessee, where he was to deal with Hood’s westward-marching army. Then Sherman made ready to march to the sea.

He chose Kilpatrick to lead his cavalry, although Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant had previously appointed Major General James H. Wilson to command all the horsemen in Sherman’s theater. Sherman explained his decision to Wilson in curious terms: I know Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition. He then directed Wilson to join General Thomas in Tennessee.

During the march to the sea, Kilpatrick made quite a name for himself. His name, in fact, became infamous to Georgians, who watched his cavalrymen run wild over their property. They learned that Kilpatrick overlooked incidents of pillaging and thievery by his men because he frankly enjoyed wreaking havoc on secessionists.

Some of the general’s favorite vices also came to public attention during the campaign. Georgia newspapers reported that he travelled with female companions, including two Negro girls who cooked for him and with whom he engaged in the most familiar and indecent conversation. And a Confederate prisoner later recalled marching in tow beside Kilpatrick’s carriage and seeing the general stretched out comfortably on the seat with his head in a woman’s lap.

Kilpatrick’s men merrily laid waste to the state, and when the cavalry occupied the capital, Milledgeville, Kilpatrick joined in their fun. He and his officers broke into the Georgia House of Representatives and staged a mock legislative session. Although a teetotaler, Kilpatrick reportedly took the speaker’s stand and regaled the assembly with tales of the cavalry’s gallant campaigns against enemy wine cellars and whiskey store rooms. After a round of speechmaking the congressmen drew up a series of resolutions, including one declaring the Georgia Ordinance of Secession a damned farce.

During the march Kilpatrick carried on a running war against Major General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry, who constantly hovered on the fringes of Sherman’s army. Often Wheeler bested Kilpatrick in skirmishes and engagements, but not even Fightin’ Joe was able to curtail Sherman’s inexorable march through the state.

On the other hand, Kilpatrick got the better of Wheeler now and again, as in November when under Sherman’s orders he swung his cavalry north toward Augusta and then south toward Millen. It was a feinting movement and Wheeler, taking the bait, concentrated his cavalry at Millen, thinking that the Federal horsemen were heralding Sherman’s advance. Actually Sherman was marching unmolested in another direction–toward Savannah–with his four infantry corps.

Fuming at his deception, Wheeler tried to get even. On one occasion he routed Kilpatrick from a night bivouac. On another day he pushed him away from some strategic objectives which he had planned to destroy. And when Kilpatrick’s cavalry reached Aiken, South Carolina, Wheeler’s men struck them so viciously that the Federals were driven out of the town like chickens.

On the whole, however, Kilpatrick did an efficient job of guarding Sherman’s flanks. When the army reached Savannah, just before Christmas 1864, Sherman wrote him: The fact that to you, in great measure, we owe the march of four strong infantry columns, with heavy trains and wagons, over 300 miles through an enemy’s country, without the loss of a single wagon, and without the annoyance of cavalry dashes on our flanks, is honor enough for any cavalry commander.

When Sherman resumed his march, from Savannah through the Carolinas, Kilpatrick redoubled his efforts to make the Confederacy suffer. At the start of that campaign, according to prevalent rumors, he issued large quantities of matches to his troopers. He left no doubt about his intentions when he told some of his officers: In after years when travelers passing through South Carolina shall see chimney stacks without houses, and the country desolate, and shall ask ‘who did this?’ some Yankee will answer, ‘Kilpatrick’s cavalry.’ And he spoke even more plainly to a group of foot soldiers: There’ll be damned little for you infantrymen to destroy after I’ve passed through that hellhole of secession.

He tried hard to keep his word. As an example, consider his short but unpleasant stay in Barnwell, South Carolina, where his troopers were careless with their matches. While flames consumed part of the town, Kilpatrick held a gala ball at his headquarters and even forced some of the local ladies to dance with his officers. Thereafter his soldiers renamed the place, fittingly, Burnwell.

Through South Carolina Kilpatrick continued his war against both Wheeler and Lieutenant General Wade Hampton, whose cavalry guarded the retreat of the Army of Tennessee, once again under General Joseph E. Johnston. In addition to authorized warfare, Kilpatrick engaged in a bitter personal feud with Hampton, stemming from reports that Hampton’s men had lynched captured Federal troopers. Although Hampton denied the charges, Kilpatrick heatedly declared that he would retaliate in kind. It is difficult to determine where the burden of guilt in this should rest, for unauthorized killings undoubtedly took place on both sides, but certainly the issue inflamed the bitter feelings that already existed between Kilpatrick and his opponents. Since Kilpatrick’s men retaliated by violating private property, the people of South Carolina suffered most for it in the long run.

Shortly after Sherman’s army entered North Carolina, Kilpatrick endured perhaps the most embarrassing hour in his career. It came about because of his old fondness for female companionship.

Despite his raccoon-like face and slight build, Kilpatrick had always considered himself a ladies’ man. When his wife Alice died in 1863, his passionate nature apparently turned into licentiousness. While in Virginia he had been intimate with a pretty camp follower who had also been a good friend of his subordinate, Custer. And in North Carolina he travelled with another companion, a tall, handsome, well-dressed lady.

Presumably it was she who, clad only in a nightgown, was routed from Kilpatrick’s headquarters near Fayetteville, North Carolina, when Hampton’s cavalry attacked it one night in March 1865 Kilcavalry himself, wearing nightshirt and boots, was nearly captured when a Confederate swooped down on him and demanded to know General Kilpatrick’s whereabouts. Realizing that in his sleepwear he had been taken for an ordinary soldier, Kilpatrick pointed to a passing horseman and said, There he goes! The Rebel spurred his mount and was off, and Kilpatrick wasted no time finding a horse of his own and riding to safety. His lady friend, meanwhile, had to hide in a ditch until the fighting was over. When the Confederates learned these facts, they laughed heartily at Kilpatrick’s expense.

But the Rebels’ merriment could not last. In subsequent weeks Sherman proceeded to back Johnston into his final corner, and Kilpatrick’s men bagged scores of prisoners–Confederates who sensed the futility of waging a doomed campaign. On April 26 Johnston was forced to surrender his army to Sherman near Durham Station, North Carolina, and the war was over. After the Rebel army disbanded, Kilpatrick was promoted major general of volunteers and won a brevet major generalship in the Regular Army.

Kilpatrick’s postwar life was varied and colorful if ultimately tragic. Resigning his commission, he was appointed minister to Chile by President Andrew Johnson. In South America, his libertine days at an end, he married the niece of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Santiago and settled comfortably into domestic life when he was recalled to the United States in 1868.

Kilpatrick later became a director of the Union Pacific Railroad, tried his hand at playwriting, and spoke to numerous veterans’ associations. He switched his politics to vote for Democrat Horace Greeley in 1872, but afterward returned to the Republican fold and was reappointed minister to Chile in 1880. He served there until his death the following year from a kidney ailment.

He never achieved his most cherished goals. Though in February 1864 he had envisioned himself a future governor and President, he made only one bid for elective office–a rather modest one, as a congressional candidate from New Jersey, in 1880. But he was soundly defeated.

Though it may seem a minor defeat, Kilpatrick never quite got over it; he always longed for the adulation of the electorate. For a man who had seen many hopes destroyed during his lifetime, this was perhaps the cruelest disappointment of all.

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This article was written by Edward G. Longacre and originally published in the April 1971 issue of Civil War Times Illustrated Magazine.

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