The action took place only 35 miles from Maryland's eastern shore as Lieutenant Morris continued his dashing raid on Union coastal shipping. Shortly thereafter, Morris gave chase to bark Zelinda, which he captured in ballast. He reported: "Put an officer and prize crew on board of her, with orders to follow us, went in chase of a schooner to the eastward. Found her to be the Howard, with a cargo of fruit belonging to English merchants. Bonded the schooner for $6,000, and put all of the prisoners (sixty-two in all) on board. . . . Morris then removed Zelinda's provisions and burned her. Florida made yet another capture that day, the mail steamer Electric Spark, her passengers were transferred to a passing British ship, Lane. Seeking to create the impression that he had made a tender of Electric Spark, Morris scuttled her during the night rather than putting her to the torch. This prize had yielded a quantity of cash in addition to other important articles, including mail. Morris, recognizing that Union ships would by this time be in hot pursuit of him, turned Florida on an easterly course into the broad Atlantic, whose vastness provided refuge for commerce raiders.

Reflecting the widespread concern caused by the recent captures made by C.S.S. Florida, Lieutenant Morris, off the coast of Virginia and Maryland, Rear Admiral Lee dispatched screw steamers U.S.S. Mount Vernon, Lieutenant Commander Henry A. Adams, Jr., and U.S.S. Monticello, Lieutenant Cushing, to "cruise together, and on finding the Florida will make a joint attack on her and capture her.'' The career of Florida, one of the most successful raiders, was nearing an end, but the honor of capturing her was to go neither to Adams nor Cushing. Many ships went out after her, but few got even a glimpse of the wily cruiser. This date Lee also ordered out U.S.S. Ino, Acting Lieutenant French, with another approach in mind: "Disguise the Ino, her battery, officers, and crew, and play the merchantman in appearance so as to entice her [C.S.S. Florida ] alongside, when you, being prepared, will open upon her suddenly and effectually."

The story of the women and children of the Roswell mills is one that too few of you know.

The story, little known outside Georgia, took place between the battle of Kennesaw Mountain and the battles for Atlanta. The army of Confederate General Joseph Johnston had fallen back across the Chattahoochee River, and Sherman was looking for a way to get his army across after him. He sent his cavalry division sweeping eastward back upstream with orders to capture Roswell, which sits on the river's northern bank and was lightly defended by home guardsmen and a few rebel horsemen.

Despite its tiny size, the town – which until the war was known primarily as an upland escape for the aristocracy's elite from coastal Georgia's brutal summers — had become the center of a thriving textile industry during the war. The cotton mill was cranking out up to 191,000 yards of cloth per month and the woolen mill up to 30,000 yards of "Roswell Gray" uniforms. Each of the mills employed hundreds of women, some of them black.

After easily capturing the town, the commander of the Union troops, Brigadier General Kenner Garrard, turned his attention to the town's woolen mill and cotton mill. He was surprised to find a French flag flying atop the woolen mill in what turned out to be a ploy by its Confederate owner to keep it from being destroyed.

The ploy failed.

Garrard, noting no U.S. flag atop the French one, ordered both mills burned - to the protests of a French millhand who had been granted temporary ownership of the factory by its Confederate owner a day or two earlier.

Apprised of the situation, Sherman wrote Garrard "...should you, under the impulse of anger, natural at contemplating such perfidy, hang the wretch, I wholeheartedly approve the act beforehand."

However, the millhand, a Frenchman named Theophile Roche, survived.

Sherman then ordered Garrard to arrest all employees of the factory and "...let them foot it, under armed guard..." the more than 10 miles to Marietta from where he ordered them sent north via livestock boxcars to Indiana. Added Sherman, "...the poor women will surely make a howl! I presume we should let them take along their children and clothing…"

To General Henry Halleck in Washington, Sherman noted that the women were "...tainted with treason," and, "...should be as much governed by the rules of war as if in the ranks...the whole region was devoted to manufactories, and I will destroy every one of them, factory and worker alike black or white, to force their traitor soldiers to relent."

He added the next day, "...whenever these people get in the way, simply ship them to a new country north and west."

Within days Garrard had moved as many as 700 people, nearly all of them women and children, like cattle to Marietta. Their arrival there made the front pages of the New York newspapers.

By July 15, having had been given nine days' rations, two whole trainloads of the helpless refugees were sent north - most never to be heard from again.

According to author Webb Garrison, who wrote "Atlanta and the War, "...for the military record, that closed the case in which women and children were illegally deported after having been inexplicably charged with military treason," and, "...had the Roswell incident not been followed immediately by major military developments, it might have made a lasting impact upon public opinion concerning the entire war. In this century, few analysts have given it the emphasis it deserves."

What happened with the Roswell women has been a matter of great local conjecture ever since. Many of the refugees had little choice but to remain north, though some did make their way back home.

Wayne Bagley of Roswell is descended from Adeline Bagley Buice, whose husband was in the Confederate army. Though pregnant, she was sent to Chicago and was unable to return to Georgia with her daughter for over five years.

By that time, her husband, having returned from the war and thinking her dead, had remarried.

Wayne Shelly of Rome is the grandson of a millworker. Her mother and grandmother also worked in the Roswell mill and all three were deported. The woman's mother died aboard a train in Tennessee, and her death was followed shortly by that of the grandmother while the group was being transported via steamship up the Ohio River. The old woman had been so feeble that she was carried on board the boat in a rocking chair.

Interestingly, the female millworkers in the little factory town of New Manchester met a fate similar to that of the Roswell women. New Manchester was on the banks of Sweetwater Creek just across the Chattahoochee due west of Atlanta. But because that town was burned along with the mill and never rebuilt thus effectively erasing its existence, the tribulations of its women and children have been nearly forgotten.

Then again, the same can be said of the women and children of the Roswell mills, perhaps the greatest "untold" story of the war.

Sherman would use similar tactics throughout 1864 and 1865 to, as he put it, "...break the spirit of the South." Today, such actions would be considered war crimes.

To sum up the episode, Dr. Garrision wrote,"...the mystery of the Roswell women, whose ultimate fate remains unknown, is one of major importance in its own right. Even more significant is its foreshadowing of things to come of which no one should be proud."

The Civil War saw the introduction of a full-fledged, well-organized, logistics supply system running from "factory to foxhole" (as it might be described in today’s terms). Items such as shoes, apparel, tents, leather goods, ambulances and wagon wheels left the factories and were deposited in huge area base depots. From there they moved by ship or train to still larger advance depots in or near the main theaters of operations that allowed armies to act independently from the base area. The largest advance depot for the Union Army was City Point (present-day Hopewell, Virginia) which was used to sustain the Armies of the James and the Potomac for the last nine months of the war. With the exception of City Point and a few other major depots that were run by colonels and lieutenant colonels, the job of Depot Commander usually fell to a Quartermaster captain, whose responsibilities far outweighed what the pay grade would suggest. Temporary depots, landings, railroad sidings and open storage dumps – all purposefully located at convenient points for final delivery or pick up by user units – formed the last link in the Civil War supply chain.

In spite of the many and varied instances of fraud and corruption that surfaced from time to time, broken contracts, the issuance of shoddy goods and whatnot, and wastage on a sometimes monumental scale, the system overall worked remarkably well. It got even better as the war progressed. General Ulysses Grant, for instance, thought City Point Depot in 1864 the best-organized Quartermaster supply operation ever.

Idaho Territory was an organized territory of the United States which existed from 1863 to 1890.

The territory was officially organized on March 4, 1863 by Act of Congress, and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. It was created July 10, 1863, by areas from existing territories; the area west of the Continental Divide was formerly part of the Oregon Territory and Washington Territory, whereas most of the area east of the Continental Divide had been part of the Dakota Territory. The original territory covered most of the present-day states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

The first territorial capital was at Lewiston. Boise was the territorial capital from 1865.

Although the 1863 Bear River Massacre in present-day Franklin County is considered to be the westernmost battle of the Civil War, the upheaval caused by the Civil War and Reconstruction was a distant concern to those in the comparatively stable Idaho Territory, a situation which in turn encouraged settlement.

During the year she had made three voyages but had lost contact with Captain Semmes, the unresting commerce raider, and it would be too costly to maintain her as a tender.